The Mountain Within Me

Director: Polly Steele

Year: 2024

Nicholas (O’Shea) and Isabel (Skelly) are made for each other, but fate does not always choose the easiest path to true love. As destiny pulls them together, so do family, passion, and faith drive them apart. Nicholas’ father, William (Brosnan), comes home one day to shatter his family’s quiet, modest life. He tells them that in a moment of divine intervention, God has instructed him to dedicate his life to painting. He quits his job and sets off for the coast, leaving his shellshocked wife and son to fend for themselves. Meanwhile Isabel and her family live a charmed existence on a nearby small neighbouring island, their house full of music and poetry. When tragedy strikes and her brother suffers a terrible accident, the music stops, and Isabel’s parents (Bonham Carter, Byrne) decide in their grief to send Isabel to a convent school on the mainland. The young lovers embark on their own individual journeys of heartache and misplaced love, before fate contrives to pull the threads of their lives together. When they meet, it will be like a miracle.

Director: Polly Steele

Year: 2017

Based on the true-life story of Helga Schneider who was abandoned by her mother in 1941 when she was only four years old. Helga’s mother had gone to join the Nazi SS where she underwent special training to qualify as a concentration camp guard in Auschwitz. The film is set in the year 2000, following not only Helga and her mother’s journeys but the next two generations of their family and the suffering they endure following revelations of long held secrets around the horrific events that took place over 70 years ago.

Director: Ornella Mutoni

Year: 2024

A group of young adults born during or just after the 1994 genocide against Rwanda's Tutsi people gather to find the courage to break a powerful taboo. Rwanda is one of the few nations in the world providing specialist counselling for children conceived through rape, who number 10,000 across the country. Here, course leader Emilienne, a mother, therapist and genocide survivor, helps the group to imagine a future free from family secrets and societal stigma. In a circle of supportive peers, they tell their individual stories and face their struggles together, in the hope their participation will advocate for others facing similar trauma. Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2024 NY African Film Festival 2025