Yet more evidence that the Irish film industry is in the rudest health in living memory. Brendan Canty’s Christy is an impassioned, often witty, drama that makes an asset of the specificity of its impoverished Cork council estates.

Christy (Danny Power) is a careworn teenager who moves in with his estranged brother Shane (Diarmud Noyes) and his young family after his previous foster placement ends in violence. As the two brothers reconnect, Christy is also marked as a potential cohort by hs gangster cousin.

When we’re introduced to Christy, he’s a walking furrowed brow. Constantly on the defensive and instantly at loggerheads with Shane, it appears that Christy is going to be pure misery tourism. However, as Christy begins to find his feet, the film becomes gradually more suffused with hope.  As he falls in with a ragtag group of kindly locals such as a close friend of his later mother and her son, the motor-mouthed wheelchair-using Robot (a scene-stealing Jamie Forde), his guard slowly comes down the tone noticeably lightens.

By its title, we’re led to believe that this is going to be an intimate character study. It’s true we initially see Christy’s new surroundings through his eye. Yet also get to experience the community’s reaction to its prodigal son. For example, Christy’s arrival sparks something of a crisis of responsibility in Shane, still dealing with his own struggles in the care system, Pauline, the friend of Christy’s mother, sees him as someone she can take under her wing out of love for her late friend. Conversely, Christy’s cousin sees him as a potential asset to be exploited.

It doesn’t all work seamlessly. There are a few strands that aren’t really resolved and feel like padding, but it’s universally well-acted and made with care and love. Danny Power gives an impressively internalised performance as the titular character, possible the most grizzled teenager since Luke Littler and Federico Macheda. Though there’s nothing new here beyond its unusual setting – it feels a bit safer and less distinctive then, say, Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank which is a clear influence – but by the time the film concludes with a communal rap montage (more beat boxes than bodhrans in this sliver of Ireland), it’s impossible not to have been moved at least a little by its gritty charm.

Screening as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025