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Fréwaka film image; woman with blood on her face looking off into the distance

Fréwaka

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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.

 

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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 & Suspense Drama Women Directors
DoubleBand Films

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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)

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