By Roger Childs

…you’re bound to enjoy a fantastic trip to the cinema regardless of what you see! –Festival Patron, Francesca Rudkin

2026 Intrepid British and Irish Film Festival

It’s one of the highlights of the year for serious film goers. There are twenty-five movies in all and fortunately many will return to cinemas like Shoreline in Waikanae. We saw two impressive films from Ireland last week and both displayed the diversity and beauty of the Irish countryside.

Three Urns is full of humour and fun as Mr O’Connor (Ciaran Hinds) carries one of the urns bearing his wife’ ashes and is headed cross-country to Donegal. However Whitetail is a serious psychological drama set in the haunted, wooded country of southern Ireland. Both are four star movies showing in different dimensions the diverse skills of Irish film makers, production staff and actors.

Travelling in whatever is available

O’Connor starts with a car but the wheels are taken after one stop! Then the rest of the vehicle disappears. There is one delightful scene when O’Connor is talking to some locals and you see in the background a middle-aged couple moving the wheels in a wheelbarrow! A Breakers Yard features a lot as the whimsical O’Connor is happy to travel in anything that reliably moves including a milk-float and an open wagon. His final means of travel features a wonderful draught horse!

There is a range of characters who keep on cropping up including a whiskey priest, an older woman who takes on different jobs, a couple of students who are very fond of each other, a, slim young French woman usually wearing black, musicians and more. The music is a delightful element of the film and covers the range of Gaelic styles.

The acting is superb and Hinds in the lead role is excellent.

Cinematographer Richard Kendrick makes a meal of the various landscapes and the impact people have had on the land over many centuries. Highly recommended.

The troubled Jen

Whitetail centres on a forest in the south of Eire and the small town nearby. Jen (superbly played by Natasha O’Keeffe) is a key figure in the village where she works as a park ranger often changing the batteries on tree cameras in an effort to catch poachers in the woods. The first scene features a teenage Jen with her boyfriend and the two of them are taking pot shots at cans. But then they mistake her sister for a deer.

Most of the film centres on Jen some years later. She lives with her father and has a mixed relationship with the Garda who are not very cooperative in trying to catch a poacher especially when she dumps the corpse of a deer on the road outside the police station. She gets satisfaction from her conservation work but emotionally Jen is a mess and this is not helped when the former boyfriend turns up in the town.

This is a dark, simmering drama, however there is one delightful scene late in the piece, Jen is out to it in the woods she loves and as she wakes she realizes her face is being licked by a whitetail deer!

Irish quality

The Three Urns (96 minutes) and Whitetail (103 minutes) are two very different Irish films, but both are well worth seeing if they feature in a cinema near you.