Looking on The Bright Side

Writer and director Ruth Meehan talks about her new film, The Bright Side, a project that’s helped her cope with grief.

The idea for The Bright Side came about following personal grief. Tell me how making this film took you through that time. I lost both my sister and a very close friend to cancer, and that experience is life changing. Making this lm has been a great gift and huge opportunity to engage with the emotional landscape that comes with loss and grief and, more importantly, life. I came across Anne Gildea’s memoir, I’ve Got Cancer, What’s Your Excuse?, at the airport when I was going to India, a year after my sister died. I’d been in college with Anne, and when I was reading it, I found it so refreshing because it was so honest and irreverent and funny, and that reminded me of my sister. Some of the scenes in the

lm are very close to home, but the story is a complete creation of myself and the writer Jean Pasley, and then Anne’s input with her material.

It features a remarkable cast – tell me how that came together.

I’m very proud of the performances, especially the ve women – Gemma-Leah Devereux, Siobhán Cullen, Derbhle Crotty, Karen Egan, and Barbara Brennan – and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Kevin McGahern.

The main character, Kate, looked very di erent in my mind’s eye, but when I saw Gemma-Leah, I thought, now I can make the lm. I’m a big believer that every creative project has its own pulse and my job is to be the midwife of that project. I knew it was an incredibly challenging role for Gemma-Leah and for me, but I also knew the only hope of us delivering what I thought that role needed to deliver was absolute commitment and to create the space that she could nd the most powerful version that she could bring to the screen for that character. On the rst day of principal photography, I remember turning around and saying to the cast and crew, “Everybody who needs to be here, they’re all the right people.”

Your autumn musts? I’m delighted there are so many lms by female Irish writers and directors coming out – Herself, Wild re, written and directed by Cathy Brady, and Deadly Cuts, written and directed by Rachel Carey, which was shot by JJ Rolfe, who shot e Bright Side.

The Bright Side is in cinemas on August 20.