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Director's Statement
THE QUIET GIRL (An Cailín Ciúin) is an Irish-language adaptation of the acclaimed story "Foster", written by Claire Keegan. First published in the New Yorker and declared “Best of the Year” by the magazine, the story was expanded and published as a standalone book by Faber & Faber in 2010. Writer/director Colm Bairéad first read "Foster" in the summer of 2018 and was immediately captured by the idea of adapting it as a film."Thematically, it touched upon so many areas of concern for me, things that had been present in my short drama work up to that point - the complex bonds of family, the question of emotional and psychological growth and, crucially, the phenomenon of grief and its capacity to shape us.From a formal perspective, the telling itself was immediately compelling - a first-person, present tense narrative told through the eyes of a young girl. It felt utterly immersive and empathetic and innately visual - so much of it, is what this girl is seeing and feeling moment to moment. The narrative tension of the story is completely derived from the girl’s experience, rather than from any over-reliance on plot. And that felt like an appealing challenge from a film-making perspective. The idea of shaping this girl’s experience and this being the overriding concern of the film, where the exploration of character and relationship dynamics was completely to the fore. But it was also the “smallness” of the story that I believed in. There’s a quote by Mark Cousins where he says that art shows us again and again that if we look closely and openly at a small thing, we can see a great deal in it.I’m very much drawn to this notion, that something quite expansive and profound can be found in small places, in a kind of narrative humility. More than anything else, however, it was the emotional undertow of the story that convinced me of its potential as a film. Its restraint - and its eventual cathartic release - mesmerised me and I could envision a film adaptation that might produce that same response in its audience."