"A good place to make films" - that's director Brendan Canty's Ireland tagline as his feature debut, Christy, opens in cinemas around the country.
Filmed in Canty's beloved Cork city, the coming-of-age drama arrives on our screens with serious kudos. A Grand Prix winner at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, where it also received its world premiere, Christy has since won Best Irish Film at the Galway Film Fleadh. Now Canty - best known for the video for Hozier's Take Me to Church - reckons that word of mouth will work some magic over the next few weeks.
All involved deserve that, and chances are, you won't stay quiet after watching Christy.
Watch: The trailer for Christy
Based on Canty's 2019 short of the same name, and with a screenplay by his childhood friend Alan O'Gorman, Christy is a heart-warmer that also ships grit by the tonne.
Reprising their roles from the short, the excellent Daniel Power and Diarmuid Noyes play estranged brothers Christy and Shane. Having been thrown out of his latest foster home, the soon-to-turn-18 Christy (Power) moves in with Shane (Noyes) on Cork's northside. It's only for a few weeks, but such is the tension between the siblings that Christy could be lighting out the door with his bin bags in a matter of days.
"With Christy, I was definitely conscious of, 'I'd love to make a film that is an authentic working-class story, but it has hope and humour without losing that authenticity'," says Canty.
Fittingly, a story that's all about connection and reconnection came after Canty and screenwriter O'Gorman rekindled their friendship.
"We go way back," the Ballincollig man continues. "But honestly, this isn't just saying it because it sounds good, we grew up in the same estate, he was my first best friend when we were, like, five. The first kid, friend, I met. The first boy I befriended.
"We were just stuck in each other's back gardens, on the green playing soccer up until we were 10 or 11. [We] played with the same football team. We didn't go to the same school, well, up until we were in secondary school. We knew all the same people and stuff like that."
"When we were in secondary school, we kind of drifted apart," he admits. "It was only when I was making music videos and I was like, 'Oh, I'd be interested to make some films now', and I was looking for a writing partner, did I notice that Alan was doing these short story readings at bars and stuff, reading his own short stories. I was like, 'What? You write?!'"
The years rolled back, and the pair's first collaboration was the 2016 Dublin-set short For You. For the follow-up, all roads led back to Cork.
"We tried loads of things trying to write," Canty recalls. "We took a while to find our common ground, but then our common ground was Cork. Talking about Cork and stories and people we grew up with and Cork humour. It was all the stuff we'd talk about when we'd meet up or chat anyway. When we started to write about that sort of stuff, I think that's when things really started to click into gear."
When it came to making the short Christy, the film gods smiled on the pair. They met stars Daniel Power and Diarmuid Noyes and the youngsters from the Kabin Studio - yes, the gang behind breakout hit The Spark are part of Christy's world.
With that cast in place, Canty and O'Gorman knew there was a feature film there for the making, too. They also realised where the screenplay needed to go.
"During the short film, there were a few foster kids, kids who'd been through the care system who either acted in it or were involved or whatever helping out, and we chatted," Canty explains.
"Alan had done work in a school in Manchester. He had worked with kids in the care system and his mum was a social worker. It wasn't really a thing in the short film that Christy was a foster kid, but there was kind of a backstory, as in he was living with his brother, the parents weren't on the scene. We just decided to explore that more with the feature. Then Christy became more and more Christy."
And now he's home - where it matters the most. Canty says he was more nervous about the Cork premiere than the world premiere in Berlin, and posters for Christy on the sides of Cork buses stop him in his tracks, but he's confident people who see his film will take it to their hearts just as much as the festival crowds.
"I've big excitement for it," he says. "It's really surprised people, it's charmed people. It's just been a project that's had a flow to it the whole time. I almost feel guilty talking about it because people's journeys with feature films can be so strenuous and mine just actually hasn't been. There's just been goodwill, goodwill, goodwill, one thing has flowed to the next to the next to the next. It's been a bit of a dream project. And it still is now it's coming out."
"It's such a Cork film as well," Canty concludes. "I honestly just feel unbelievably privileged to have made it."
Christy is in cinemas now.
