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.
Lakelands, a recently released drama filmed on location in Granard, Co. Longford, is regarded as the first real film about one of those pillars — Gaelic football.
The 98-minute feature celebrates the positive impact the GAA has on communities, but it also shines a probing light on the serious and often unspoken cultural pressures that surround it.
It tells the story of “Cian Reilly” (Éanna Hardwicke), a young footballer and farmer, who struggles to come to terms with a serious injury sustained during a late-night assault outside a nightclub.
With the injury poised to end his playing career, the film follows his search for his own identity in a small community, where the GAA is a religion and is often defined by what you can do on the pitch.
His complex and emotional journey impacts on the two other supports of rural Ireland’s symbolic three-legged stool — farming and family. It does so through his role as a footballer, his efforts to resume playing, and his struggles working on the family farm.
His father “Diarmuid” (Lorcan Cranitch) cares deeply for his son but has difficulties demonstrating that affection. The storyline, while set in the midlands, represents countless localities across Ireland and even further afield.
Lakelands was written and directed by Robert Higgins and Patrick McGivney, who were cornerbacks on football teams in their native Granard from underage level to senior. They always had an ambition to make a film set in rural Ireland, which they believed was not fully represented in the cinema.
Having formed a midlands-based multi-discipline production company, Harp Media, in 2018, they set about rectifying the imbalance. They brought to the task a collective experience in filming, media and business development and a deep empathy with lifestyles in small communities that have the GAA and farming at their core.
With an infectious pride in the vibrancy of the midlands, they made some short films before embarking on Lakelands, which reflects the positives of rural Ireland, as well as its complexities and challenges.
Éanna Hardwicke, Danielle Galligan, Lorcan Cranitch, Dafhyd Flynn, Dara Devaney, and Gary Lydon star in the film, which was co-produced by Chris Higgins and Andrei Bogdan with Patrick O’Neill as executive producer.
Comfort arrives for “Cian” when an old girlfriend ‘Grace’ (Danielle Galligan), returns home from London to nurse her ailing father. She is the voice of reason for him as she patiently urges him to face the truth that he will not be able to play football again because of his injury.
The result is a moving, honest, and well-considered depiction of rural life which resists the temptation to shy away from examining tricky societal problems in a non-judgmental way.
Emigration, concussion, drinking at weekends, peer pressures, drug use and vulnerability are all explored through “Cian’s” gripping and often poignant story.
The film, shot mostly in Granard but also in Longford and Gowna, Co. Cavan, also focuses with sensitivity on the masculine tendency of not talking about some of the issues that affect young people today.
It is often reflected in the dismissive response to queries about how they are feeling: “Ah, grand, sure you know yourself.” Farming and the GAA are part of the fabric of rural communities, and the young filmmakers were eager to include both in the film. “Cian”, the central character, is defined through these two aspects of his life.
Patrick McGivney said: “We felt it would be interesting to look at how the character would react when these things were stripped away from him, and he had to look inward and find out who he is away from them.
Robert Higgins said they were eager to keep the film as close to home as possible as they felt it would lend it authenticity. They were fortunate that Patrick’s father, Padraig, allowed the production team to use the family farm one mile outside Granard as a location for the filming.
That was done on and off over three weeks, with a herd of dairy cows ready and willing to act as extras. Granard’s local community was integral to bringing the film to life, with the GAA scenes being filmed at their local club, St Mary’s.
“We shot the film on a small budget. Were it not for the brilliant support we had from our hometown it would never have been possible. We both played football growing up, and thankfully, a few of the lads were willing to tog out on a couple of cold nights,” Robert said.
Éanna Hardwicke, the lead actor, who is from Glanmire in Cork, spent six weeks with the Clan Na Gael club at Ringsend, Dublin, preparing for the footballing scenes in the film. Hardwicke, who shared the screen with Paul Mescal in ‘Normal People’, went through a range of emotions in his ‘Lakelands’ role.
It included a new experience for the lead actor — coping with the routine of dairy farming. Filming began at the start of the calving season. Patrick and Robert didn’t tempt faith by telling Éanna. But they both felt it would be amazing if they could capture that on screen.
They left a bit of a gap in the script in the off-chance it would happen. With parts of the farm turned into a film set, Patrick’s father, a fourth-generation dairy farmer, came rushing towards the production crew in the yard on the first day to tell them one of his cows was about to start calving.
Patrick gave Éanna, a 45-second tutorial on how to calve a cow, and the actor did it exceptionally well, with acclaimed cinematographer Simon Crowe on hand to film the scene. Luckily, it was an easy calving without complications.
Patrick later recalled:
“It was excellent too in that it showed how good an actor Éanna is and how he was able to calve a cow with about a minute-long tutorial on how to do it.”
Lakelands received four nominations at the Irish Film and Television Awards before being released in Ireland and the UK by Wildcard Distribution. One was for the best film (Higgins and McGivney), two were for acting (Hardwicke and Galligan), and the other was for best original music (Daithi O Dronai).
It also won the Best Irish Film Award (Galway Film Fleadh) and Best Film Award (Kerry International Festival). Hardwicke and Galligan also won the Bingham Ray New Talent Award at Galway.
The film had its United States premiere at Santa Barbara and has played at other festivals in the US, Europe, and Australia. More recently, it was released on streaming platforms such as Amazon, Apple TV, Sky, GooglePlay and IFI.
Made with funding from Creative Ireland, Longford Arts Office, Backstage Theatre, and Longford LEO, it also received development funding from Screen Ireland.
Robert said when he and Patrick were writing it, they hoped it might be relatable for people from communities other than their own. “It’s been a great experience travelling with the film and meeting people from other countries who have found parallels in their own communities,” he said.
It was a response that resonated with the filmmakers from Granard, where an old Irish saying — the grass is not always greener on the other side of the ditch — is as universal as some of the issues examined in Lakelands.
