This preview screening at 18.30 on Thursday October 17th 2019 was followed by a Q&A with director Ian Fitzgibbon and novelist Kevin Barry, hosted by Mary Kate O’Flanagan, Story Consultant, Storyteller, Screenwriter. 

Sara (Charlie Murphy) has married into the feuding Mannion family and is embroiled in a complex web of erotic dysfunction. Though husband Daddy Mannion (Pat Shortt), 20 years her senior, is a big cheese in a small town, she is wholly disengaged and filled with
marital ennui. She is however smitten by his estranged son, criminal recluse Doggy Mannion (Peter Coonan), and is also involved with his younger son, failed chicken farmer Martin (Moe Dunford). An uneasy truce prevails but the family’s long-simmering feud looks set to erupt as the sons try to overthrow their domineering father.

Wrought from the dark recesses of novelist Kevin Barry’s mind, and filmed on the Leitrim-Sligo-Roscommon borderland, director Ian Fitzgibbon delivers a pitch-black comedy portrait of small town Ireland with echoes of grand guignol and Royston Vasey.

Dark Lies the Island opened on Friday October 18th 2019. 

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn.