Skip to main content
Fréwaka film image; woman with blood on her face looking off into the distance

Fréwaka

Altered States

This event has passed

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

Director
Cast

Clare Monnelly, Bríd Ní Neachtain, Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya

Credits
Country of Origin

Ireland

Year

2024

Language

In Irish and English with English subtitles

19+
103 min
Action Drama Women Directors
DoubleBand Films

Book Tickets

This event has passed.

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 headshot; Fréwaka director

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

Palestine '36

Dir. Annemarie Jacir
118 min

An epic historical drama from director Annemarie Jacir that follows an ensemble of rural villagers who face off against British colonial forces during the 1936 Palestinian revolt.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

The Art of Adventure

Dir. Alison Reid
90 min

The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Chasing Ice

Dir. Jeff Orlowski-Yang
75 min

This visually stunning film follows renowned National Geographic photographer James Balog on a harsh Arctic expedition where he captures a multi-year record of the world's changing glaciers — undeniable evidence that our planet is in crisis. The screening will be introduced by James Balog.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema

Dead Lover

Dir. Grace Glowicki
83 min

A foul-smelling gravedigger's romance ends in tragedy, spurring her to attempt a resurrection through a madcap series of science experiments. Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie’s film is a zany DIY horror that zaps fresh life into Mary Shelley's classic.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Calle Málaga

Dir. Maryam Touzani
116 min

Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.

VIFF Centre - Lochmaddy Studio Theatre

Sansho the Bailiff

Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi
124 min

The third of the great Japanese masters (with Ozu and Kurosawa), Mizoguchi is a poet of suffering. There's plenty of that here in his exquisite telling of an ancient folktale about the enslavement of a woman and her two children.

VIFF Centre - VIFF Cinema