Set on a snowbound mountain top in a far corner of Russia, Irish director Johnny O’Reilly’s new film The Weather Station is a cracking psychological thriller. Inhabited only by two ageing meteorologists and a young teenage cook, three men share the remote outpost with swirling snowstorms and an elusive yeti.

When a mysterious couple arrives to explore the caves in the area, their presence brings the underlying tensions to the surface. When the wife (Aleksandrova) returns alone and injured, she reveals that she killed her husband in self defence. Her confession fractures the uneasy balance between the men and sets up each of them against each other.

With its gleaming photography and the clever shifts in time, there are echoes of Kubrick’s The Shining, but working with a Russian cast and crew, O’Reilly has fashioned an impressive film that stands on its own merits.

Gráinne Humphreys,
Jameson Dublin International Film Festival

Johnny O’Reilly will attend the screening

Wells Cargo Gala