All Sunday screenings will have a live introduction with speaker tbc.
In an instant, nurse Manuela loses the teenage son she raised on her own. Grief-stricken, she sets out to search for the boy's long-lost father in Barcelona, where she reawakens into a new maternal role, at the head of a surrogate family that includes a pregnant, HIV-positive nun; an illustrious star of the stage; and a transgender sex worker.
Original language: Spanish
Presented with English subtitles
This season has been made possible by support from: The National Lottery, Too Much: Melodrama and the BFI Film Audience Network.
Irish Film and Identity on the big screen
Visions of an Otherworld is a season allowing viewers to see spiritual and mythical stories using the Irish language, telling contemporary and compelling stories that offer another world of Irish Film and Identity.
Irish culture has recently taken on a resurgence through literature, TV shows and particularly film, with Claire Keegan’s ‘Small Things like These’, Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ and Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’. These stories offer a view of Ireland’s filmic identity currently, but they are still being spoken in English and not Irish. In a 2023 interview during the BAFTA Awards, Irish actor Paul Mescal stated, "Broken Irish is better than clever English," as he and many other young people have become advocates for reclaiming their language through films. My season offers a unique blend of films, all in Irish language from the last decade, from young Directors, which offer unique but universal stories which hope to question what it means to be Irish in our current times.
In Ireland’s distant past, there were seanchaí (travelling storytellers) who ventured from village to village, sharing stories around a campfire, orally presenting Ireland’s strong storytelling heritage to bring communities together around a shared passion for their unique cultural identity. This passion for stories and language, when combined with the medium of film, blends together in current directors who are crafting stories that are trying to redefine what it means to be Irish. Colm Bairéad’s 2022 fiction film ‘The Quiet Girl’, Ciara Nic Chormaic’s 2022 documentary ‘Clouded Reveries’, Pat Collins’s 2017 biographic feature ‘Song of Granite’ and Tomm Moore’s 2014 animation ‘Song of the Sea’ all offer unique views of what it means to be Irish, as this new filmic identity comes of age.
Visions of an Otherworld is presented in partnership with the National Film and Television School. This programme has been curated by NFTS Film Studies, Programming and Curation student, Joseph Pidgeon.
