Garnering awards at this year’s Sundance Film festival, Irish director Gerard Barrett delivers an uncompromising film of immense emotional power about a young man’s attempts to save his alcoholic mother from her addiction.

John (Jack Reynor) is a young south Dublin cabdriver who can barely make ends meet. His mother, Jean (Toni Collette), is an unwavering alcoholic who is systematically drinking herself to death. Hospitalised after another overdose, Jean’s best hope of escaping her septic cycle of squalor is a costly, private rehab clinic. After years of embarrassment, including her virtual abandonment of her youngest son Kit who has Down Syndrome, Jean’s alcoholism has left John exhausted. Desperate and broke, he’s left to decide whether or not to turn to a life of crime in order to get the cash he needs to save his mother from her addiction and unite his broken family.

With a fantastic central performance from Reynor that’s full of spirited stoicism and compassion, this is a deeply moving study of people living on the margins that’s brimming with startling poetic realism and a quiet intensity.

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