Experiencing Interruptions?

Acheron

Christy, a myth-obsessed playwright in his late twenties, finds himself stuck in a creative rut as he constantly clashes with his father. They go for a tense walk by the local estuary to clear the air, but ghosts wait beside the water. Acheron is a film exploring family, grief, and the creative process.

  • Tommy Creagh
    Director
    Land of Winter, Father of the Man
  • Tommy Creagh
    Writer
    Land of Winter, Father of the Man, A War Poem
  • Tommy Creagh
    Producer
    Land of Winter, Father of the Man
  • Cilléin McEvoy
    Key Cast
    "Christy"
    The New Music, Clear the Air
  • Gerry Cannon
    Key Cast
    "Father"
    Fairytale, Rotten Sweetness
  • Conor Tobin
    Cinematography
    Masks, Hold the Line
  • Matthew Flanagan
    Sound Design
    Land of Winter, Father of the Man
  • Steven McKenna
    Editor
    Lover Boy, The Work Party
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Drama, Family
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 22 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 20, 2021
  • Country of Origin:
    Ireland
  • Country of Filming:
    Ireland
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    4:3
  • Film Color:
    Black & White
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Shadow Film Festival
    Birmingham
    United Kingdom
    November 12, 2021
    England
    Winner - Best Director
  • Dublin International Short Film and Music Festival
    Dublin
    Ireland
    October 15, 2021
    Dublin
    Winner - Best Actor (Gerry Cannon)
  • Solaris Film Festival
    Nice
    France
    September 18, 2021
    French
    Honorable Mention
  • Belfast Film Festival
    Belfast
    United Kingdom
    November 13, 2021
    UK
    Official Selection
  • IndieCork Film Festival
    Cork
    Ireland
    September 24, 2021
    Ireland
    Official Selection
Distribution Information
  • Green Ray Film Agency
    Sales Agent
    Country: Ireland
Director Biography - Tommy Creagh

Tommy Creagh is an award winning English-Irish writer & director with a passion for expressive, lyrical, storytelling with great performances at the centre. He graduated from Bristol UWE in 2017 with a 1st Class Honours Degree in Filmmaking, and since then he has been making films, music videos, and theatre. His films have won several awards and been shown at over 50 film festivals around the world, and his music videos have received over 100K hits to date. His most notable films are Father of the Man (Winner of Best Short Film at the Vienna Independent Film Festival), & Land of Winter (Winner of Best Irish Short at the Dublin International Short Film Festival & Best Young Talent at the New Renaissance Film Festival)

His fifth short film 'Acheron' is going out to film festivals now and has recently picked up an Honorary Mention at the Solaris Film Festival & Best Actor for, Gerry Cannon’s performance, at the Dublin International Short Film Festival. He also has a couple of feature films in development and is in the early stages of writing a long form historical drama with classicist and filmmaker Herbert Golder. In 2020 he set up the independent company Æ FILMS, focusing on innovative and experimental cinema in Ireland, with long term collaborator Conor Tobin. 

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Director Statement

I wanted to create something that I could connect to as someone in their late twenties living in Ireland at a time when all my friends, especially artists, seemed to be moving back in with their folks. The conversation between the father and son in the kitchen is almost word for word a real conversation I had with my own father that I thought said something pertinent about fathers and sons, one generation and the last, and from there I built the story of Acheron.

Christy and his father are both worriers, it is the inheritance that is passed down through the family, rather like a curse in one of the doomed houses of Greek Myth, continuing to haunt them as history repeats itself. Every family has a secret like this, and each their own cross to bear, their family curse if you will. 

The title also refers to a river in myth that connects the land of the living to the underworld, and as the characters walk along their local estuary the shifting water, like the Acheron, seems to drag them into a different state. I have always had a strong connection to water, growing up by an estuary myself where my grandparent’s ashes are scattered. I think this is one of the reasons I associate water with death, and perhaps life beyond as well as water is mutable and migrational, like a channel between worlds, bridging the material and the abstract.