BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Daisy Asquith explores her family’s painful Irish heritage in this moving documentary about her mother’s adoption.
Asquith’s hand-held style of shooting – where she turns her camera onto obscure, hidden and lesser-known subjects – is well known in a body of work that has seen her make over 20 films for the BBC and Channel 4. Here she focuses on her own mother, conceived to unmarried parents in Ireland and adopted by an English family, as she goes in search of her roots in West Clare.
A visit to a confession box, intercut with archive footage (Daisy’s mother being interviewed in a pub and chatting with locals) lends itself to a ’stage Irish’ view of rural Ireland. However, when the long-lost relatives are eventually discovered, Daisy – the natural communicator who likes to see the world through other people’s eyes – takes us on a journey far from West Clare and beyond her mother’s quest to understand her mysterious Irish past – a past we are all too familiar with.
Barrie Dowdall is a Dublin-based filmmaker
With special guest Daisy Asquith
Please note that the festival is for over 18s only
