A film about the handful of streets around the Cowgate, Edinburgh, which have long housed a proud Irish diaspora. A film about folk music and its power to connect people.
Musician Aidan O’Rourke, from the celebrated folk trio Lau, lives in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town. During lockdown, Aidan got to know three of his octogenarian neighbours, all called Margaret, and listened to their stories. Aidan brings together a group of sensational Irish and Scottish folk musicians and explores through music and storytelling what home and belonging mean.
Featuring a stunning original soundtrack by O’Rourke and live performances by Liam Ó Maonlai, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Comac Begley, Róisín Chambers and Aoife Ní Bhriain.
Aidan O’Rourke is a fiddler and composer. Raised in Argyll, his roots are Scottish and Irish but his music roams the edges of those traditions.
Becky Manson is a filmmaker from Orkney. Interested in routine, repetition, and ritual, she tells small stories that speak to universal themes.
Mark Cousins has directed twenty feature films. His themes are cinema, cities, recovery, walking and looking. Among many he has won the Prix Italia, the Stanley Kubrick award, the EFA's Innovation award, a Peabody.
A short and personal female centred documentary about addiction, and long-term recovery from it. This film weaves together observational and lyrical elements to take us into the challenging, deeply personal, and relatively unknown world of recovery – along with the processes of care that follow in the years after a period of active addiction. This is one couple’s journey together as they negotiate the world of recovery and how to plan for a future with so much uncertainty in it.
DUTHCHAS is a poignant, touching and emotive exploration of what it means to people, especially women, to have to leave the island of their birth - Berneray in the Outer Hebrides - to get an education, work, and live and examines the effect this had on the Gaelic language and culture of the island.
The documentary features previously unseen Kodachrome 8mm archive film of everyday life on the Isle of Berneray in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland through the 60s and 70s, intercut with interviews with people from the island including many featured in the archive film which reveals repeated iconic scenes of leaving the island, friends and relatives on the pier waving as they recede into the distance.
A specially composed soundtrack by Donald Shaw draws on the richness of traditional Gaelic songs from Berneray and their compelling melodies as inspiration.
Whilst waiting for her asylum claim to be assessed in Glasgow, a Kurdish refugee’s infatuation with a charismatic Turkish barber forces her to confront her past trauma in order to face the future in hope.
After a night of intoxication, a hungover and hysterical Nick wakes up next to his boyfriend Charlie and must conceal him from his own homophobic and dysfunctional family.
Official Selection Flickerfest International Short Film Festival 2022 - World premiere
Official Selection SXSW Film Festival 2022
Official Selection BFI Flare London LGBTQ+ Film Festival 2022
Lockdown in London due to the pandemic. People work at their houses and get bored and stressed out. Despite everything, the only thing always finds a way: Love.
A short film shot during the pandemic with a bit of humour that makes people remember those difficult times.
Will, a frustrated animator, records a message to his mother. He explains “confessionally” that the film he was trying to make with his collaborator, Ainslie Henderson, failed. It was a film that they were making about her, after she contracted mouth cancer 5 years ago.
He explains the purpose of him talking to her now, in a candid way about it, might just be the final closure his Mum and family need. Why did he invent an imaginary cat called DOM who exists only on his computer and begins to get in the way? Needing to move on, the film they shot and animated will now explain what they were trying to do.
The film plays out from Will’s perspective today, a composition of thoughts, images and scenes - reflecting and editing together a letter to his mother. A self-reflective and self-referential film that blurs the lines between fiction and nonfiction. This video message or ‘letter’ to her is a device that guides the film’s narrative. As if being ‘live edited’ the film has a playful urgency, enabling the viewer to authentically experience the journey with Will and the other characters.
A lonely widow’s home is infested by a mouldy manifestation of her dead daughter’s spirit, but when her son returns from university and realises the severity of her emotional entombment she is forced to confront her festering guilt and choose between the living and the dead.
A marine odyssey into the folklore, ecology and history of seaweed in northern Scotland. Voiced by harvesters, environmentalists, archaeologists and seaweed farmers behind the miracle resource.
A vivid dream exploration of Moira Shearer's heart and mind, just before and after she agreed to star in Powell and Pressburger's beloved cinema classic "The Red Shoes", a decision that would change her life forever.
After 40 years of solitude, a spirited elderly hermit opens his life to young female director as he tackles ill health, a declining memory, and questions whether he can live out his last years in the wilderness he calls home.
Official Selection Glasgow Film Festival 2022 - World premiere
