The Sin-Eater

THE SIN-EATER is a Gothic horror that asks a simple, powerful question: how far will you go to protect the ones you love?
Set in the beautiful but bleak mountains of mid-19th century Wales, it uses a real historical ritual as the backdrop to a story about inequality and injustice, pitting a young woman against a conservative society that mirrors many of the more troubling aspects of today's world.
Sin-eating was a real Victorian ritual in which the sins of the newly dead were "eaten" by another, supposedly freeing up their passage to heaven. It was an important part of mid-19th century Welsh culture: a ceremony that was illegal but widely tolerated. Available to everyone, but mainly used by those who could afford to pay. The Sin-Eater carried out an essential role, but they were usually poor, surrounded by shame and shunned by their society. Our film uses those dichotomies to probe the inequalities and injustices of the time, in a way that's relevant to us all here and now.
This is a woman's story: women at the time were meant to bury emotional grief inwardly and accept responsibility for the death of a child. In our current climate where women’s rights seem to be regressing, and THE SIN-EATER highlights many issues the film-makers are passionate about. The use of Welsh language in the story also reinforces that message: how language, culture and women were suppressed in "polite" society. And so we've centred Welsh as the language of power, depth and emotion in the film.