A Want in Her + director Q&A

Irish filmmaker Myrid Carten's haunting feature debut presents a complex and unflinchingly honest portrait of her relationship with her alcoholic mother.

Carten’s film opens with a recording of a phone call she once made to her uncle, explaining that she had just seen her mother, Nuala, drunk on a bench in Belfast's city centre. ‘I knew straight away it was Mammy,’ she tells him, ‘cos of the heels’. The film goes on to use phone call recordings and eerily prescient old home movie footage, alongside elements of performance and video installation, to tease out a candid and confronting portrait of a mother-daughter relationship marked by addiction.

With a verité, handheld style that is often interrupted by the film's performative sequences (notably when Nuala plays herself), or some disquieting camera angles shot inside the family home, A Want in Her is at once furious and cathartic – an intricate and intense working-through of trauma and unconditional love.

The 6.30pm screening on Thu 9 Oct will be followed by a Q&A with writer/director Myrid Carten.

You may also like the following events from Queen's Film Theatre, Belfast:

• This Thursday, 2nd October, 08:20 pm, The Curse of Frankenstein in Belfast
• This Friday, 3rd October, 06:00 pm, Sinners in Belfast
• This Saturday, 4th October, 06:00 pm, Too Much: Far From Heaven in Belfast

Also check out other Entertainment events in Belfast, Arts events in Belfast, Literary Art events in Belfast.