Fréwaka

In Fréwaka, Irish director Aislinn Clarke transports you to a remote village in the Irish countryside, where young caregiver Siobhan ("Shoo") moves in with Peig, who has dementia. What begins as a caregiving job quickly transforms into an oppressive tangle of personal traumas, mysterious powers, and superstitions, as Peig lives in constant fear of supernatural beings who supposedly abducted her as a young woman. Shoo becomes entangled in Peig's paranoid rituals, that bring her own unresolved grief to the surface. 

This almost entirely Irish-spoken slow-burn folk horror weaves Irish folklore, religion, and intergenerational traumas into a slowly unfolding nightmare that effectively gets under your skin. The brilliant sound design and visual splendor play as important a role as the strong performances.

Fréwaka premiered last year at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland and, after Childer (2016) and The Devil’s Way (2018), is the third horror film from Aislinn Clarke, who also wrote the screenplay. The role of Peig is played by Bríd Ní Neachtain, who previously starred in The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), the opening film of the 2022 Northern Film Festival.

Director Aislinn Clarke will be present for a Q&A at the screening on Friday night.