Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson on the Banshees of Inisherin red carpet | BFI LFF 2022

The stars of The Banshees of Inisherin, along with director Martin McDonagh and producer Graham Broadbent, talk about their film on the red carpet at the BFI London Film Festival 2022, presented in partnership with American Express (5-16 October). On a small island off Ireland’s coast, life delivers few surprises. While a civil war of increasingly senseless violence rumbles on the mainland, sleepy days on Inisherin are marked by lifelong pals Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm’s (Brendan Gleeson) late-afternoon trips to the pub. Until one day, when it doesn’t happen. McDonagh offers an undulating wave of a story, one that moves from hoot-inducing black comedy and a tender ode to filial love, to a film about a fiery rage that’s lost sight of its original purpose. Farrell and Gleeson dazzle throughout. But the film also centres scintillating performances by Barry Keoghan as an inchoate but harmless pest and Kerry Condon as Padraic’s sister, the island’s sagest resident who longs for something more.