When the Kneecap movie had its world premiere at Sundance a year ago its Irish-language rapping stars arrived in style. It was probably the first time an armoured and graffitied PSNI Land Rover had been driven through the streets of Utah, bringing the band and a little piece of Belfast to the western United States.
Kneecap forms part of what has been hailed as an international cultural moment that Ireland has been having over the past few years. The semibiographical film is tipped to be nominated for an Oscar on January 23rd. Cillian Murphy and Small Things Like These could be up for consideration too, following Murphy’s Best Actor win for Oppenheimer last year.
Both films add even more scope to the ever-growing “must-visit” locations and settings for anyone with a favourite movie, TV show or book set in Ireland.
Our island has, of course, been the backdrop for big productions such as Star Wars, Braveheart, Game of Thrones and Saving Private Ryan. The scenery, the history and the appealing tax incentives have all worked in our favour in terms of what keeps productions coming here, as well, according to film and TV locations manager Rossa O’Neill, as local skill.
“We have some top-class production companies and growing studio facilities, making Ireland a very attractive location for all sorts of productions,” he says.
O’Neill, with more than two decades of experience in productions including Vikings and Star Wars: The Last Jedi under his belt, can appreciate how the Irish landscape makes his job that little bit easier. “A huge variety of architecture and historical locations”, he says, together with “a highly skilled workforce” are key factors when productions decide to make a base in Ireland, whether they’re drawn to Skellig Michael for Star Wars or Enniskerry for Disney production Disenchanted.
Story is the leading factor in the search for the perfect location, says O’Neill. “Then the budget and scale may influence where they can go.” Working closely with the director, producers, designers and director of photography “helps to focus the scout and build our world”.
Originally from Ballyshannon in Co Donegal, O’Neill got into location scouting by first taking a TV and film post-Leaving Cert course at Ballyfermot College of Further Education. During a summer break he was hired to do some work on the feature film King Arthur as part of the locations department. “That was it for me,” he says. “I was hooked.”
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King Arthur was shot in Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare and involved building a 1km-long replica of Hadrian’s Wall in a field in Ballymore Eustace. Ballymore, as it’s known to locals, is no stranger to Hollywood calling. Braveheart’s Battle of Falkirk was filmed there back in 1994, while The Curragh and the Wicklow Mountains also saw their fair share of bloodshed.
But what other filming locations have been popping up on tourists’ bucket lists?
Dundalk
Although set in west Belfast, the Kneecap movie production team spent quite a bit of time south of the Border in Co Louth to bring the story of rappers Moglaí Bap, Mo Chara and DJ Próvaí to life. The film is expected to be the second Irish-language movie to represent Ireland in the International Feature Film category at the Oscars, after 2023′s An Cailín Ciúin (which, incidentally, is set in Waterford but was filmed in Meath and Dublin).
Dundalk is not the first name that springs to mind when the glamour of a film set is mentioned but the town’s Spirit Store music venue, along with New Street, are both key locations. Seapoint strand in Termonfeckin is the setting for a beach yoga scene (and an inspired “Bobby Sandals” quip) while the village of Greenore on the Cooley Peninsula saw Michael Fassbender mingling with locals while filming scenes as Moglaí Bap’s da.
In Belfast, director Rich Peppiatt was at the helm for scenes filmed in Ardoyne, New Lodge and at Madden’s bar in the city centre. Peppiatt has spoken about some difficulties encountered while filming in the North, telling Screen Daily last year that a meticulously planned scene in some woods had to be abandoned because of local politics. Still, with Kneecap and Kenneth Branagh’s 2021 movie Belfast, not to mention the many television productions made in the city (Line of Duty, Blue Lights ... ), Kneecap’s hometown has been having a moment of its own.
The band has also been shortlisted in the Academy Awards’ Best Original Song category for Sick in the Head. If they brought a Land Rover to Utah, what might they bring to the Los Angeles stage if invited to perform?
New Ross
It hasn’t taken long for the Small Things Like These effect to hit New Ross. The Cillian Murphy film, adapted by Enda Walsh, produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and based on the book by Claire Keegan, was largely filmed in and around the Co Wexford town. An early 19th century home for sale in New Ross was recently featured in this paper’s pages as an “Evocative Small Things Like These property”. The property’s emerald-green shopfront bearing a “Walshe Tailor” sign is situated on one of New Ross’s steep streets that are so well represented in the film.
New Ross doesn’t have a cinema so local residents were treated to screenings of Small Things Like These in St Michael’s Theatre. What the town does have in abundance, though, is charm, as well as more of those vintage shopfronts.
If Small Things Like These generates the expected Oscar buzz or wins Murphy his second Academy Award it could be added to a film locations tour of Wexford, with Saving Private Ryan, Brooklyn and P.S. I Love You also on the itinerary. It is of course a local bylaw when travelling anywhere near Curracloe that you point out it was the setting for Steven Spielberg’s D-Day landings on the beaches at Normandy.
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Meanwhile, a large mural of Murphy as his character Bill Furlong from Small Things Like These has been created by French street artist Zabou in New Ross. Local politicians have been hard at work to maximise the town’s potential, with the mural, which is to be a permanent feature, in the works for some time. Will Cillian Murphy, a man known for aversion to publicity, pop down for a selfie with himself?
Leitrim
All due respect to Leitrim’s stunning scenery and rich cultural heritage – Glencar Waterfall was the inspiration for WB Yeats’s poem The Stolen Child, and who among us has not taken in the sights of Carrick-on-Shannon on a hen weekend? However, the county is not a place that instantly invokes images of sex, intimacy and a blossoming yet secret love. Enter: Sally Rooney.
Rooney’s latest novel Intermezzo is set in Dublin and Kildare but dwells most intriguingly on an unnamed town in Leitrim. There, characters Ivan and Margaret meet and begin a love affair marked by an age gap and difficult personal family dynamics. Again, not to besmirch the county and its beauty, but did we ever think we’d have Americans romanticising Leitrim? And how do we think they’re pronouncing it?
It’s only a matter of time before gaggles of young women are flocking to Drumshanbo in search of the lane where Ivan and Margaret took their walks. Drumshanbo isn’t specifically named in Intermezzo but it has as much right as any other Leitrim town to adopt itself as a hotbed of intimacy and longing. Maybe Manorhamilton will vie for the title of Ireland’s sexiest village? Or Roosky?
Rooney Tourism is already a thing in Dublin where the setting of Normal People in Trinity College has not only brought holidaymakers to walk the same paths as Connell and Marianne but has even encouraged students from overseas to pursue their education in its hallowed halls.
Paul Mescal recently returned to Trinity as part of his Gladiator II publicity tour, it being not only Connell’s alma mater but Mescal’s too. Normal People has also inspired tour companies to come up with trips across locations in Sligo, from Streedagh beach to dcurry. Nothing says young, burning love like Tubbercurry.
Derry
Another mural that’s already a huge attraction is the Derry Girls portrait that appears on the side of Badgers Bar on Orchard Street in the city. Discover Northern Ireland even refers to the mural as “one of the best selfie locations” in Derry. Lisa McGee’s show about a group of young people navigating not only The Troubles but life as a teenager became an international hit when it was broadcast on Channel 4 and then on Netflix. It’s truly put the Oak Leaf county on the map, with many visitors to Ireland adding Derry to their itineraries.
There they can visit the “nothing short of spectacular” city walls where Chernobyl child Katya remained unimpressed and Orla had her emotional Irish dancing moment. There’s also Pump Street, where Grandda Joe was clocked with a cream horn, Guildhall Square, where the Bill Clinton visit was filmed (and where then US president Clinton’s actual reception was held in 1995), and Limewood Street, which was the girls’ route to school and the site of Clare Devlin’s “I’m not being an individual on my own” denim jacket meltdown.
Sandycove
The Forty Foot in Dublin’s Sandycove has been a sea swimming spot for centuries. Through gender restrictions, nude protests and James Joyce writing about the “fortyfoot hole” in Ulysses, the bracing waters of the Irish Sea have been soothing and shocking bathers for generations. Sharon Horgan, star and co-creator of Apple TV’s Bad sisters, was inspired to use the Forty Foot as a location for the show when she visited and saw a group of women treading the freezing water, deep in conversation as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
At the centre of the first season of Bad Sisters is a dark secret held by Horgan’s character Eva Garvey and her four siblings and the swimming hole represented the perfect location for the family to come together to plot and scheme.
The international success of Bad Sisters, now back for a second season, shone a spotlight on Sandycove. There were articles about the bathing spot in Forbes and GQ and multiple online sites give tourists an itinerary for a day trip based on the locations in the show, from Skerries to Malahide to Sandycove.
And while we’re mentioning iconic swimming spots, who could forget that Matt Damon moment at the Vico Baths in Dalkey in the summer of 2020? Damon wasn’t filming at Vico – he was in Ireland to shoot Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel – but he and his Super Valu bag of trunks and snacks have given it a place on the map, nonetheless. Harry Styles paid a follow-up visit to Dalkey while in Dublin in 2022 for his Love on Tour concert in the Aviva Stadium.
Cork
Caroline O’Donohue’s The Rachel Incident hops between Cork city in the late 2000s and modern-day London. Most of the action takes place in the “people’s republic”, though, as Rachel and her best friend James navigate a tricky time for her as they trip around the streets of Cork, which is brilliantly brought to life by O’Donoghue, who is originally from the city.
The Rachel Incident has been optioned for the small screen by Universal Studios, so Cork could soon be the location du jour as Rachel and James crash around in the shadow of the Shandon Bells. The book is somewhat autobiographical, and O’Donoghue has said she was forced to leave Cork for London after the city was decimated by the recession.
Of course, the Rebel County is no stranger to the big or small screen. Sets of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Wind That Shakes the Barley and Michael Collins have all called Cork home. Rossa O’Neill says his work on Star Wars in Crookhaven and the surrounding areas might be his most memorable.
Achill Island
Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin is almost cartoonish in its representation of technicolour green fields and criss-crossing stone walls. Those heavyweights of Irish acting, Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan, slope around the place in jumpers with pints. All that’s missing is Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan sailing past with a donkey, like a post-famine Mary and Joseph.
Banshees is a film mainly for people who have an affinity for Ireland but aren’t actually from here. Criticisms aside, though, the movie does a fantastic job of making this country of ours look spectacular. There are six locations marked on Achill Tourism’s Banshees of Inisherin trail map, from the breathtaking Keem Beach on the southwest coast to Cloughmore in the southeastern corner of Achill, the setting for the fictional JJ Devine’s pub where Farrell and Gleeson’s characters have their daily pints.
The pub was built from scratch on location in Achill for the film but was then dismantled and rebuilt in Mee’s pub in Kilkerrin, Co Galway. Many tourists and tour buses have made their way to Mee’s to see “Jonjo’s pub” after The Banshees of Inisherin was nominated for multiple Academy Awards.
