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(This article is produced by our Gaeltacht team. You can read an Irish version of this piece here)
A WRITER from the Donegal Gaeltacht is looking forward to returning home this Summer to begin the production of a new short film he has co-written about a transgender teenager who goes to Summer College in the locality and the questions this poses for the organisers of the Irish language course.
Writer Antóin Beag Ó Colla, who hails originally from the Magheraroarty area of Donegal (not too far from Falcarragh near the north west coast), spoke to The Journal about the project, titled ‘Fear’, and said that it was a mix of humour and seriousness but that there were also many strong points being made.
He said that the title was not an accident, as the word for man in Irish is the same as for fear in English.
Antóin is a writer who has worked on series such as Callan’s Kicks, Fair City, Hollyoaks and is now a researcher on Emmerdale and is based part-time in Liverpool, England, and the rest of the time in Belfast. Ó Colla wrote the film ‘Rúbaí’, a film about a Gaeltacht girl who refused to accept First Communion and which received much praise when it was released in 2013.
His co-writer, Grace Mulvey, is a an award-winning comedian. Her one woman show received high praise at the Edinburgh Fringe festival last year. The director is Oisín Ó hEartáin, an up and coming director who hails from the Kerry Gaeltacht.
The proposal for ‘Fear’ is one of three proposals receiving support worth €30,000 under the Tús scheme, a scheme administered by TG4 in conjunction with Fís Éireann and Northern Ireland Screen.
This scheme and its partner, Céim Eile, aim to bring a new generation of film makers to the forefront so that works in Irish can be considered for major film awards, as ‘An Cailín Ciúin’ was shortlisted for the Oscars in 2023.
Ó Colla is open about drawing from his own experience as a gay person growing up in rural areas in the Gaeltacht and realizing that people were insulting him and saying ignorant things about him.
Despite his own experience, however, he came to understand that he wasn’t as knowledgeable as he thought about ‘trans’ people.
“I realised this when a script editor I was working alongside on Hollyoaks for five months told me they were trans – I wouldn’t have realised this otherwise,” he said.
“It was interesting to me because I thought I knew everything about trans but then I realised that I didn’t know that much.”
He and his co-writer sought advice from the same transgender script editor and were happy with the feedback they were given about the script and their approach.
“When we had the script done we also sent it to various groups in the sector in Ireland and Britain for a ‘sensitivity read’ and they were very happy to see we were not dealing with the transgender character as they had been dealt with in other films.
“When you see trans teenagers on screen generally, they are telling people they are trans for the first time and it is heavy – we wanted to write about someone who was happy to say ‘I am trans and that’s the story’.”
He said that he and the co-writer understood very well that transgender issues are a serious and sensitive subject and that people can be very upset about it but that they also understood that strong points could be made using humour.
He said that a lot has changed in terms of public opinion in his own area since he was growing up.
When I was ten years old in 1993 he was still against the law being gay – and in 2026 same-sex marriage is legal.
Now in Falcaragh, there is a Pride festival and an effort is being made to ensure that LGBTQ people are welcome, a fact which Antóin thinks resonates with the community’s friendly character.
Based in Liverpool, he plays soccer there with Liverpool Trans and Emby FC, as well as another team for gay players, and he has done a lot of research trying to find out about transgender students and Irish-medium colleges.
Although a grant of €30,000 has been approved for the project, there is still a lot of work to be done. Antóin is looking forward to the start of filming and is hopeful that it can be filmed in his own home area, in the Donegal Gaeltacht.
One of the challenges they will face is finding a transgender actor with Dublin Irish to play the role of Dreoilín, the main character.
Another challenge they face is finding the right time to film or they will have to do it during a period of good weather before the start of the Irish language college season.
Two other projects have been approved under the same scheme, which is being administered by TG4 in conjunction with Fís Éireann and Northern Ireland Screen.
The main character in ‘An Scoilt’ is a young rower struggling with personal relationships and the desires of his heart and is directed by Barra Convery by Upon Blue Ridge Productions. The lives of the pioneers are discussed in ‘Haigh a Cháirde’, a work being planned by Danú Media.
You’d never know but you could see a director or writer from this group on stage at the Oscars in the coming years.
The Journal’s Gaeltacht initiative is supported by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme
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