Wildfire

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G.L.O.R.I.A GLORIA! G.L.O.R.I.A GLORIA! Two women are dancing to Van Morrison in a quiet pub. To the men watching it looks aggressive, manic, almost violent. But looking closer you see it's feels practiced, choreographed, they intertwine, slink around each other, moving like one. It's been done 100 times before. The older men smell blood in the air, eyeing them like predators. Their offers of drinks don't go the way they expected. They've messed with the wrong sisters. In the past and now in the present.

Nika McGuigan passed away on the 23rd of July 2019, only months after filming finished on this film from writer/director Cathy Brady. It adds a fierce sense of sadness and what could have been to a film already laced with sorrow and despair, so much so that at times it all threatens to be too much to cope with. But McGuigan's fiery turn as Kelly is so good you'll keep going through the hurt. Add in a blistering performance from Nora-Jane Noone and you have a story that will stay with you for an age.

Kelly's just come home from across the pond after being missing for a year. Her sister Lauren (Nora-Jane Noon) is overcome with a mixture of relief she's safe and rage after being left wondering if she was even alive for so long. Lauren's husband Sean (Martin McCann) is trapped between a rock and a hard place as the push and pull of their relationship plays out around him. They've lived in the same place all their lives, right on the border between the North and the Republic of Ireland. Houses they lived in loom large. Paramilitary atrocity has shaped their lives and the lives of those around them. The men responsible drink freely in their eyeline after early release due to the Good Friday agreement. Everywhere are reminders of loss and when troubled Kelly dives into her mother's belongings Lauren begins to feel things she's long kept tamped down.

You won't finish this one in a particularly good mood but you'll be glad you stuck with it. A story about the way violence leaves an echo that affects everyone involved. Kelly and Lauren are scarred by it. One ran and one stayed. A ferocious, almost co-dependent closeness torn apart and now tough to fix. It feels odd at first as you don't quite know what's going on but as the story moves forward the layers are peeled back and we get a real sense of the ripple effects of bloodshed. The stories we in the ROI, especially in the places away from the border, grew up hearing in the news about the troubles were exactly that to us, stories. When the news finished we moved on to whatever show was on next. For the people affected it's a lifelong struggle, a limp that effects your work, passing by the site of a bombing every single day of your life, depression in the aftermath of horror. It's that big ol' traumatic scar on our national psyche brought right down to a human level. But it's a fixable one.

Wildfire is in cinemas now. It's very good but jesus it's tough going. Be nice to yourself afterwards.