The unlikely rise of Irish-language 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 premiere 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 premiere, 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.

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.

Published 30 Nov 2024

Tags: Bring Them Down Irish Film Kneecap The Quiet Girl