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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
ARCHIVE AT LUNCHTIME: MCGAHERN: SHORT STORIES (PROGRAMME 1) 13:10
EAT / SLEEP / CHEER / REPEAT 14.00, 20.40
HOARD 15.30, 18.00
LA CHIMERA 13:00, 18:10
LOVE LIES BLEEDING 16:00
ROME, OPEN CITY 20:55
THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN 13:00
THE DAYS OF TREES 18.30 (+ Q&A)
TIGER STRIPES 15:45, 20:55
The IFI is supported by The Arts Council