Damian McCann spoke to David Hennessy about his Irish language heist film Aontas ahead of its screening at Irish Film Festival London this week.
The Irish language heist film Aontas screens at Irish Film Festival London this week.
It has already had festival success including being awarded Best Feature at the San Diego Film Festival, Best Feature at San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, Best Feature Film at Maryland International Film Festival, and Best Director and Best Feature Film at Manchester International Film Festival.
Directed by Damian McCann and co-written by McCann and his wife Sarah Gordon, Aontas sees three unlikely thieves, led by a woman on the verge of a breakdown, rob a rural Irish Credit Union.
Opening in the tragic aftermath of the heist-gone-wrong, the story uses reverse chronology to unravel the events that led to this point.
Starring Carrie Crowley, Bríd Brennan, Eva-Jane Gaffney, Seán T. Ó Meallaigh, Marcus Lamb and Art Parkinson, Aontas is McCann’s follow up to Doineann.
Damian McCann chatted to The Irish World ahead of the festival.
Do you remember what inspired Aontas?
“It’s funny you say that because you don’t always remember.
“But Aontas was quite a specific, I remember exactly where it came from.
“I had already made one film four years ago called Doineann.
“Usually what happens is when you finish one film, then you immediately start to panic about what the next will be.
“I had it in my head that I really wanted to make a heist movie.
“Those are the type of films that I would watch and I historically watched as a kid and stuff.
“So me and Sarah sat down and started talking about heists.
“We watched a lot of heist movies, we read about bank robberies and were doing a lot of very dodgy Googling which probably has us flagged somewhere.
“I’m from a town in County Armagh called Lurgan.
“I had a feeling that the Credit Union, because of the type of town it is, would have been robbed previously so I went home to my parents and I said, ‘We’re writing this story about a Credit Union being robbed. Has the Credit Union in the town ever been robbed?’
“And they were like, ‘Are you joking? It was robbed all the time in the 70s, 80s, 90s’.
“But my mam said something that I didn’t know before.
“She said that she had worked in the credit union before I was born and she mentioned a couple of times that it had been robbed, but then she said something really interesting that cracked it for us.
“She said, ‘If I was going to rob a bank, here’s how I would do it…’
“And then she listed all these really extensive ways.
“She was talking about going in on loan day and how she would manage the crowd and all, so Sarah and I immediately decided that, ‘Actually, the interesting bit isn’t how you would rob a Credit Union, it’s why someone like my mother would rob a credit union’.
“So you start off at that point where you have a female protagonist that robs a credit union and the story becomes about why she would do it.
“And then as a writer, then it becomes a wee bit easier because you have someone in your mind in terms of creating dialogue and creating the character.
“And then you’re able to start thinking, ‘Right. Well if my mam was going to rob a credit union tomorrow, who would she ask to do it?’
“I was like, ‘My aunty Kathleen is definitely going to be there, the neighbour is going to be there’.
“And you start to build a world based upon people and the way they talk and the way they act.
“It was really useful.
“It’s completely changed from that.
“It’s not my mother (in the film), I should just be clear in case she reads this but there was a very specific moment that we were like, ‘Okay, that cracks what we want to do with the story’.”
The three characters of Mairead, Cait and Sheila, played by Crowley, Brennan and Gaffney, all need a way out, don’t they?
“Yeah, they’re all desperate.
“I think that is also one thing that we’re keen to do in writing in general is that every character should have their own wants and needs and they’re not just ploys for the main character.
“You sit down and each character, you spend some time considering why it is they’re doing this thing.
“But with those three characters, again there was one other moment that sort of cracked it for us.
“We watched this film called Odds Against Tomorrow which was made in the 50s.
“The film is about this perfect crime but the people that are doing the crime can’t get on with each other and so the difficulty in a way isn’t the actual task of it but it’s whether the three of them can get on in order to do this.
“We wanted to do something similar.
“Three women, who will not traditionally get on with each other, are trying to do this really complex thing and the question is, will they be able to work together?
“All three women, when they go into that credit union, have three different sets of goals and three different ways of going about it and that conflict within the credit union drives the drama of it too.
“None of them have the same goal when they go in there and it’s exciting to write that then.”
The fun for the audience is its reverse time structure..
“When you sit down and watch other heist movies, you learn why the people are doing it and then it builds to seeing them do it.
“Because we were doing it the other way around, it made sense to go, ‘Right, we’ll put what they do right at the front’ so everyone knows exactly what they do and how they do it but you’re building backwards towards why they did it.
“It turned it from a heist movie into a mystery almost which was satisfying to write because you can play about with that and the things that the audience are learning when they’re learning it.
“You can have some fun with that too.”
Something common to both Doineann and Aontas is they both include small town guards. These are interesting characters because while their typical day could be quite dull, if something happens they are on their own..
“Yeah, I think that’s the one thing Sarah particularly talks about: Ordinary characters in extraordinary situations.
“That’s always interesting to see how they deal with it.
“I think what’s interesting across the two is an older female lead as well that maybe people don’t expect much out of and that’s useful to play with an audience’s preconceptions as well.
“You kind of come in thinking, ‘Oh, maybe they won’t be able for this’.
“But you can kind of play with that too.
“And then the other thing that I think that Doineann and Aontas share is that playing about with time.
“I think that’s something that I personally like, the idea of time, playing about with time, playing about with memory, playing about with how people perceive events.
“It’s maybe over analysing it but I always think being from the North get a weird perspective on fixed historical events because we have differing opinions even within this part of the world as to how those fixed, historical events were.
“There was a famous phrase from here that we have a shared history but not a shared memory.
“That’s sort of the crux of the things that I enjoy as a writer or as a filmmaker, to play with preconceptions, to play with memory of very fixed events and how three different people might look at that one event or how they might experience it based upon their traumas or their own historical backdrops.
“Éamon Phoenix said that phrase and it sits with me all the time.”
You were blessed in terms of cast with Carrie Crowley, one of the stars of the phenomenal An Cailín Ciúin, and the Tony Award- winning Bríd Brennan who, of course, you also had as part of Doineann..
“They always say directing’s 90% casting and it is sort of true.
“You write this thing and then you give it to someone to interpret it.
“It’s always amazing how people interpret it different ways than you had initially considered it.
“Bríd is great at that.
“There’s something reassuring as a director when actors want to work with you again.
“My favourite Irish film is a film called Anne Devlin and Bríd is the lead in it and to get to work with the lead of your favourite Irish film, it’s kind of a trip.”
I don’t want to ruin anything by spelling it out but Carrie Crowley’s Mairead character is hurting and we find out later just why that is..
“There are sentences that are often bandied about in this (writing) room and one is, Hurt people hurt people: This idea that people who have been hurt then also go on to do things that maybe are outside of their nature or they kind of pass on this kind of circle.
“Again it’s maybe a Northern thing here, the cycle of violence sometimes, or a cycle of hatred and things like that.
“We were keen that all the characters, even the antagonists, have something that is hanging over them in their past that causes them to act the way they are now.
“It’s not black and white.
“They’re not Disney villains.
“They’re people who have hang ups and that are trying to overcome some historical grievances.
“I watched it the other day on a big, big screen.
“It was the biggest screen I’d ever seen it on before and it’s interesting to watch Carrie’s face when she’s not talking, particularly on a big screen.
“She’s doing so much work with just her eyes and her facial expressions and to see it on the big screen, even stuff that I missed on set because I’m watching on a small monitor, you get to really appreciate it once it’s up there on the bigger screen.
“It’s the words that she says but it’s also her delivery and her moments in the silent times that she just, I think, nails it.”
Domestic violence is another theme that comes up in Sheila’s story..
“Again, it’s such a major issue in Irish society but so criminally under spoken around because there’s a taboo around it for the victims of domestic violence, there’s a fear about talking out about it. But it’s huge.
“It’s a huge endemic problem within Irish society and to try and shine a light on it as subtle and as kind of powerful a manner as possible is what you’re always trying to do.
“Sarah and I have endless conversations about how far to push that, how far not to push it.
“You do your research and you look into it but to not look at it also a problem in itself.
“It was to try and give a microscopic look on a small Irish town, the issues that affect the town and to try and get it so all of these issues all rise at the one time for the drama of it.
“But also to kind of be as truthful to small town Irish society as possible.”
There is a subplot about a local quarry closing meaning a lot of local jobs will be lost. It is a familiar story in how a community can be destroyed by greed…
“As you said, it’s a common story.
“I have some personal experience of parents losing jobs in major industry in a small town and then the fallout of that.
“I have personal memories of the confusion around that and partially the anger around it because there’s a hopelessness.
“When the central industry in a town goes, you’re angry about it but you can do nothing about it.
“It doesn’t matter, you can be angry all day but you’ve no control over it.
“There’s something about that that I thought was important to talk about.
“In a way the film is about money.
“Robbing from a credit union, you’re robbing from your neighbours.
“That was kind of an early, early thought and so much of it became about that.
“It was partially personal experience or personal memory, without going into it too much, but it’s also just such a common Irish thing that happens in a lot of these rural locations.”
The Irish language has had a resurgence in recent years with An Cailín Ciúin and Kneecap etc. You have been ahead of the curve there, how does that feel?
“Yeah, I made a film pre-An Cailín Ciúin and pre-Kneecap, and now I have made one post and to see the difference.
“When you pick up the phone to crew maybe the first time around, people were a bit reluctant, they weren’t sure what that would be whereas now when you pick up the phone, everyone answers,
“Obviously there’s been a lack of Irish language content for many years.
“We have stories to tell.
“There’s an excitement to it.
“This is the first Irish language heist movie that’s ever been made.
“That’s kind of exciting for me and other people that you’re creating a blueprint as you go along.
“But definitely those two films have completely revolutionised the conversation around the Irish language.
“That’s exciting to be in, albeit on the outside of it but to be in that kind of circle of filmmakers that are making Irish language movies at the minute.”
There’s something subtle in the film about how different people are treated differently. I’m thinking about Marcus Lamb’s businessman Dara who, while unscrupulous, is deferred to by some while young Garda Eamonn (Art Parkinson) lacks confidence and isn’t taken seriously. When Dara arrives at a wake and has brought sandwiches, he flings car keys to Eamonn indicating he is to bring them in..
“You know those wakes and you know those dynamics when you’re from a small Irish town.
“And we were thinking specific people when we were writing it.
“It plays well in Ireland and of course people recognise those characters and they recognise those towns but internationally, it’s amazing that that you go to China and those people are still recognised.
“For something that felt to us to be so parochially Irish, so specifically Irish they are archetypal characters all around the world.
“It was amazing how that has travelled.
“We played Shanghai and it was four sold out screenings.
“I was like, ‘What will people see in this uniquely Irish story?’
“And then you get there and you talk to people and you’re like, ‘Oh no, it’s not, that’s a universal trend’.
“And the same in America.
“And whilst we write it to be very specific to where we live and where we’re from, if the story’s right and if the characters are true, then it kind of travels everywhere.
“You asked about the Irish language stuff.
“You almost don’t expect it to travel maybe because of our own internal thoughts about the language but once you get beyond the subtitles, the audience do not care what language it’s in.
“They don’t care about our own hang ups about language and stuff.
“They’re like, ‘Is the story good? Are the characters believable? Am I going to enjoy it?’
“That’s all they care about and it seems to be playing well from what I can tell.”
Aontas screen at 8.45pm at VUE Piccadilly Thursday 13 November as part of Irish Film Festival London. Irish Film Festival London runs 12- 16 November. Irish World readers can get 20% off by using the code, FRIEND.
For more information and to book, click here.
