School Life

Ardal O’Hanlon explores a 1930s quest to find the first Irish men and women using archaeology, answering his deepest questions about what it means to be Irish.

An experimental true crime documentary based on the unsolved murder of Raonaid Murray, a 17-year-old Irish girl, which achieved nationwide attention during the 2000s.

This beautiful and poignant film was commissioned by TENI (Transgender Equality Network Ireland) and is a conversational piece which explores gender identity and transgender experiences in Ireland.

Cameras follow Irish solo sailor Tom Dolan as he attempts to sail single-handed around the island of Ireland, which is one of the toughest feats in sailing.

A teacher in a disadvantaged community rebels against a system that neglects many of its vulnerable students. Gloria Merriex transforms into a trailblazer, using rap, dance and other innovations to enable children to thrive in school—and beyond.

Joanne is a model, a teacher, a fighter, a chameleon. But when her private semi-nude photos went public, this woman of many talents came to be simply known as 'the topless teacher'. Together with her former student, artist Simon Fujiwara, she seeks to reclaim her image through social media and branding tactics. Shifting between advertisement and portraiture, this meta-narrative on identity manages to infuse playfulness in its layered commentary on who you are and how you're seen.

In a Europe traumatized by the First World War, educationalists point the finger of blame: the school, which produced “brave soldiers”. The task now is to build peace and develop a new education for a generation of children who, it is hoped, will never wage war again. How can we educate them without surveillance and punishment? How can we help them to emancipate themselves? To make children happy is to make them better adults, according to those who embarked on the adventure. Their names are Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, Célestin Freinet, Alexander S. Neill, Ovide Decroly, Paul Geheeb or Janusz Korczak, each of them inventing educational methods. A Swiss pedagogue, Adolphe Ferrière, brought them together in the Ligue internationale de l'éducation nouvelle.

Ireland, June 1944. The crucial decision about the right time to start Operation Overlord on D-Day comes to depend on the readings taken by Maureen Flavin, a young girl who works at a post office, used as a weather station, in Blacksod, in County Mayo, the westernmost promontory of Europe, far from the many lands devastated by the iron storms of World War II.

Chinese teenagers from the wealthy elite, with big American dreams, settle into a boarding school in small-town Maine. As their fuzzy visions of the American dream slowly gain more clarity, their relationship to home takes on a poignant new aspect.

Through economic necessity, an Aran Islander is forced to travel to England to work on building sites so that he can earn money to support his family back on the Islands.

Rafe Esquith, 1992 American Teacher of the Year and National Medal of Arts recipient, teaches 5th-grade children whose parents don't speak English at a school in a dangerous, poor, drug-infested 100% Latino/Asian neighborhood in Los Angeles.

A biography of the poet W. B. Yeats and his contribution to the Irish independence movement as a Protestant nationalist.

A short documentary exploring the ways LGBT couples show affection, and how small interactions like holding hands in public can carry, not only huge personal significance, but also the power to create social change.

In 2012, Stephen Vaughan and Kay Ferreter are invited to address the congregation at St. Joseph's Redemptorists Church in Dundalk, Ireland for the Solemn Novena Festival. In a powerful speech, the pair describe their experiences being gay and lesbian in Ireland, feeling excluded by Catholic doctrine, and the importance of a more inclusive church.

The story of famous actor and director Orson Welles is told through his two visits to the Republic of Ireland; first in his youth as a promising young actor and finally in later years as a washed up icon of the silver screen.