Writer, director and actor Liam O Mochain has established himself as a fearless independent voice in Irish cinema, with acclaimed features like The Book That Wrote Itself and Lost & Found. Below, he introduces his latest ensemble piece, Abode, released in Irish cinemas this November.
Abode is a feature film with five stories connected by the theme of home and what it means to the different characters in the film. Whether the characters are living in mansions, on the street, in a big city, suburbia or in the countryside, home has an importance and a different meaning for each of them. In Abode 'everyone wants to belong somewhere'. All the stories are local, ones that everyone can relate to.
I wanted to make a film about home and what it means to different people, to tell different stories, all from a personal perspective. I was homeless for the first year and a half of my own life. I spent the first few years going from foster home to foster home until I ended up with the same family in the west of Ireland for most of my childhood, for nearly 15 years. I have the feeling of belonging and abandonment in equal measure, and an affinity for most but not all the characters in Abode. The stories in the film are inspired by real stories and events in the wider community, with some of my own background and lived experiences influencing some of the stories; from the family I was taken from to the one that raised me.
Abode was filmed in different parts of Dublin in five segments, over a three-year period from 2021 to 2023 as the world was coming out of the Covid pandemic, which was a great challenge to making the film, with numerous stop-starts. I spent a good portion of the early part of the pandemic researching the stories, characters, and events, before writing the scripts. The producer and I brought in most of the key production team and crew each year, a month or so before the filming began. A majority of the crew and some of the cast worked with us on our previous feature film Lost & Found so there was a shorthand there, which given the times we were filming in was a great help. Making the film over this longer period gave me time to think about all the different stories, characters, and ways to connect them together both thematically and in tone. I started out with lots of stories and ended up with the five I wanted to tell. Abode completed filming in Summer 2023 and post-production finished in early 2025.
The stories in the film are a mix of drama and comedy, stories about ‘the need to belong somewhere, sometimes anywhere’, the ‘intimate lives of your parents and what you really don’t want to know’, a ‘love never forgotten’, a ‘weekend away with a difference’ and an ‘AI oven that just didn’t want to fit in’ which was the biggest diva on the film.
Like a parent I am proud of each story and everyone who worked on the film.
P.S. I have an oven for sale ‘a few minor glitches’.
Abode is in cinemas nationwide from November 7th.
