“A staggering portrait of Irish life”: Sinead O’Shea’s Pray For Our Sinners makes waves across the US since World Premiere
Posted: 13th October 2022
Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland is delighted to congratulate director Sinéad O’Shea and the creative team behind Irish documentary Pray for Our Sinners as the documentary is to screen at multiple prestigious US festivals this October.
In Pray For Our Sinners, filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea returns to her hometown of Navan to dig into a recent past that remains shrouded in secrecy. It was recently named as one of the films to watch this Fall by Vox, which called the film a “quietly devastating expose” and praised Sinéad O’Shea for “dismantling the mythologization and fetishization of Irish society by outsiders, and still managing to show immense love for the people she came from”.
The film received its World Premiere this year in Canada for the 47th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), with high praise for O’Shea’s “extraordinary skill for getting people to open up about difficult subjects” from festival programmer Thom Powers.
We are delighted to see that it has since been selected for a wide range of festivals across the United States celebrating the best of documentary filmmaking.
Pray for Our Sinners will make its US premiere at the Chicago Film Festival this Thursday, October 13th. Described by the festival programme as “an arresting mixture of personal storytelling and political exposé” and “a staggering portrait of Irish life”, the film will compete for the Best Documentary Award.
It will then head for its East Coast premiere on October 15th at the Hamptons International Film Festival, where it was also nominated for the Best Documentary Award alongside four other international documentaries, and in Washington D.C. at the Double Exposure Festival, where it will be celebrated as one of the “finest new films inspired by the investigative instinct.”
Finally, the film will screen on October 16th in Boston at the GlobeDocs Film Festival, a five-day film festival designed to engage, promote, and celebrate film and production talent.
Filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea will attend the screenings in Chicago, the Hamptons and Boston for this October US run of the film. She said:
“The reception so far has been so warm and I'm delighted, if a little bit stunned. Pray for Our Sinners is all about people who take on a seemingly omnipotent force and it's just amazing to see their feats being celebrated in such prestigious festivals such as TIFF and now the Chicago Film Festival alongside so many other wonderful films.”
Screen Ireland is thrilled to see the film undertaking this impressive journey and is looking forward to see where it goes next.
Pray for Our Sinners is produced by SOS Productions, Sinéad O’Shea and Maya Derrington, with Katie Holly as executive producer. Dogwoof handles international sales. The documentary is proudly supported by Screen Ireland.