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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 (DOUBLE BILL) 13.20
BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD BLACKBERRY 11:00, 20:10
IFI & GAZE: UNMASCED: BEYOND THE AGGRESSIVES: 25 YEARS LATER 20.30
IFI & GAZE: UNMASCED: BUTCHES AND BOYS 18.15
IFI & GAZE: UNMASCED: OUTITUDE 13.30
IFI & GAZE: UNMASCED: SCANNÁIN SAPPHIC (IRISH LESBIAN SHORTS) 15.30
KIDNAPPED 14:30
LOVE LIES BLEEDING 16:10, 20:50
PERFECT DAYS 17:20
THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN 11.30, 13.50, 18.30
THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE 11.20
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