Canadian Premiere
Shortly after the death of her estranged mother, Shoo (Clare Monnelly) a primary care nursing student takes a placement in a remote Irish village to care for Peig (Brid Ni Neachtain) a reclusive, elderly woman who lives in fear, haunted by her experiences in a Catholic asylum. The house in the woods holds plenty of dark secrets and Peig’s paranoia begins to rub off on Shoo, whose own troubled, abusive past begins to catch up with her.
Aislinn Clarke follows up her spooky, found-footage creep show The Devil’s Doorway with another chilling religious horror that values atmosphere over cheap scares. Though the locked cellar with the red door covered in religious trinkets isn’t short on terror, Clarke’s careful direction and smart (predominately Irish-language) script ratchet up the tension slowly, building to a lyrical and frightening climax that combines traditional folklore with the religious trauma of the Magdalene laundries and culminates in a uniquely Irish feminist folk horror.
Supported by
Media Partner
Community Partner
Clare Monnelly, Bríd Ní Neachtain, Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya
Ireland
2024
In Irish and English with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Diarmuid Lavery, Patrick O’Neill
Screenwriter
Aislinn Clarke
Cinematography
Narayan Van Maele
Editor
John Murphy
Production Design
Nicola Moroney
Original Music
Die Hexen
Aislinn Clarke
Aislinn Clarke is an award-winning writer, director, and academic from Northern Ireland. Her debut feature film The Devil’s Doorway premiered in the Official Competition at the 2018 Seattle International Film Festival and had its European premiere at the Galway Film Fleadh, where Aislinn was nominated for the Bingham Ray New Talent Award. Fréwaka, her latest film and the first-ever Irish-language horror film, had its world premiere Out of Competition at the 2024 Locarno Film Festival.
Filmography: The Devil’s Doorway (2018)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Company of Strangers
In this Canadian gem, seven elderly women find themselves stranded when their bus breaks down in the wilderness. With only their wits, memories and some roasted frogs' legs to sustain them, this remarkable group of strangers share their life stories.
Madonna: Truth or Dare
A year in the life of Madonna at the height of her fame, touring Blonde Ambition through 1990. There's concert footage, but the movie is also daringly truthful about life behind the scenes — not that Madonna is every really off-stage.
The Leopard
Lampedusa's elegiac account of a 19th century Sicilian aristocrat, Prince Salina, fading into history is one of the pinnacles of Italian cinema, an epic which influenced the tempo and gravitas of The Godfather, Age of Innocence and The Deer Hunter.
