Wildfire

Savagely powerful, directed with an unshowy but acute eye (the use of the colour red is a simple but searingly effective device), this is a terrific feature debut from the writer and director Cathy Brady.

The film uses the Troubles and Brexit to frame its understanding of the past and the present. Brady suggests a liminal psychological space – much like the liminal political space that Brexit created – through which Lauren and Kelly’s traumas move and, perhaps, can be understood.

Appearing opposite Nora-Jane Noone in a film that twists the actors round each other like competing bindweed, McGuigan could hardly have delivered a more bracing final performance. So savage is her turn that you expect water drops to hiss off her broiling skin.

While occasionally veering into melodrama, Brady’s feature debut is a powerful slice of kitchen-sink gloom, and a blazing portrait of women on fire, unsure of where to go in the wake of rippling tragedy.

The structure of Wildfire’s narrative doesn’t emerge out of a simplistic progression from strife to reconciliation, as writer-director Cathy Brady has her characters follow a realistically erratic trajectory.

It’s a potent drama – and a melancholy reminder of the talent that Irish cinema and TV lost in McGuigan