Farming and rural Ireland on the big screen

Danielle Gilligan and Eanna Hardwicke in Lakelands, a film that highlights the key pillars of rural life, Gaelic football, farming, and family.

Farming, the GAA, and family, key pillars of rural life, are reminders of the small wooden stool on which people sat in draughty sheds when they milked cows by hand.

It didn’t have any back or armrests and depended for stability, balance, and support on three sturdy legs. But the stool couldn’t function if one of those legs wobbled or collapsed, just like the interlinked supports that underpin rural life.