Saise shines in Arracht – in her debut film role

Arts Week with Judy Murphy

“I don’t try too hard, but I try,” says 12-year-old Saise Ní Chuinn about her approach to acting.  It works. Saise was 10 when she successfully auditioned for the role of Kitty in the Irish-language period thriller Arracht (Monster) and is superb in the film which will be screened online next week as part of Galway Film Fleadh.

Saise is both luminous and understated as the child who helps redeem a lost soul, Colmán (Dónall Ó hÉalaí), in this bleak, violent film set on Connemara’s coastline on the eve of the Great Famine.

Arracht was shot over 20 days in September 2018 around Leitir Mealláin.  The story centres on Colmán who, with his brother, makes and supplies poitín locally, but Colmán has seen the damage it can do and doesn’t drink it. A family man, he’s devoted to his wife and young son as he tries to defend his smallholding and his community from an increasingly greedy landlord (Michael McElhatton).

When the local priest (Páraic Breathnach) asks Colmán to give refuge to a stranger, ex-soldier (Dara Devaney), the scene is set for tragedy. His family killed, Colmán ends up an outlaw, hiding in a sea cave and eking a living from his wits as the famine takes hold.

Then his finds Kitty, a sick child in need of help.

The relationship that develops between them is the highpoint of the film, as he mixes herbs to cure her cough, shares his foraged food with her and teaches her how to row his currach after he’s injured. Their conversations are minimal and punctuated by many silences but her presence restores his humanity.

When Saise, who is from An Spidéal, decided to audition for Arracht two years ago, it all happened so fast she didn’t have a chance to tell her mother, Liz, who was away working. She did tell her dad, Toner, who “didn’t take much notice,” the now-12-year-old recalls.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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