Irish Film Institute -International Film Directory – Film Listing

Fréwaka

Fréamhacha

    • Director

      Aislinn Clarke

    • Credits

      Producers:
      Dermot Lavery,
      Patrick O'Neill.

      Cinematographer:
      Narayan Van Maele

      Writer:
      Aislinn Clarke

    • Principal Cast

      Bríd Ní Neachtain,
      Clare Monnelly,
      Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya,
      Olga Wehrly,
      Grace Collender.
      Grace Collender

  • Category

    Feature
    Irish Language
    F-Rated
    Horror

Haunted by a personal tragedy, home care worker Shoo (Clare Monnelly) leaves her pregnant girlfriend to care for Peig (Bríd Ní Neachtain), a cantankerous old woman who has incarcerated herself in a big house on the edge of a remote village. Peig fears the neighbours as much as she fears na sídhe, sinister entities who she believes abducted her on her wedding night decades before. As the two develop a deep connection, Shoo is infected by the old woman’s paranoia, rituals, and superstitions, eventually confronting the horrors of her own past.

Aislinn Clarke’s haunting folk horror is deftly woven through with contemporary concerns about mental health, inherited trauma, and the fraught realm of motherhood, as they impact upon the two fully-realised characters – brought to life with understated brilliance by Monnelly and Ní Neachtain.

Notes by Sunniva O’Flynn

103 minutes, Ireland, 2024, Colour

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