An experimental drama about a woman and her deteriorating relationship with people in her life, culminating in her death. On November 2nd, All Souls Day, Nicole’s (Eva Birthistle) body is found on the beach. Seven years later her mother Maddie (Jayne Snow), resolves to find out what really happened that day and visits her daughter’s former boyfriend Jim (Declan Conlon) in prison. All Souls Day is a very low budget feature film, shot over two years, on a variety of formats including Super 8mm, Hi-8, VHS and Super 16mm, blown up to 35mm. The film was premiered at the 1997 Cork Film Festival. It was funded by the Arts Council in 1989 (as a treatment of Oscar Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’) and completed with co-funding from RTE and the Irish Film Board.
An intense and demanding picture…All Souls Day takes on a hypnotic hold as it delves deeper into its interlinked themes of memory, truth, forgiveness and redemption, and it continues to play on the mind long after it finishes on screen. – Michael Dwyer, The Irish Times
(1997, 80mins)