A round-up of Ireland’s cinematic contributions in 2024
By Brian Bowe
We are heading into 2025 whether you like it or not. But hey, even if you’re entering the New Year willingly or kicking and screaming like me, if you can manage to blot out most of the current news coverage, there’s actually some stuff to look forward to, especially on the big screen. Looking at the slate, we have Heat 2, Now You See Me 3, Mission: Impossible 8, and Mickey 17, which, you’ll be happy to hear is not a sequel.
However, this article isn’t about what’s to come, but more what’s already happened. 2024 was a damn fine year for cinema-goers. A quick glance at my Letterboxd diary (the popular mobile app used for logging and rating movies) and I’m seeing a lot of 4 star ratings for this year’s flicks, a noticeable spike when compared to the previous years’. Before we get stuck into Ireland’s contribution to this healthy batch, I’ll quickly rattle off a few titles that, if you haven’t already, you should check out: Close Your Eyes (Victor Erice), Janet Planet (Annie Baker), Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Perfect Days (Wim Wenders), Anora (Sean Baker) and, one for the dads (and the French, apparently), Clint Eastwood’s Juror No.2.
That They May Face the Rising Sun, Pat Collins’ screen adaptation of John McGahern’s final novel of the same name, stunned audiences when it arrived in cinemas last spring, garnering wonderful notices across the world. The film follows Joe and Kate Ruttledge (Barry Ward and Anna Bederke) after they leave London to live and work in a small lakeside community in Ireland, near to where Joe grew up. It’s soft and lyrical, the type of film that asks you to slow down, look and listen. Eagle-eyed viewers will spot Joe’s licence plate, which reads OZU and should give you some idea of Collins’ cinematic inspirations. The director has been working away for years, Song of Granite (2017) and Silence (2012) both had buzzy festival runs, but That They May Face the Rising Sun feels like a breakthrough for the Cork-born filmmaker. Stream it now on IFI@Home, and let its golden rays keep you warm during these cold winter months.
Then again, if you prefer your winters cold and dark like me, I have just the thing. When it comes to the horror genre, Ireland has a pretty solid track record in recent years: Key texts include Kate Dolan’s You are Not My Mother (2021), The Hole in the Ground (2019), and Grabbers (2012). And while Damien McCarthy’s debut feature, Caveat (2021), got horror heads talking, it’s his follow-up, Oddity, which has attracted worldwide acclaim, and rightly so! Now streaming on Shudder, McCarthy’s sophomore film creeps up on you, combining sharply directed set-pieces and a slow-burning sense of dread to pull off one of the best Horror films of the year. If you’ve already caught up with it, word on the street is that McCarthy is already planning his next movie, so the wait shouldn’t be too long. No rest for the wicked!
Someone else who shows no signs of slowing down is actor Cillian Murphy. You’d think with an Academy Award under his belt, the Cork man would coast a wee bit and do a few soft pictures happy to trade on his newfound stardom. But he’s done the opposite, turning in what’s arguably his finest performance to date, in Small Things Like These, adapted from the 2021 novel by Claire Keegan. Its director, Tim Mielants, is Belgian; but the story, focusing on Ireland’s infamous Magdalene Laundries, is unmistakably Irish. Set in 1985, Murphy stars as Bill Furlong, a devoted father who uncovers disturbing secrets at the local convent; as he investigates, he discovers shocking truths about his own past and life. The result is a quietly moving investigation of shame and guilt that speaks to society today just as much as it does the horrors that stretched throughout the twentieth century. Murphy is sublime, of course, and lending his name to this film just after his award-winning turn in Oppenheimer last year will undoubtedly expand awareness of the harrowing reality of the Magdalene Laundries.
Another film tangled up in Ireland’s recent history is Kneecap, Rich Peppiatt’s buzzy biopic depicting the rise of the Belfast-based hip-hop trio of the same name. At once radical and formulaic, the film successfully juggles complex political sensitivities surrounding Irish identity and language in post-Troubles Belfast while still keeping things moving and fun. Kneecap comes out swinging with a blistering first half; and sure enough, it soon broadens out, spreading a little thin over too many subplots, but it never sells itself out, which is pretty admirable. At my screening, the elderly lady sitting near me who was laughing throughout was quietly weeping/sniffling by the end, a testament to how deftly the film handles its heavyweight themes. Surprisingly sweet at times and without a dribble of sentimentality.
You won’t find that much sweetness in The Apprentice, Ali Abbasi’s Trump biopic produced by Irish company Tailored Films and starring Sebastian Stan as the current US president-elect, which is wholly engaging when it’s going for Behind the Candelabra by way of American Psycho. Abbasi examines Trump’s career as a real estate businessman in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, using his relationship with attorney Roy Cohn (a terrific Jeremy Strong) as a throughline. It’s a wickedly funny movie — and no, I’m not talking about the lame Trumpian Easter eggs which seemed to be the trailer’s sole ingredient, but rather the moments of grotesque absurdity, a certain queasiness heightened further by the interplay between the scruffy vérité shooting style and the cartoonish performances.
From the skyscrapers of Manhattan to the graffiti-daubed squats of north Kent. Dublin actor Barry Keoghan co-stars in Andrea Arnold’s latest, Bird, a magical coming-of-age drama told from the viewpoint of 12-year-old Bailey (impressive stuff from newcomer Nykiya Adams). Keoghan is going full cheeky-chappie charmer. It’s a mode we’ve seen him in before, which isn’t to say he’s phoning it in here. He’s reliably strong, but it’s a less interesting turn than, say, his Tom Ripley-esque performance in Saltburn — a film which surprisingly gets referenced a couple of times in Bird.
Leaping out of his comfort zone, however, is Keoghan’s mulleted, middle class counterpart, Paul Mescal. Best known for his breakthrough in TV series Normal People, the Maynooth man is now making his blockbuster debut in Ridley Scott’s hotly-anticipated historical sequel, Gladiator II. At the time of writing, the film has yet to be released, but early reports seem to suggest Scott should’ve resisted the lucrative urge to expand his 2000 smash hit into a franchise. But fear not, as the good news for Mescal fans is that 2024 had us spoiled. Earlier in the year came Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, co-starring Mescal alongside yet another Irish heartthrob, Andrew Scott, in what has topped many critics’ Best Of lists already.
Of course, no round-up of Irish talent would be complete without mentioning Saoirse Ronan, who led two distinctively different productions in 2024: The Outrun, in which Ronan tackles addiction against the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands; and Blitz, Steve McQueen’s sprawling London-set World War II drama. The former, released at the end of summer, gave Ronan some of her best notices to date, with critics tipping her for an Oscar nod. Blitz, however, didn’t move the needle as expected. McQueen, best known in Ireland for his Fassbender-led experimental Bobby Sands biopic, Hunger, premiered his latest at the London Film Festival in October. The reactions were polite but undoubtedly underwhelming. However, Ronan, as ever, drew most of the praise, for playing a distraught mother during the Luftwaffe’s raids. So, who knows, the Irish star could be on track for a double Oscar nomination!
