Colm Bairéad and Cleona Ní Chrualaoi: Making Noise With "The Quiet Girl"
In times past, the Irish language (Gaelic) was thought by some to be a mark of backwardness. In this episode, husband and wife team, Colm Bairéad and Cleona Ní Chrualaoi reveal how Ireland's native tongue provided entrée to the world of movie-making leading ultimately to the creation of An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl), Ireland's nominee for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.
While there are a number of hurdles to jump before the final five Oscar nominees are announced, there is little doubt that An Cailín Ciúin is meeting with approval from both general audiences and film critics, racking numerous awards at film festivals around the globe beginning with a Grand Prix award at the Berlin Film Festival in February
We talk with Cleona and Colm about how the Irish language shaped their lives, sometimes in not the most comfortable of ways. We track their paths through Irish Radio and TG4 (Ireland's Irish Language TV Channel) where they met and how they resolved to make a feature-length fiction film using their Inscéal production company.
Join us as we go behind the scenes in the making of An Cailín Ciúin and how things seemed to pull together in a special way despite significant challenges
Colm & Cleona Links
- Inscéal - Colm and Cleona's Production Company
- Colm's Website
An Cailín Ciúin Links
Colm Bairéad
Director
Colm has been working as a director and writer for over 15 years, gaining considerable experience as both a drama and documentary filmmaker. He has directed a number of multi-award-winning short films and many hours of documentary television for RTÉ, TG4 and TV3/Virgin Media. These include the four-part IFTA-nominated series, The Joy, the award-winning feature-length drama-documentary, Murdair Mhám Trasna, the IFTA award-winning docudrama, Cumann na mBan – Women of the Revolution and the IFTA-nominated documentary, Frank O’Connor - Idir Dhá Shruth. Colm’s 2013 fly-on-the-wall doc series, An Ceoldráma (The Musical) was nominated for three IFTA Awards, including Best Director. In 2020, Colm directed McGuinness, a major one-hour documentary on the controversial Republican leader for RTÉ One. An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) is Colm's narrative feature film debut.
Cleona Ní Chrualaoi
Producer
Cleona has worked in the broadcast industry for the past 20 years, beginning her career as a radio journalist before migrating to television production in 2008. Since then, she has produced many flagship programs and series for RTÉ, TV3/Virgin Media and TG4 which won multiple Irish Film and Television Academy awards, amongst them, the docusoap, Connected, and the docudrama, Cumann na mBan - Women of the Revolution. She also produced the ground-breaking IFTA-nominated documentary series, The Joy, on life inside Mountjoy Prison and the feature documentary, Lorg na gCos, which won a FOCAL international award in 2012. Having produced on a freelance basis across all genre of television, Cleona set up the production company, Inscéal, with Colm Bairéad and in recent years, has set her sights on the development and production of narrative feature film.
Listen On