Immrám (2025)

Michael Holly & Mieke Vanmechelen

For one full year between the harvest festivals of Samhain, IMMRÁM follows a charismatic family who are at the centre of a growing movement that aims to reclaim indigenous Irish identity, customs, religion and language. Siobhán de Paor and Diarmuid Lyng situate themselves at the centre of this movement, as public figures and leaders. In a post-Catholic, neo-liberal Ireland, they are attempting to propagate new cultural and religious roots in tune with nature. 

IMMRÁM encounters this family and their circle of friends and colleagues along a ten-day walking pilgrimage across the South of Ireland. It meets them at their home in Co. Kilkenny, at gatherings and rituals. It observes a men’s spiritual retreat in the Wicklow mountains with wild hurling and a sweat lodge, amongst several other intimate and poignant moments.

 The family and the people around them follow the teachings of the enigmatic philosopher and mystic John Moriarty (1938 - 2007), who is always present in IMMRÁM, in scatterings of television archive. Moriarty wanted to reconnect with his ‘wild nature’ - to ‘decivilise’ himself by living a life in communion with the rhythms of nature and engaging with the profundities of mystical philosophies from around the world. 
 

IMMRÁM is an experimental documentary film that visually and sensorially navigates the complex connections between place, identity, language, environment, and contemporary lived life in Ireland, which it sees as an outpost of a resurgent indigenous European culture.

Musical score composed and performed by Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh  

Produced by Fierce Quiet Films. Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland