The Sparrow: New West Cork-set film takes flight with tale of a deadly secret
Éanna Hardwicke and Ollie West in The Sparrow, a film set in West Cork.
Following the success of Bodkin and the latest series of The Young Offenders, Cork is again ready for its close-up in a new Irish drama. Released in cinemas this weekend, The Sparrow centres on a teenager who is grappling with guilt over a deadly secret.
The movie is the feature debut from Michael Kinirons and producer Alicia Ní Ghráinne. The couple moved to West Cork a decade ago - and were inspired to make a film in the place they made their home. “We were renting at that stage and our lease was up, and friends had a holiday cottage in Baltimore,” says Kinirons. “We moved down to Baltimore, just packed up everything, and then fell in love with the place and never left.”
The filmmaker had long been cultivating an idea for his first feature, and found himself spurred on having moved to West Cork. “The script came together very quickly, and what happened was within West Cork, there were so many great locations, and everything sort of filtered into that. So it really kind of organically came out of writing in that place, the story came out of that place.”
Glebe House, Lough Hyne, Skibbereen, Baltimore village and its famous Beacon are among the striking locations that viewers will see in the drama. “What I was trying to do is be very smart in how efficient this would need to be to make it work because to make anything really beautiful you need time and time is serious money in film,” says Kinirons, adding that having so many strong locations near each other proved advantageous.
“I didn't have time to do a lot of location changes during the day so I'd say 70% of the movie was shot within 10-15 minutes of our own front door. We were able to use the old Glebe house just at the bottom of the road for the main household. Lough Hyne was right there on our doorstep, 10 minutes away. We had the village with the Beacon and then we had a few scenes in Skibbereen as well. We had a lot of water work to do and water is a real challenge because every time you have a boat on screen there's five other boats behind you - safety and divers and makeup and hair.”
Starring Ollie West, Éanna Harwicke, David O’Hara and Aisling O’Sullivan, The Sparrow tells the story of a teenager, Kevin (newcomer West) who struggles to please his disciplinarian father and to live up to his older brother (Éanna Hardwicke) following the death of their mother. But another drama follows, and Kevin’s initial guilt leads to him keeping a shocking secret that ties him into a bind.
“The kind of characters that I'm most interested in, I think, are really cinematic, morally ambiguous antihero types,” says Kinirons of the young man at the heart of the film. “I'm quite drawn to those characters who are in the grey, who do things that are morally questionable, but you root for them, you understand what they're doing.
“Walking in the shoes of another character is what film for me is really about, that empathy. That magic that allows you to see through another person's eyes, and then putting them in situations where you're going, how would I react to that situation? The onus is on you, as a writer, to be really grounded. It's so easy to overcomplicate these things as well.
All of the cast deliver, including David O’Hara, who brings nuance as the family patriarch. “David O'Hara is fantastic in the film, he's such an icon of Irish cinema in one sense, even though he's Scottish Irish,” says Kinirons. “For me to have the guy who played Steven in Braveheart was always a privilege.”
Following on from the global success of Netflix’s Bodkin, the Irish comedy-mystery-thriller from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground, and the ongoing appeal of The Young Offenders, it feels like Cork is having a moment when it comes to screen storytelling.
Kinirons agrees - but feels it is crucial that the county is supported in building a sustainable industry. “I feel like it's starting to pick back up again. You've got the studio in Skibbereen [West Cork Film Studios] which potentially can be amazing, I think Bodkin could be great (for Cork) as well. We need sustainability in there. My sense is there's a push coming to really rebalance where Cork was.”
He feels the southwest should have a fund, similar to the West of Ireland’s WRAP (Wrap Region Audiovisual Producers) Fund to attract screen investment and build the industry from these green shoots.
“It makes sense,” he says, adding that the region ticks lots of boxes to make it attractive to storytellers. “Its population base, hospital, airport, it's got all the things for a big studio. Kerry and Cork should have its own southwest fund, because that's all the scenery you want there. Plus you've got the city in Cork and it’s accessible, if you're coming from Cork airport.”
Kinirons has two further projects in the early stages of development - a TV series that he wants to return to film in the county, and a feature film.
The Sparrow is his first feature, having had a number of successful short films and co-written the screenplay for Strangerland, a thriller starring Nicole Kidman and Hugo Weaving. Director Kim Ferrant asked him to travel to Australia to work on the project at the rehearsal stage, giving him the opportunity to observe two of cinema’s biggest stars as they prepared to film. It was an invaluable experience in advance of making his own film, he says.
“The director had two weeks of rehearsals which is pretty unheard of and she asked me to come over for rehearsals. I spent a month there in prep with her and went through all the rehearsals with her so I was really lucky.
“Hugo Weaving is mainly from a theatre background so he was 100% there for rehearsals every day. And then Nicole is... it’s incredible to watch because she does a lot of preparation herself. You talk through every scene with her. But then you see what she does on camera.
“Something clicks and it's just phenomenal to watch in person, to see someone who can change everything about themselves so quickly. There's a reason why she's one of the greatest living actors, you know. That was a very special experience. I learned so much through that process myself.”
- The Sparrow is in cinemas from Friday, July 5
