West Cork’s Maurice O’Callaghan is at home making films

You can take the man out of the landscape, but you can’t take the landscape out of the man. That’s true of writer and film director Maurice O’Callaghan, who was born near Béal Na Bláth, West Cork, and has reflected its hauntingly beautiful countryside in his writings and films.

His story collection, A Day For The Fire And Other Stories, won several awards in 2005, and his last novel, In Their Dreams of Fire (2011), has been hailed as the greatest Irish historical novel since Strumpet City.

A lawyer in both the US and Ireland for 20 years, O’Callaghan’s first love is making vivid films about his native countryside and its history. His screenplay, The Soldiers of Destiny, was acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival in the 1980s. O’Callaghan’s 1994 film, Broken Harvest, based on his own story, revealed the lingering after-effects of the Civil War in 1950s Ireland.