Sins of Ireland - the latest feature-length film by documentary maker Alex Fegan - is getting a nationwide release at selected cinemas from April 18.
Following on from Fegan's previous, celebrated works such as Older Than Ireland and The Irish Pub, Sins of Ireland offers an exploration of the Catholic Church in Ireland through the lens of the sacrament of confession as a way of understanding our past, as well as where we are now and where we are going.
The film features fifteen Irish priests offer their own confessional on the rise and fall of a sacrament that now epitomises the turbulent changes in faith and spirituality in contemporary Ireland.
The documentary is a uncynical examination of confession, as the priests themselves acknowledge how a rite meant to offer absolution and guidance had for many years become a tool of control and shame - sometimes with devastating consequences.
Sins of Ireland also explores forgiveness - not as an easy resolution, but as a necessary reckoning with the past and a gateway to spiritual redemption.
For filmmaker Alex Fegan, this was a documentary he felt he needed to make to learn moreabout where we have come from as a people, and where we are going.
"Growing up in Dublin in the 1990s, the grip of the Church over our collective psyche was loosening," he recalls.
"I was at once intrigued by the rituals and appalled by the abuses of the Church.
"As the years went by, Ifound myself questioning everything about what the Church had meant in people's lives over the decades and centuries, including what we may have lost as well as what we may havegained as people have moved away from religious traditions.
"I have always been fascinatedby the concept of forgiveness, which I feel is one of the most fundamental aspects of what itmeans to be human.
"And when my son was on the altar making his first confession with the Parish Priest, as I observed this I went into a sort of daydream and wondered about this ancient rite of passage - to some this must seem absurd in the extreme, repulsive even, and to others it must be moving and sacred.
"And so, I set out to speak with and understand priests inIreland in the 21st Century through the prism of the confession box - these people about whommost of us know so little, yet have heard so much.
"Making the film taught me many thingsabout them, myself and life itself. If people get even a small bit as much from watching Sins of Ireland as I did from making it, I will be delighted."
Alex Fegan will share insights on how and why he made this film at Q&As at the IFI Dublin on April 18 at 6.15pm, the Eye Cinema Galway on April 19 at 7pm, IMC Killarney on April 22 at 7pm, Arc Cinema Cork on Thursday April 24 at 7pm, and Odeon Stillorgan on Saturday April 26 at 7pm.
