Rural Ireland. 1981. Cáit is a nine-year-old girl from an over-crowded, dysfunctional and impoverished family. Quietly struggling at school and at home, she has learned to hide in plain sight from those around her.
As summer arrives and her pregnant mother’s due date approaches, Cáit (Catherine Clinch) is sent to live with distant relatives. Without knowing when she will return home, she is left at the strangers’ house with only the clothes she is wearing. The Kinsellas, a middle-aged couple she has never met, dress the girl in what clothes they have.
They are farming people, like her own, but hard-working and wanting for nothing, it seems. Despite a warm reception from the woman, Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley), the man of the house, Seán (Andrew Bennett), keeps his distance from Cáit and she from him, but over time, their strained relationship begins to deepen. Slowly, in the care of the Kinsellas, Cáit blossoms and discovers a new way of living. But in this house where affection grows and there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers one painful truth. 2022, Ireland, 95 minutes, in Irish with English subtitles.
The Quiet Girl is the highest grossing Irish-language lm of all time and one of the most critically and commercially successful Irish lms of recent years. The Quiet Girl was nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards.
“Luminous… There may not be a movie more expressive of the season’s benevolent ethos than this hushed work about kith and kindness.” – The New York Times
“Through heart-wrenching, nuanced and arresting performances by Clinch, Crowley and Bennett, The Quiet Girl technically lives up to its name, but speaks volumes about the transformative power of what it means to be loved. – Globe and Mail
“A genuine work of art by a genuinely empathetic artist, and one of the single most moving, heartfelt, and heartbreaking movies from any country in the last decade. That only sounds like hyperbole until you see it.” – Rolling Stone
