Sé Merry Doyle’s homage to Dublin’s street traders chronicles how their age-old culture becomes increasingly overshadowed by the closing of marketplaces, the scourge of heroin, and the mutation of a city into a soulless space.

The poetry of Dubliner Paula Meehan is woven throughout, a poet who has “borrowed Joyce’s lens to try to see into the past and into the legacy that would animate most of what I’ve subsequently written”.

Shot in stages over many years, the film explores the city through which Leopold Bloom wandered, but now sees the demolition of its tenements; a young U2 perform at an inner-city festival; Tony Gregory speak of his arrest in defense of the traders; and the last trading days of the Iveagh Market.

This screening is presented in association with the Friends of the Iveagh Market, and will be introduced by Sé Merry Doyle.

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn.

See all IFI and Bloomsday Film Festival 2023 screenings here.