Christy: Behind a cinematic love-letter to the Northside of Cork City

A new film has Cork's Northside at its heart. Aoife Barry chats to the director, screenwriter and actors who brought Christy to life.

A still from 'Christy', the film by Irish film-maker Brendan Canty starring Daniel Power.

Director Brendan Canty and screenwriter Alan O’Gorman have seen their debut feature Christy on the big screen in Berlin and Galway, but nothing beat the Corkonians’ hometown nerves when it premiered recently at the Omniplex in Mahon Point.

They needn’t have worried: A huge crowd attended the film, which is about a 17-year-old called Christy (Danny Power of The Young Offenders) who moves in with his estranged brother Shane (Diarmuid Noyes of Blood) in Knocknaheeny after a fractious exit from his foster family.

“It’s such a Cork film — it was like bringing it home,” says Canty. “It makes sense why we were a bit more nervy.”

Christy is a film with heart and hope in it. It has its dark sides, but bright splashes of humour too. Set over a short period of time, it follows Christy and Shane as they struggle to connect following Christy’s move into Shane’s house, which is also occupied by Shane’s partner Stacey (Emma Willis of The Young Offenders) and their infant daughter.

Director Brendan Canty with cast members of the film Christy, Cara Cullen, Danny Power, Emma Willis, and Diarmuid Noyles at the Opera House, Cork. Picture: David Creedon

The day after the Cork premiere, the main cast — Power, Noyes, Willis, and newcomer Cara Cullen — join Canty and O’Gorman in the Cork Opera House to chat to the Irish Examiner. 

They’re surprisingly fresh-faced despite the night’s celebrations, with light teasing and camaraderie testament to the bonds made while on set.

In fact, deep friendships are at the root of Christy: O’Gorman and Canty were childhood best friends in Ballincollig who reconnected in young adulthood, while Power (a former rapper) and Cullen (a singer) are connected to Knocknaheeny’s music and creative hub the Kabin Studio, run by producer Garry McCarthy. 

Other ‘Kabin Crew’ in Christy include Darren Stewart as Ferret, Sophie McNamara as Joey, and Ian Tabone who plays the menacing Jammy. 

Canty began taking photos and making music videos as a teenager, while O’Gorman went into teaching.

“I was writing privately a lot,” says O’Gorman, who later did a masters in creative writing.

“You were writing all these mad short stories,” Canty teases as the pair detail discovering they were on the same creative buzz. 

They worked on a few projects together, but were waiting for the ‘big one’.

“When we tried to write a Cork story, that’s when it started to click,” says Canty. That Cork story became a 2019 short film, also called Christy, which this feature film expands on.

KIDS IN CARE

Christy’s roots lie in 2012, when Canty photographed bonfire night in Knocknaheeny and got chatting to some local teens.

“They were kind of the kids you might steer away from… but they were really sweet when I got talking to them, and they were really interested in what I was doing,” says Canty. 

“I was like, ‘well, you could get into filmmaking too. You’ve just got to go to college’. And I was just being really naive.”

He was struck both by the options afforded to him by his middle-class upbringing, and the lack of confidence among the teens. He wondered: At what stage does their confidence disappear?

This “really resonated” with O’Gorman’s experience as a teaching assistant in Wythenshawe in Manchester, which has a similar socioeconomic profile to Cork’s northside. Many of the children he was working with were in foster care.

“We didn’t intentionally set out to make something about kids in care,” he says, but he did write a character living with his estranged brother for the short film Christy. Turning this into a feature necessitated digging deeper into Christy’s background, and it became clear the character had been in care too.

“It was really important for us to get that right, and we luckily were surrounded by enough people to really show us what that was authentically like,” says Canty.

Their mentor, Yann Demange — a producer and director known for ‘71 and Top Boy — had been in foster care as a child himself. The team wanted to make sure that they didn’t parachute an imagined story into the lives of real people.

“We never would have done that,” says Canty.

Actor Emma Willis at the Opera House, Cork. Picture: David Creedon

One of the crucial parts of getting Christy made was time spent developing and workshopping the film with the cast. The film was financed by BBC Film and Screen Ireland, who encouraged them to lean into its Cork-ness. During workshops with acting coach Toby Clarke, the actors dug deep, improvising key moments from their characters’ lives.

“There was a real freedom to create the character,” says Emma Willis. She and Noyes came up with one of O’Gorman’s favourite scenes during this period, where their characters Shane and Stacey

talk about how they met in Cubin’s nightclub.

“That was gold for us,” says Canty, while O’Gorman says it helped them “find out why the characters are acting the way they are”.

When these exercises didn’t go well, they still helped the film take shape. Noyes and Power were tasked with improvising a scene to uncover the humour between the brothers, but it just wouldn’t land.

“Diarmuid was getting super frustrated, as if he was failing this exercise,” recalls Canty. “But I was like, no, has taught me that there is no humour, and it makes so much sense, because there’s such friction between them.”

When the brothers do eventually laugh together on screen, things feel all the sweeter.

Actor Cara Cullen at the Opera House, Cork. Picture: David Creedon

PURE DIVA

First-time actor Cara Cullen plays Leona, a sparky new friend Christy makes in Knocknaheeny.

“I don’t do improv,” she told Canty before filming, joking now that she was a “pure diva”. Yet she was asked to improvise one of her first scenes.

“I was like, how am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to keep talking without having a conversation?” says Cullen, animatedly recalling her frustration. Now she says proudly that the scene is the one people always ask her about, even though it’s just her “rambling on”.

Cullen and Jamie Forde, who plays the character Robot, bicker like brother and sister on screen.

“We speak to each other like that in real life,” chuckles Cullen. “It was pure natural in that way, because it’s the way I talk to my own brothers.”

When she walked on set, she felt like she was playing a version of herself: “She was a 17-year-old girl living in Knocknaheeny, and I was the exact same. And having a single mam and having to take care of her brothers and all of this stuff. I almost felt like Leona was like a different version of me.”

Actor Danny Power at the Opera House, Cork. Picture: David Creedon

In the RTÉ/BBC series The Young Offenders, Danny Power plays a loudmouthed antagonist. His lead role of Christy couldn’t be more different.

“For Christy there’s not a lot of talking, but he also has to tell a story without speaking,” says the softly-spoken actor. 

“Some of this stuff that he went through, the emotions that he felt… I had a child at a very young age, so some of them emotions just connected with me.”

His son, who was born when he was 18, plays the young Christy.

“Obviously, we have different pasts and we’ve been through different things, but it’s the emotional side of it, I feel like Christy is just me,” says Power.

Both Christy and his brother Shane have a maelstrom of emotions trapped inside them: Shane loves his brother but doesn’t know if he can deal with him; Christy wants love and freedom.

“I felt empathy for him. I understood him,” says Noyes of Shane. 

“It’s a lot of Irish males, just not saying what they mean and bottling up everything and afraid to be vulnerable.”

The silence between the men was drawn out even further in the edit.

“It makes the end way more powerful,” says O’Gorman.

“I got into a habit of, when we’re doing angry scenes, I’d always punch a wall,” Noyes adds.

“Brendan texted me in the edit and he was like ‘all these takes — I can see you looking for something to punch’.”

TALKED DOWN

That Christy is set in Knocknaheeny still feels remarkable for an Irish film.

“The northside is talked down by so many people, especially Knocknaheeny,” says Power. “To show people that there is beautiful stuff that goes on in the northside and in the city is a real big thing.”

“It’s a community,” adds Cullen, which “has the best people”.

As a Dubliner, Diarmuid Noyes discovered the “love for life around Knocknaheeny”.

“People just want connection, and that’s very much what this film is about — connection,” he says.

There were “kids everywhere” while they filmed, though onlookers often thought it was The Young Offenders set. One scene in Christy features a young boy in tiger face paint.

“He just kept coming up, and Brendan was like ‘put him in the film’,” says Willis.

Ten of Christy’s cast members came from the Kabin Studio, as did some team members behind the camera. Power says if he didn’t start rapping and join the Kabin: “I would have never, ever been here today.

“My plan was to go to the army when I was 18”.

O’Gorman interjects, smiling as he tells him: “I just caught you before that.”

He and Canty cast the short film by visiting the Kabin Studio, and the project re-routed Power during a “hectic” point in his life. The whole gang is full of praise for Garry McCarthy of the Kabin.

“If we had Garrys in every part of the city all over Ireland, it would be a better world,” says O’Gorman.

They filmed amid real bonfires in Knocknaheeny, inside real houses, and did their costumes, hair, and makeup in Terence McSwiney Community College in Hollyhill.

“There’s nothing worse than going into an area that you’re filming about and they make it look artificial,” says Willis.

Cork film stars Alison Oliver and Chris Walley are also among the cast — playing a homeless woman and Shane’s co-worker, respectively — adding their imprimatur to Christy.

“The two of them were just so into the whole ethos of the film,” says Canty.

O’Gorman is a huge fan of Helen Behan, who plays local hairdresser Pauline, because of her work in the Shane Meadows series The Virtues, and was astounded she signed on.

Christy doesn’t shy away from the issues faced by some residents of Knocknaheeny, but offers lightness too. During filming, someone told Canty they assumed Christy would be “a dark, depressing film set up in Knocknaheeny”.

“That was just an expectation, and I’m happy that it’s not at all, without shying away from the dark side of things. That would not be authentic,” says Canty.

He sees the northside as cinematic: “It’s on a hill. There’s so much space. The houses have all these pastel colours. You’ve got the water tower, which is just this incredible structure.”

To him, Christy is “a love letter to the city”.

Director Brendan Canty and writer Alan O’Gorman of the film 'Christy at the Opera House, Cork. Picture: David Creedon

LA-based O’Gorman and Cork-based Canty are currently in the early stages of planning a TV series set in the world of Christy, while Noyes’ upcoming projects include the Marian Keyes series The Walsh Sisters, and Power is working on various unnamed projects. 

Willis is auditioning, while Cullen is “just living life”.

Both O’Gorman and Canty indicate Christy taught them about paying attention and being willing to change their approach.

“I learned whenever you’re not sure about anything, just listen. And talk to people, ask questions. It’s as simple as that really,” says Canty, as O’Gorman nods in agreement.

 

• Christy is in cinemas from August 29.