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Director
Aisling Walsh
Credits
Producers: Dominic Wright, John McDonnell. Writers: Aisling Walsh, Kevin Byron Murphy, Patrick Galvin
Principal Cast
Aidan Quinn, Iain Glen, Marc Warren, John Travers
Category
FeatureF-Rated
The brutality of Ireland’s industrial schools has become a matter of public knowledge – and shame – over the last twenty years and Song for a Raggy Boy is part of that narrative of revelation. This film from Aisling Walsh revolves around the efforts of Franklin (Aidan Quinn), a one-time revolutionary hired to be a lay teacher at a reform school. Here he is shocked by the school’s culture of brutality; led by the cruel Brother John (Iain Glen), the boys at the school are subject to a regime of torture and degradation. Made to answer to numbers instead of names, the worst horror the boys are exposed to is a paedophile willingly accommodated by the staff. Based on Patrick Galvin’s memoir which recounted his time in an industrial school, Song for a Raggy Boy is a powerful depiction of the worst elements of Ireland’s religious institutions.
100 minutes, Ireland/UK/Denmark/Spain, 2003, Colour
A QUIET LOVE 18.00
HAMNET 15.30
IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY 13.10, 20.40
JEAN-LUC GODARD: ALPHAVILLE 18.20
MY FATHER’S SHADOW 13.00
NO OTHER CHOICE 13.00
SENTIMENTAL VALUE 15.20
THE BIGGER PICTURE: BEFORE SUNRISE 20.30
THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE 15.45, 18.10 (OC)
THE SECRET AGENT 20.10
The IFI is supported by The Arts Council