The Silver Branch

★★★★ Dir: Katrina Costello Starring: Patrick McCormack, John Joe Conway

G 75M Following sold-out screenings in October, audiences are getting another opportunity to catch a documentary that scooped a number of festival awards. Katrina Costello’s film-making debut is a beautifully shot tone poem channelling Terrence Malick in the beauty of its natural imagery. The story focuses on Clare farmer, Patrick McCormack, a thoughtful man who rallies his local community to challenge the proposed construction of the controversial Burren Interpretative Centre. Rather than just concentrate on the nuts and bolts of the political campaign as it makes its way through the courts, The Silver Branch shows us a disappearing way of life through the eyes of Patrick McCormack and his interactions with family, with neighbours and mostly, with the land. “That valley, and what it stood for,” he says, “wasn’t the place for tarmac or big buses or noise. It was richer and deeper. We put our house and land and families at risk for something we believed in.”