GRACE O’BOYLE REVIEWS MYRID CARTEN’S AWARD-WINNING DEBUT FEATURE FILM, SET IN RURAL NORTH DONEGAL.
Myrid Carten is an artist and filmmaker from the Gaeltacht region in Donegal. A graduate of Central Saint Martins and Goldsmith College in London, her practice utilises documentary and fiction to examine the struggle for intimacy and how the past continues to shape us. Carten’s debut feature film, A Want in Her (2024), is an immersive, first-person account of her relationship with her mother, Nuala, who is embroiled in the struggles of mental illness and addiction.
Carten interweaves prophetic camcorder footage from her youth with 16mm shots of Northwest Donegal, intimate phone calls, and previous artistic projects, into an aesthetic tapestry that is strikingly original. The 81-minute documentary is not didactic, nor is it an inquiry into the source of her mother’s condition, but rather the artistic expression of a daughter navigating an impossibly thick world of responsibility, guilt, and unconditional love.
After the death of the family’s matriarch 20 years prior, the family home becomes a contested site as Kevin, Nuala’s brother, solely inherits the house. Isolated and brooding in the Donegal terrain, the home is the first character we meet. It is an anthropomorphic entity – correlating with the interior lives of the family members who inhabit it. Carten does not present the home as a static object or set design; instead, she renders the domestic space alive through a surreal and haptic treatment of everyday materials.
The camera follows water droplets fall from the ceiling; it shoots from ashes in the fireplace, and tunnels lace curtains. Its oneiric imagery takes on a ghostly quality, suggesting that an energy remains at large in the house. Within the home, the film’s central container, certain constants persist; boiling the kettle, smoking cigarettes, and gathering around the fireplace become grounding, life-sustaining rituals.
With a camera in hand, Carten makes a clearing through thick foliage to access an abandoned caravan just outside the family home. Her other uncle, Danny, is sheltering, but the natural world has already crept in. It is now reclaimed – wild, rotting, and unruly. Danny’s presence makes familial conflict visible to the viewer, allowing Carten’s diaristic exploration to unfold. Fractured and non-linear, the film’s timeline relies on Carten’s intuition and technical skill to construct the contours of her and her mother’s complex dynamic. She resists straightforward explanation and embraces a form of filmmaking that thinks through trauma.
A woman wearing a grey hoodie is collapsed on a public bench in Belfast city. She clenches a bottle of wine, her legs crossed, as a pink double-decker bus passes with the words “You Can Get Through This,” pasted on an advertisement. It feels scripted in its cosmic irony. Carten identifies her mother who has been missing: “I knew straight away it was mammy because of the heels.” She films at a distance, preserving the quiet, implicit agreement to remain discreet whenever Nuala is drinking. In this moment, as with many throughout the film, the viewer is an participating subject, who must reckon with themes of consent, trust, and the necrotic forces at play within the human experience.
Although systemic issues are not directly addressed in the film, they inevitably linger. As a Donegal native, Carten’s depiction of Errigal, the Muckish Mountains and Gortahork evoke familiar feelings of desolation and disadvantage. They are mythic in their presentation, but those who live at the foot of Errigal understand the ominous ambiguity of this landscape. Carten’s debut is a profoundly vulnerable account of mental illness, addiction in rural Ireland, and the tension between survival and responsibility.
Grace O’Boyle is a curator and writer from Donegal, based in Dublin.
Myrid Carten’s film, A Want in Her, premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival 2024 (IDFA) and won several awards during its festival run, before winning three British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs) in November 2025.
myridcarten.com
