Aoife McArdle's first feature film is a dark vision of life in an Irish town
A PASSION for both movies and music — and a conviction that both were intertwined — helped foster Aoife McArdle as a filmmaker.
From the northern town of Omagh, with neither the background in nor the means to finance short films, she started to make music videos for musician friends. It revealed a natural flair for storytelling, and now she’s worked with some of the biggest artists on the world stage.
“They’re all narrative shorts that I wrote,” she tells me. “It was my way of getting to make a film. It is a hard world to break into, if you’re not from that background or if you’re from a small town. Obviously I did go to film school but the way I broke into it was via being interested in music and having some mates that played music. I used their music as a soundtrack and their lyrics as a voiceover, essentially.
“I work against the song and add a new narrative to it that wouldn’t have been there before, necessarily. Always as an avenue to become a filmmaker, but an interest in film and music has always been hand in hand for me.”
Her work, comprised of short stories rather than performance videos, was soon gaining the attention of U2, Bryan Ferry and James Vincent McMorrow, who have all worked with her.
In recent years, she has applied a similar approach to commercials, and an advert she made for Audi ended up going viral after it was first screened during last year’s Super Bowl.
The Audi one was about gender equality which is obviously a really important subject matter for me. It was about a girl and her father and I think it really connected with a lot of people, especially fathers. They don’t want their daughters to grow up in a world where they don’t get equal opportunities. And it was wonderful working with this little girl, she was terrific.
But the irony was not lost on McArdle that hers was the only female-directed advert screened during the Super Bowl that year.
“I think it’s changing now and I really hope it continues to change but yeah, I’m very used to being the only woman on a bid, the only woman pitching, the only female director in a room. It’s great to see that the issue’s been highlighted in the last year and we are seeing inroads made to correcting that wrong.
“It’s all about women seeing other women being directors and cinematographers too. It’s important to celebrate the ones we have so that young women know it is possible for them.”
McArdle brings her trademark verve and style to her first feature film, Kissing Candice. Featuring actress Ann Skelly in the title role, it tells of a volatile teenage girl who crosses paths with a violent local gang.
“Most of the projects I’ve done have had a bigger budget than the feature. That aspect of it was a little shell-shocking! But at the same time, it was an opportunity to work intensively with actors over a more sustained period than I had
before.
“Every first feature, every low-budget feature, there’s a certain amount of compromise and sacrifice but at the same time I just really tried hard to make something visceral and thrilling.
“Really I just always wanted to make an Irish dystopian youth film that was dark but also quite fun and irreverent. Essentially it’s trying to immerse you in a very thrilling, experiential world of being young.
“Because it’s a film about young people for young people, it should have an edge and be challenging. It’s all about escaping.”
Her long-held goal has been realised and the writer/director is currently developing her second feature. Her debut looks remarkably assured and slick on screen, and her vast experience in commercials and music videos has stood to her.
‘When I was starting out I used to shoot and edit all of my own work, because I had to. That was a brilliant schooling for everything else.”
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