Writer/ director Anna Rodgers and actress Fiadhnait Canning spoke to David Hennessy about Grace, a coming of age short film that looks at the agency of adults with learning difficulties.
A poignant coming of age Irish short film that has already started a conversation in Ireland and is now gaining an international audience.
Grace is centred on a woman in her late 20s with Down Syndrome, navigating the complexities of adulthood, independence and first love from within a residential support house.
As Grace grows closer to her boyfriend Tommy, their relationship is met with hesitation from those around them, who continue to make decisions on their behalf believing they are acting in their best interest.
When Grace pushes the boundaries set for her, the consequences ripple through her carefully managed world.
Grace has already screened on RTE and is about to have its international premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival.
Fiadhnait Canning will be in attendance thanks to the support of Culture Ireland.
Grace is also nominated at Gradaim RTS/Royal Television Society Ireland Awards 2026 for Best Short Film and Audience Award.
Written and directed by Anna Rodgers, the film stars as Fiadhnait Canning, who has Down Syndrome herself, as Grace. The supporting cast includes Carrie Crowley (An Cailín Ciúin), Eva- Jane Gaffney (Aontas) and Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle (Clean Sweep/ How to Get Heaven from Belfast).
Anna Rodgers is an IFTA-winning filmmaker best known for her documentary Somebody to Love, which explored sex, love, and relationships for people with disabilities.
Fiadhnait Canning speaks publicly on inclusion and disability.
Luca Malocco Mulville, who plays Tommy, is also an actor with an intellectual disability.
Both Fiadhnait and Luca make their drama screen debuts in Grace.
Anna and Fiadhnait took time to chat to the Irish World.
What inspired you to make Grace?
Anna: “Many years ago I directed a documentary for RTE called Somebody to Love and it was a really interesting project that opened my mind and my world to lots of people with physical and intellectual disabilities and their love lives.
“We discovered that there was a law in place at the time that prevented people with intellectual disabilities from having a sexual relationship and the way that that had a chilling effect on services and families that didn’t really have the legal basis to support people going out and dating.
“It wasn’t even about sex.
“It was about just love, dating, getting out in the world and meeting somebody and socialising.
“We met people where some elements of the story of Grace were true to their lives but of course, those much more sensitive stories are very difficult to capture in documentary.
“We did meet people whose relationships were blocked or broken down by the fact that services got involved which is a historic thing and things have changed.
“A new law was brought in, the Assisted Decision Making Capacity Act, and it only really came into effect in the last couple of years and it hasn’t really changed things that quickly because it takes time for a society to adapt and change.
“I made the film to remind people around the fact that people with disabilities should be included in all decisions around their own lives, in particular in this area of love and sexuality and relationships.
“That was the kernel of where the film came from and then when I started writing it, the characters came to life.
“I imagined Grace to be this really sassy, independent, very able young woman who pressed people’s buttons and pushed the boundaries of her circumstances.
“Then I went in search of someone who could pull that off and that’s how we met.”
Do you remember your first impressions of the story, Fiadhnait?
Fiadhnait: “I absolutely loved Grace.
“When I was reading this script, you absolutely feel for her.
“It’s just her falling in love.
“It shows that how she’s developing her voice.”
The film shows how little Grace is asked what she wants. Even in that first scene her sister is talking about her wedding invitations and Grace happens to ask what a plus one is. Had she been asked, she would have had Tommy as her guest..
Anna: “It was really important to me that the services and the family members in the film were painted in a rounded light: There was no blame, that nobody’s a bad guy in the film.
“It’s actually just about that grey area between protection and control where it is complex as a topic and it isn’t necessarily straightforward.
“We’re not offering any answers in the film.
“We’re just highlighting that it’s really important to talk about this and we talk about sex education and we acknowledge that people are sexual beings and that they are romantic beings in the same way as all of us.”
Fiadhnait: “Everybody has a heart and so does she.
“She’s just following her heart and falling in love.”
Anna: “I suppose that with the other characters in the film we were just trying to show how, in small ways, they exclude Grace from the discussions and from the decisions instead of involving her and bringing her into the room.
“That was a stylistic device that I wanted to use from the very beginning which was that Grace was always overhearing things rather than being told directly.
“She knows what’s going on and she interprets things in her own way and listens to conversations from the door crack and knows that it’s about her but isn’t being told what’s going on really.
“She has to try and piece things together.
“It is a love story at the end of the day.
“Her relationship with her boyfriend is very tender and really that was a big challenge, wasn’t it?”
Fiadhnait: “A little bit but it’s done so sweetly in the end because you can see that’s just her growing up and wanting to have a full life.
“That’s all she wants, is to have love in between.
“It’s just her growing up as a young adult woman and feeling like one.
“They don’t see her as an adult woman.
“Nobody else can actually believe that from her.”
Anna: “The piece you referenced about the plus one is like a reference as well to the fact that of course adults with intellectual disabilities have family members who are getting married, having children and they see this all around them as normal life and yet feel excluded at times from those kind of experiences.”
Fiadhnait: “And of course if you fall in love, you fall in love.”
Anna: “You can see the mother character in the film struggles with it, as mothers do in general anyway.
“She really wants to protect Grace and take care of her so she’s scared about all the things that can go wrong as well.
“But that’s the parents’ position, isn’t it?
“Young people want to always break away and grow up and be treated as adults and Grace is no different.”
Fiadhnait you knew Luca. You had met years previously so that must have made it easier to play a couple..
Fiadhnait: “He recognised me in the audition thing a good while ago and he was like, ‘Fiadhnait’, and I was like, ‘Luca’.
“It was a while ago that we saw each other but you feel safe with him.
“He’s a good guy.
“Luca is a great guy.
“It was sweet for me and Luca because we were getting in the character of Grace and Tommy and you can see the genuine love is there between them so you feel how sweet that is having that little moment like that.”
Tell me about the audition process. Anna it sounds like you uncovered a gem in Fiadhnait. So much of the film rests on her performance…
Anna: “Yeah I have to say there were a few sleepless nights in the beginning because we had quite a fast turnaround for this and I really knew that a lot fell on the character of Grace.
“Grace is the main character and appears in every scene and some scenes don’t even have a supporting character in it that can help to carry that scene or anything so I knew it had to be somebody who was really confident, really able for it.
“We did a casting process with Maureen Hughes.
“But Fiadhnait came in and I think you brought yourself to the role.
“She came in with all of her own personality and her own sassiness and spark.
“Fiadhnait just took the dialogue and then added her own lines to it and I could just see it coming alive for her emotionally.
“I could see that she was living and breathing the scene and had kind of internalised it and made it very personal.
“I knew she was extremely watchable and I just knew she could do it and had the stamina and the talent to pull it off.
“We were very lucky.
“I should mention as well how we found Luca Malocco Mulville, who plays Tommy, because that was a big trawl as well.
“Luca came originally from a theatre group called Blue Diamond so he’d done a bit of stage.
“I saw him and thought, ‘Who’s that guy?’
“We did have to convince him a little bit to come in and do the audition for us so we had to chase him a little bit.”
Fiadhnait: “He played hard to get.”
Anna: “Yeah, he played a little hard to get.”
You were blessed with a supporting cast that included Carrie Crowley, Eva- Jane Gaffney and Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle..
“Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle was amazing as the key worker and I loved how they perform that role.
“It’s quite a tricky one to get right as well because the character is caught up in trying to do the right thing and how do you interpret that?
“Carrie plays the mother and how we got Carrie was actually kind of a funny story because she was my dream person to play the mother. I knew she could bring all of that nuance to the role where she wasn’t this wicked mam who’s blocking this lovely relationship but she just really felt very conflicted and very protective.
“I went to see a performance of Hamlet in the Dublin Theatre Festival which was by this Peruvian group of people with Down syndrome.
“It was the most surprising show I’ve ever seen.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to go see Hamlet’.
“They completely deconstructed Hamlet and told their own stories through Hamlet.
“It was amazing.
“I saw Carrie Crowley sitting behind me and she really was enjoying the performance and when it ended, lots of people went up on the stage and danced with the cast.
“I saw her go up and I was like, ‘I gotta grab her right now’.
“So when she came down off the stage, I just kind of seized the day.
“I grabbed her and said, ‘We’re making this film’.
“I briefly pitched the story to her and right there and then, she said yes and gave me her phone number and her email. We didn’t know each other at all so it was a bit of a cheeky move and I’m so glad it worked out.”
What was it like to work with people like Carrie Crowley, Fiadhnait?
Fiadhnait: “Incredible.
“When I first met her I was like, ‘I can’t keep my mouth open, close your mouth’.
“She has a lot of talent in her.
“You’re trying to, like, compose yourself because you’re actually working with one of the most talented people in the world.
“She’s incredible.”
Anna: “You were a bit nervous..”
Fiadhnait: “Yeah, I was a bit terrified because it’s not very often, you sit beside someone of that talent.
“And then it’s like, ‘Don’t open your mouth, Fiadhnait. People are staring at you and so is she’.
“And it turned out really well.
“It turned into a beautiful moment with Grace and her mother.”
Anna: “There was gorgeous chemistry between the two of you.
“There was lovely connection.”
Fiadhnait was it refreshing for you to see this script telling the story of someone with learning difficulties?
Fiadhnait: “Very refreshing because you don’t really see that on the screen very often.
“I actually love the story.
“I fell in love with the script and I fell in love with the character.
“I was like, ‘You know what? I’d like to do it, I’d be happy to and I’d be honoured to tell her story the way it should be and how it was being told in a graceful way’,” Fiadhnait laughs.
Anna: “You read the script and learned it off very quickly as well.”
Fiadhnait: “I couldn’t put it down.
“It’s really beautiful.
“It turned out a beautiful story and, of course, amazing short film.”
I like, as you said, how there are no bad guys. Carrie plays a different maternal figure to what she saw from her in The Quiet Girl but I wouldn’t say she was any less loving..
Anna: “It is a complex subject but we’ve never solved anything in society by sweeping it under the carpet and not talking about it.
“I think if you really want to talk about protection and empowerment and all of that, then it all comes back to open channels of communication, education, inclusivity in these discussions and one of the things about the Assisted Decision Making Act is that it actually does highlight that people can be allowed to make mistakes as well.
“We all make mistakes in our love lives.
“Some of these things obviously are irreversible and sometimes things can go wrong of course but we can’t let the fear of things going wrong prevent us from providing the right supports to people so that they can have a social life, so they can have a romantic life and go out and enjoy life.”
The film is now getting an international audience. It screened on RTE last year, did you find it started a conversation the way you would have liked?
Anna: “Yeah it went out in December and we got really lovely feedback from lots of people.
“There is a message we want to get out there so it’s really wonderful for it to reach a wider audience.”
Fiadhnait: “It’s not very often you go to your own premiere.”
Anna: “I’ve been contacted by a couple of universities, one in Belgium who want to show it to their class over there for them to discuss and learn a bit and then also a university in Letterkenny got in touch and they want to show it to a class up there too so that’s the other route for this film, that it could be used as an education and discussion tool.
“I suppose the fact that it has an open ending, I really like that because it’s not providing, as I said, the answers.
“That’s what you want.
“You want people to have conversations as a result of it.”
Fiadhnait: “It opens people’s eyes more and our minds as well at the same time.
“Like you were saying, it’s nice to think if people are making up their own theories or thinking what could also happen.
“I have those moments myself when I rewatch it.”
Anna: “I think that that whole recognition as well of the fact that actors with intellectual disabilities can also achieve what Luca and Fiadhnait achieved during this film: Very short rehearsal time, very fast turnaround, lots and lots of pressure on them and they both rose to the challenge so well and they were both really resilient and really determined themselves to pull off something great and it was definitely not easy.
“It was a hugely challenging experience for all of us, including me.”
GRACE will screen at the 50th Cleveland International Film Festival in the Parability Shorts Program — premiering on 12 April.
The RTS awards take place on 16 April.
