Please note: This was screened in Oct 2020
Phyllida Lloyd (Mamma Mia!) reunites with her all-female Shakespeare collaborators, Clare Dunne and Harriet Walter, for a stirring drama about a woman who refuses to be broken.
Sandra (Clare Dunne) is a young Dublin-based Mum struggling to provide her two young daughters with a safe, happy home after leaving an abusive relationship. When it becomes clear that the local council won’t provide that home, she decides to build one herself. With very little income and a menacing ex-husband a threat to her happiness, Sandra calls on the support of a new community of friends, including her employer Peggy (Harriet Walter).
As a first time screenwriter (working in collaboration with Malcom Campbell), Dunne impresses with her finely-crafted story of darkness and eventual triumph. And as an actor she energises this drama, utterly convincing as a woman beaten down by circumstance and failures of the State, but defiantly refusing to give up.