The unlikely rise of Irish-language cinema | Little White Lies

The unlike­ly rise of Irish-lan­guage cinema

30 Nov 2024

Words by Eoin O'Donnell

A group of people wearing orange and green uniforms walking on a road with hills in the background.
A group of people wearing orange and green uniforms walking on a road with hills in the background.
Despite less than 2% of Ire­land speak­ing the lan­guage on a dai­ly basis, more and more film­mak­ers are show­ing an inter­est in how Gaeilge can be incor­po­rat­ed into cinema.

For a lan­guage that has long been thought to be going through an irre­versible decline, the recent wealth of films in Ireland’s native tongue has told a very dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Despite less than 2% of Ireland’s pop­u­la­tion speak­ing the lan­guage on a dai­ly basis, the nation’s cin­e­mat­ic out­put has seen an enor­mous cul­tur­al shift towards its cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic roots over the past few years.

The fore­most exam­ple is Rich Peppiatt’s rau­cous musi­cal com­e­dy-biopic Kneecap, a smash-hit at both UK and Irish box offices this year. Kneecap had the pres­tige to go along with its buzzy word-of-mouth, sweep­ing nom­i­na­tions at both BIFA and the Euro­pean Film Awards as well as being cho­sen as Ireland’s sub­mis­sion for Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture at the Oscars. In fact, of the five Irish sub­mis­sions so far this decade, Kneecap marks the fourth Irish-lan­guage film cho­sen to rep­re­sent the coun­try at the industry’s pre­mière awards cer­e­mo­ny; a marked change for a coun­try that has cham­pi­oned just a hand­ful of films in its native tongue (Gaeilge, to Irish peo­ple). Colm Bairead’s dra­ma The Qui­et Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) made his­to­ry last year when it became the first of these sub­mis­sions to secure an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion for Best Inter­na­tion­al Fea­ture, and again when it became the first Irish-lan­guage film screened at the Berlin Film Festival.

The ear­li­est notable film focused on the Irish lan­guage was 1934’s Man of Aran, a doc­u­men­tary which boasts the unfor­tu­nate acco­lade of being the first-ever recip­i­ent of the grand prize for non-Ital­ian films at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val, the Mus­soli­ni cup. Whilst glimpses of the lan­guage appeared in films like John Ford & John Wayne’s The Qui­et Man, the first non-doc­u­men­tary Irish fea­ture film wasn’t released until Poitín in 1978. In the decades that fol­lowed, only a hand­ful films with dia­logue pre­dom­i­nant­ly spo­ken in Irish were released.

If Kneecap’s suc­cess wasn’t proof enough that Irish-lan­guage films have mass appeal to audi­ences beyond those at home, that fact was on full dis­play at this year’s BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val. Along­side a pan­el dis­cus­sion on the role of Celtic lan­guage cin­e­ma, this year’s edi­tion played host to two Irish-lan­guage fea­tures; Bring Them Down, a dra­ma in the offi­cial com­pe­ti­tion star­ring Bar­ry Keoghan and Christo­pher Abbott, and Fréwa­ka, one of sev­er­al films vying for the title of the first Irish-lan­guage hor­ror film.

Speak­ing after the film’s pre­mière, Fréwaka’s direc­tor Ais­linn Clarke spoke about the impor­tance of the genre film­mak­ing space in build­ing Irish-speak­ing audiences.“Growing up as a Gaeil­geoir (Irish-speak­ing) hor­ror fan, I nev­er thought I’d see an Irish hor­ror film”. Clarke fond­ly remem­bers an episode of Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er as her only expo­sure to Irish with­in the genre, where the sup­pos­ed­ly omi­nous pagan incan­ta­tion was, in actu­al­i­ty, a Dublin bus sched­ule (one can only assume she didn’t suf­fer through Don­ald Pleasance’s pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Samhain’, the Irish world for Hal­loween, in 1981’s Hal­loween II).

Irish cul­ture is unique­ly suit­ed to hor­ror in many ways – Clarke notes we have our own brand of Catholi­cism” thanks to cen­turies of druidic tra­di­tions meet­ing with nation­al trau­ma, and that this sud­den wave” of inter­est in tra­di­tion­al Irish cul­ture has coin­cid­ed with a wave of more thought­ful, cul­tur­al­ly-tuned hor­ror. Fréwa­ka (Irish for roots’) seizes upon what Clarke calls this folksy’ vision of the nation’s past, to inter­ro­gate the con­tra­dic­tions of mod­ern Ireland.

Two men embracing outdoors on a hillside, one wearing a blue jacket and the other a brown jacket.

Irish-lan­guage pro­duc­tions need not be as restric­tive for poten­tial film­mak­ers as they first appear, either. Fréwa­ka was a bilin­gual pro­duc­tion, with Eng­lish-lan­guage scripts avail­able for crew mem­bers who didn’t speak Irish, and plen­ty of Eng­lish spo­ken on set.

Chris Andrews’ Bring Them Down went a step fur­ther, bring­ing entire­ly non-Irish actors like Christo­pher Abbott on-board. Nei­ther Andrews nor Abbott spoke any Irish pri­or to pro­duc­tion com­menc­ing, with vet­er­an Irish-lan­guage actor Peadar Cox com­ing on board to help with trans­la­tions and pro­nun­ci­a­tions. Abbott learned his lines pho­net­i­cal­ly, and Andrews nev­er felt he was at a dis­ad­van­tage at the helm: I just direct­ed emo­tion, and the rest fell togeth­er”, he said after the panel.

For film­mak­ers, the Irish lan­guage is no longer just a poten­tial turn-off for audi­ences, in many cas­es it’s incen­tivized as a way to secure fund­ing from Irish arts bod­ies. Indeed, in the case of Bring Them Down, the film wasn’t even ini­tial­ly con­cep­tu­al­ized in Irish or even set in Ire­land, it was writ­ten to be based in Cum­bria. When loca­tion-scout­ing in the west coast of Ire­land, Andrews met some local Irish-speak­ing farm­ers, and real­ized that by local­iz­ing the script he could not only tell their sto­ry, but also secure pro­duc­tion fund­ing from Screen Ireland/​Fís Éireann.

At the Celtic lan­guage dis­cus­sion, Andrews’ co-pan­el­lists rep­re­sent­ed voic­es from with­in the Scot­tish and Welsh film­mak­ing scenes. Elspeth Turn­er, a Scot­tish actor who large­ly works in her native tongue, not­ed that we think we’ll only sell Gael­ic-lan­guage films to the Gael­ic dias­po­ra, which just isn’t true…there’s this mas­sive ener­gy hap­pen­ing, we just have to keep going, mak­ing more.”

Welsh direc­tor Lee Haven Jones con­curred, not­ing that just five Welsh-lan­guage films were pro­duced in the 2010s, and the only two released since 2020 were both direct­ed by him: We need to embrace genre and be prag­mat­ic, tell the types of sto­ries audi­ences want to see”. By com­par­i­son, there were also just five non-doc­u­men­tary Irish-lan­guage films released through the 2010s, despite Ireland’s pop­u­la­tion being over dou­ble that of Wales. Since 2020 though, the out­put of Ireland’s native-lan­guage cin­e­ma has explod­ed, with most of the 10+ films pro­duced so far this decade even get­ting the­atri­cal or fes­ti­val releases.

Gael­góirs at home and among Ireland’s vast dias­po­ra are still feel­ing the impact of their language’s new­found pro­lif­er­a­tion in cin­e­ma, but maybe the most excit­ing prospect is for the mil­lion or so chil­dren cur­rent­ly learn­ing the lan­guage in schools. Irish chil­dren typ­i­cal­ly spend over a decade of their edu­ca­tion study­ing the lan­guage, and the dearth of non-edu­ca­tion­al enter­tain­ment in Irish restricts any expo­sure out­side of class. Beyond short films like Mar­tin McDonagh’s Cáca Mil­lis or dubs of ani­mat­ed films like Song of the Sea, there has been lit­tle in the realm of sub­ver­sive or mature’ enter­tain­ment young Irish peo­ple could use to hone their lan­guage. Whilst films like Kneecap or Fréwa­ka, or even seem­ing­ly edu­ca­tion­al fare like Famine-set thriller Black 47 aren’t exact­ly ide­al class­room view­ing, they offer a local­ized win­dow into new gen­res and the wider world of cinema.

It’s hard to pin down exact­ly what is dri­ving the new­found pas­sion for the Irish lan­guage on-screen in recent years. Is it a byprod­uct of increased over­seas obses­sion with the coun­try in the wake of cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­na like Sal­ly Rooney’s books, or the pres­ence of stars like Paul Mescal plas­tered across Times Square? Or per­haps it’s the cul­mi­na­tion of many gen­er­a­tions of emi­gra­tion, result­ing in an inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty pin­ing for the cul­ture they left behind. Regard­less, Ireland’s cul­tur­al caché over­seas is final­ly begin­ning to trick­le back to its own native film scene, and as the say­ing goes, is fearr go mall ná go brách’: it’s bet­ter late than never.

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