Tipperary short film on Bridget Cleary murder lands three LA festival nominations
Indie film by Fionn MacCumhaill Players set for LA premiere after trio of festival nods
A Tipperary-made short film on one of Ireland’s most notorious historical murder cases has secured three nominations at an international festival in Los Angeles, marking an unusual transatlantic moment for a story rooted in rural south Tipperary.
The screenplay was co-written by friends Anne Williamson and Brian Clancy and filmed in July 2024. Long time collaborators in their local drama group ‘The Fionn MacCumhaill Players’, they cast the film from local actors and actresses and the production was filmed by ‘Dicemen Productions’, a video production company based in Kilkenny.
The historical context for the film is as follows, Bridget Boland was born in 1869 and died in 1895, in late 19th-century Ireland. She was murdered by her husband Michael Cleary, who later claimed that she had been taken by fairies and replaced with a changeling.
Her death, which involved her being set on fire after she had been killed, prompted extensive press coverage at the time and was closely followed in newspapers across Ireland during the trial.
Bridget Cleary is understood to have lived in a modest rural cottage in south Tipperary with her husband. There is no record of formal education, but she is generally described in historical accounts as a literate and skilled working woman.
She worked as a dressmaker and used a Singer sewing machine, reflecting a level of technical domestic skill associated with professional sewing at the time.
Alongside this, she is believed to have supplemented her income through small-scale rural activities typical of the period, including keeping poultry and selling eggs and butter.
More than a century later, the story has been adapted by The Fionn MacCumhaill Players who have been nominated for three awards at the Indie Short Film Festival in Los Angeles.
The film will also have its American premiere at the Regal LA at the end of May. The nominations include best young actor for Cathal Fahey, best ensemble cast for Vicky Maher, John Peter Morris, Eugene O Meara and Cathal Fahey, and best new director for Anne Williamson. Speaking to the Tipperary Star, Anne Williamson described how this short film project started.
“It was always a story that fascinated me from listening to stories as a child from my grandfather told to me down through the years. It was always a tale that tore at my heart strings the fact that she was burned and buried in the middle of the night with no mourners. It always got to me that she was wronged.”
Anne explained that she undertook extensive background research for the film. “I did a lot of research, I had the stories from my grandfather, we went back through the court case records and newspaper reports taken at the time,” she said.
She added that her interpretation of the story was shaped by both family accounts and historical material. “The theory I came up with for the film and the theory that my grandfather had told me was that her husband was a jealous man.
They were married for seven years and never had any children, and every time she went out he wanted to control her. She was very independent, making her own money.”
“The house was hers and not her husband’s home. Her father was also living in the house at the time, a very innocent old man, and her brothers had emigrated to America. Around the house also were her cousins, who were quite innocent men as well.”
She added that Michael Cleary, Bridget’s husband in her film version, was a man who exercised control over the household and ruled the others by fear. A screening of the film will take place in The Abymill Theatre Fethard on Saturday, May 16.