WILDFIRE (2020, GBR) Movie review, plot, trailer, rating

Although the violence in Northern Ireland after a decade of civil war ended with a peace agreement signed on Good Friday in 1998, there are many who still live with the trauma of everything that has happened. Numerous civilians on both sides were killed in the bloody and ruthless civil war, and immediately in the opening scene of debutant Cathy Brady’s film we see that one such event from the early 1990s affected the lives of Wildfire’s protagonists. Lauren (Nora – Jane Noone) is a woman in her thirties who lives with her partner Sean (Martin McCann) in the city right next to the border, and works in a huge warehouse.

One night, Kelly’s younger sister will suddenly appear at her door (Nika McGuigan, who passed away at the age of 33 shortly after finishing filming, and was posthumously awarded the Irish Actress of the Year award). She had disappeared a year earlier and no one knew where she was or what had happened to her, and it was clear to us from the beginning that Kelly was in an extremely difficult mental state. Her arrival in complete chaos will take the lives of Lauren and everyone around her, and in time we will realize that behind all this lies a deep trauma that indirectly has its roots in the 1992 bombing when they were both girls. Then their father died, and a few years later, under mysterious circumstances, their mother also died.

It remains unclear until the end whether their mother killed herself or was killed, and all this mystery about her death further fueled stories throughout the town that Mom was a lunatic. Of course, Kelly’s return and her distorted and not-quite-normal behavior will only fuel old stories of madness passed down through the generations, and while everyone will be in favor of Kelly being placed in a mental institution, the older sister will decide to fight for her. . It was a “Wildfire” film about a country that is still traumatized by violence and the people who live with its consequences today, but also a stylized emotional and poignant psychological drama about not only the still current cult of violence, but also how things are quickly forgotten .Rating 6.5 / 10.

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