Two Irish sisters share a bitter reunion in the… | Little White Lies

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Two Irish sis­ters share a bit­ter reunion in the scorch­ing trail­er for Wildfire

29 Jun 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Two figures dancing intimately in a dimly lit room, highlighted by colourful lighting.
Two figures dancing intimately in a dimly lit room, highlighted by colourful lighting.
Cathy Brady’s debut fea­ture con­fronts the human toll of the nation­al fight for inde­pen­dence from the UK.

As the nov­el­ist Viet Thanh Nguyen wrote, All wars are fought twice — the first time on the bat­tle­field, and the sec­ond time in mem­o­ry.” That’s cer­tain­ly true in North­ern Ire­land, where the bat­tle to win inde­pen­dence from the Unit­ed King­dom has left a soci­o­log­i­cal scar on the region and its inhab­i­tants, years of Trou­bles hav­ing cost lives on both sides of the ongo­ing conflict.

That’s the jump­ing-off point for Cathy Bradys new film Wild­fire, the first trail­er for which pre­mieres exclu­sive­ly here at Lit­tle White Lies today. In it, two sis­ters reunite after one of them mys­te­ri­ous­ly van­ish­es for a year, only to find her Irish home changed and hostile.

The locals don’t appre­ci­ate that the un-dis­ap­peared Kel­ly (Nika McGuigan, in her final per­for­mance pri­or to her trag­ic death from bow­el can­cer at age 33) has been snoop­ing around ask­ing ques­tions about the death of her moth­er, despite warn­ings from sis­ter Lau­ren (Nora-Jane Noone). Their late mum seems to have been a casu­al­ty of the IRA’s vio­lent doings, but inves­ti­gat­ing that much vio­lates the strict­ly enforced code of silence — say noth­ing,” went the mantra — that gov­erned the area.

Though Brady may be new to fea­ture direct­ing, she and the late McGuigan both got their start on TV with the com­e­dy-dra­ma series Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope in their native Ire­land. This film project looks to be in a grim­mer reg­is­ter, con­fronting the nation­al char­ac­ter on dark­er terms, meld­ing Irish pride with the nas­ti­er cor­ners of their history.

Wild­fire has already been fet­ed on the fes­ti­val cir­cuit, hav­ing graced the online marché at last year’s scaled-back Cannes as well as the vir­tu­al Dis­cov­ery Show­case at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. Brady rep­re­sents an intrigu­ing, promis­ing new voice in the Irish cin­e­ma as it con­tin­ues to grow on the world stage, an instant one-to-watch.

Wild­fire comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and Ire­land on 3 September.

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