Cork women use own homeless experience to make film about life on streets  

Former homeless woman and Cork-born filmmaker Elaine Ryan has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a film about female homelessness in Ireland.

A director and actor fundraising for a new short film about female homelessness have said in some cases women are having to hand over their child to relatives due to the unsuitability or dangers of some emergency accommodation.

Actor Elaine Ryan - who has experienced homelessness and who also worked in homeless services - and director Naoimh Ní Luanaigh, are hoping to raise €18,000 to cover production costs on the short film, which is called This Promise.

It follows the experiences of a lead female character in homelessness, and how she elects to have her daughter return to the care of her ex-partner, based primarily on the unsuitability of emergency accommodation for her.

Both Elaine and Naoimh, who co-wrote the script, said the idea was based on the real-life experiences of women they had spoken to when researching the issue.

Cork native Naoimh said: "I wanted to make a film about homelessness for a number of years now and I started by speaking to people whose jobs were in homeless services, and nearly every female I spoke to spoke about their child and separation from their child.

We have one of the highest rates of female homelessness in Europe, which is pretty shocking, and one of the main reasons for this is the unprecedented levels of family homelessness and many are lone-parent families headed by females.

Elaine, who studied screen acting at Bow Street Academy in Dublin and who experienced homelessness through addiction, will play the lead character in the film. She said there can be stigma and shame for women in homelessness, and that thereby "you would pair up with somebody most of the time, [mostly] with a man - you just feel safer, more protected."

Elaine Ryan, co-writer and lead actor in This Promise.

Elaine stayed two years with the Daisyhouse Association in Dublin, an organisation which works directly with homeless women by providing support services and short-term accommodation. She left that service 18 months ago and is now helping to spearhead the film project.

As for the €18,000 target, Naoimh said they are "about 30% of the way there" and have appealed for anyone who can give assistance - either financial or in other ways, including shooting locations - to visit the film’s website: thispromisefilm.com.

"Our goal is to premiere at the Cork Film Festival in November," she said. "So we need to film in April.

We are really calling out to organisations that can help in whatever way possible, it does not need to be a financial donation, it could be feeding the crew or giving us a location to shoot in.

The final film is likely to be around 15 minutes long, focussing on a few days in the troubled world of the women it features.

Elaine said: "A home feels like the most normal thing in the world to most but when you don’t have one it seems like the most difficult thing in the world to get."