The filmmaker duo behind the Oscar-nominated short An Irish Goodbye, about the balance between ‘tragedy and comedy’

It is not easy to approach a cruel subject with humor. And for Irish dark comedy to work, the filmmakers drew inspiration from their own ideas about life and death. An Irish farewell, written and directed by Tom Berkeley and Ross White, follows two estranged brothers who must learn to get along after the untimely death of their mother. Lorcan (James Martin), an adult with Down syndrome, bears the brunt of his mother’s death and soon fears that his brother will leave him. While Turlough (Seamus O’Hara) struggles with whether to send Lorcan to live with her aunt in London or learn to care for his brother.

Although death is not a revolutionary subject in the film medium, the unique and sincere way in which Berkeley and White explore grief by focusing on the irregular brotherhood is poignant. After a BAFTA win and heading to the Oscars, the filmmakers talk about their inspiration, cast actors with disabilities and create a sentimental exploration of love and heartbreak.

MEETING: What was the inspiration behind these shorts?

TOM BERKELEY: Ross and I have been living together in London for a long time and have decided to move back to our hometown. I moved back to Gloucester in the West Country of England; Ross moved back to Belfast in Northern Ireland. The themes of leaving home, returning home and being thrown back into the family we were once a part of were prevalent in our minds at the time.

Then I happened to go to a football [soccer] game and I saw these two adult brothers a few rows ahead of me watching the game and I found their relationship very interesting. The younger brother had Down syndrome and the older brother was there as caretaker. [I noticed their dynamic] was a typical contentious, heated, brotherly relationship. So I found this kind of duality and juxtaposition of these two things interesting and interesting. And then the next day we talked about it a lot, and we found these characters and saw what a story could look like through the journey of their newfound connection with each other.

MEETING: While this film is about grief and death and how tragedy can bring people together, so is this touching story of brotherhood. What exactly is the meaning behind it An Irish farewell To both of you? And how did you manage to find that delicate balance between sadness and comedy?

BERKELEY: It’s also about reconnection and redemption. And I think it’s about the idea of ​​what it’s like for these two characters in the darkest moments, like finding that kind of ritual of losing a parent and how devastating it is that they finally find each other. And it is not intended for any of these characters at the beginning of this film. The last thing on their minds is mending their bond, but their devotion to their mother and their mother’s memory brings them together in the end. It’s about the idea that grieving is primarily something we think of as a very personal individual journey, but it’s something you don’t necessarily have to go through alone, and grieving with another person can lead to that healing. And then about family.

ROSE WHITE: When it comes to dark comedy, we’re always very drawn to it. That line between tragedy and comedy feels very human and real to us, and we really like to play with audience expectations and almost tease each other about when to laugh and when not to laugh, when to laugh and when not to not to laugh. And maybe there is a moment of comedy, immediately followed by a moment of sincerity and honesty. It appealed to us as a way to explore that, and knowing that we were going to make a film about grief, we wanted to make sure that it was still fun to watch.

MEETING: Let’s talk about the importance of inclusion in the casting of James Martin and your experiences writing a character with a disability.

BERKELEY: To have this experience, to see these brothers [one with Down syndrome, one without] at the game the idea really worked, and we just felt that these were the characters we wanted to portray. It wasn’t something we necessarily had to fight to keep [that trait] or not. I mean, other people might have said that for casting and stuff like that it would be a lot easier, maybe think about it somewhere else. But we just thought if we can’t make it work then let’s not do the film because that’s what drew us here in this story. It is in this dynamic that these two characters process life and their emotions and grief in completely opposite ways. You have the older brother who is typically stoic and cynical and has that kind of repressed male emotion. And then the experience that many people with Down syndrome have is that they have this superhuman capacity for empathy, which makes them an interesting juxtaposition. So that was always key for us.

And shortly after we wrote the script, we saw James in this BBC Northern Ireland TV film called love and loss, and in it he was the protagonist. And then we thought: ‘This is our man. We have to develop the whole project around him.” And from there it just happened. I mean I wrote some because when [Ross and I] We first got to know each other at drama school, we wrote plays separately at the time and I wrote a play with a main character with developmental disabilities. This was my first window into it.

WHITE: I worked for a while in a special education department as a teaching assistant in the UK, what are my experiences of it. After we decided it was a character factor, we didn’t really talk about it a lot because I think something that’s really important to us is representation. It’s not enough to just put it in front of the camera and say, “Okay, we have a character with Down syndrome; Let’s go.” It’s like that’s the least exciting thing about this character. We wanted to write this character that is so versatile. Who is mischievous, full of heart and full of curses. And when we met James, it just felt like that. Aside from his disability, there’s a lot more interesting things about him, so in that sense, we really wanted to make sure that even though it’s an element of the story, it’s not just about one Character with dementia syndrome.

BERKELEY: And it’s your job as a writer to write a character that has a sense of agency in their own story, and is as complex and colorful as any other character you’d write. So that’s what we wanted to do, and when James came on board with all his colorful personality traits, it was just perfect. We’ve had some very lovely comments from people, whether with Down syndrome, children with Down syndrome, or family members, who say that they feel that Lorcan is a character they think they recognize, as opposed to a two-dimensional one Person.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]