Directed and produced by Mieke Vanmechelen and co-director Michael Holly, Hungry Hill documents the daily struggle of a community of sheep farmers in a mountainous region of Ireland, against the backdrop of an historical warning of ecological catastrophe from another part of Europe. This screening will be followed by a Q&A with Mieke Vanmechelen and Michael Holly.

Filmed on the highest point on the Beara Peninsula in the southwest of Ireland, Hungry Hill follows the day-to-day lives of a community of sheep farmers who are in perpetual negotiation with the demands of the terrain, changing societal attitudes, and the impact of globalisation. Central to the film is the story of three generations of co-director Vanmechelen’s family, who moved to Ireland from the Drowned Land of Saeftinghe in Holland/Belgium in the 1980s. The family left their farm in the polders, due to its proximity to the Doel nuclear power station and the adverse effects of pollution coming from the pharmaceutical industry. Archival media from Belgium and Holland weaves an intertextuality with footage from Hungry Hill that connects disparate times and places.

Hungry Hill explores a process that combines formal cinematic techniques and an experimental approach with an emphasis on reproducing an aesthetic experience for the audience. The camera does not focus primarily on humans as central characters in the world but rather on the affective relations between them, the mountain and the animals that live their lives there.

The film contains elements of both the personal and the political, speaking directly to the consequences of unhindered industrial expansion and lost tradition from a personal and familial point of view. It presents the real and ever-present struggle for survival while addressing urgent contemporary concerns regarding the position of the human in the cosmos and the gravity of our impact on future ecology.

Tickets are €10 + booking fee and can be purchased HERE