Irish Film Institute -International Film Directory – Film Listing

Song for a Raggy Boy

    • 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

    Feature
    F-Rated Female-led

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. 

Awards:
Audience Award for Best Irish Film at the 2nd Irish Film and Television Awards 2004
Best Cinematography Award at the 1st Irish Film and Television Awards 2003.

 

100 minutes, Ireland/UK/Denmark/Spain, 2003, Colour

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