Archaeologist Dermot (Aidan Quinn) lives on Ireland’s west coast trying to bury his past. His young lover Abby (Taylor Schilling) is beginning to reconsider her future with him ‘at the end of the world’. When she finds he has no interest in having children, she returns to her native Montreal to reflect on her situation. Meanwhile, the local community trundles its way through death and birth, economic collapse and survival – its intimacy at times a comfort, at others an intrusion.

While Dermot’s professional and human engagement is renewed by a bogland find, Abby’s confusion grows as she excavates her own history. The film, based on Aislinn Hunter’s acclaimed debut novel Stay, shuttles between the Galway locale and cosmopolitan Montreal. The west of Ireland’s rugged, sparse landscape and rough roads stress the struggle to be close despite global connectivity and the story poses questions about language, identity, family, distance and home. The cast also includes Barry Keoghan and Brian Gleeson (both of Love/Hate), Nika McGuigan, Michael Ironside, Gina Moxley and Ann Marie Horan.

Stephanie McBride