Mike Houlihan, founder of the Irish American Movie Hooley festival, is so
dedicated to Irish-American filmmakers and culture that this year he
screened 50 domestic and international submissions before he and Barbara
Scharres, director of programming at the Gene Siskel Film Center, settled
on the three films they felt were the most consonant with the Hooley’s
mission of furthering the traditions of Irish storytelling.
The strongest of the festival’s trio of films is Mother’s Day, a
moving BBC drama based on a real-life late 20th-century campaign to end
“the troubles” in Northern Ireland. On March 20, 1993, the Irish Republican
Army set off bombs in a shopping area of Warrington, a town near the west
coast of England, catching weekend customers unawares and killing
three-year-old Johnathan Ball and mortally wounding 12-year-old Timothy
Parry. The next morning, on Mother’s Day, Dublin housewife and mom Susan
McHugh (Vicky McClure) reads a newspaper account of the terrorist attack
and is so disturbed that she will become motivated to lead a peace
initiative. Eventually she and her husband, Arthur (David Wilmot), cross
the Irish Sea to arrive on the Parrys’ doorstep, greatly surprising Tim’s
mother, Wendy (Anna Maxwell Martin), and father, Colin (Daniel Mays), who
nonetheless welcome them in.
9/28-9/30, Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 312-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.
Cardboard Gangsters ★★ Directed by Mark O’Connor. 92 min. Sat 9/29, 8 PM.
Covadonga ★ Directed by Sean Hartofilis. 71 min. Fri 9/28, 8:15 PM.
Mother’s Day ★★★ Directed by Fergus O’Brien. 90 min. Sun 9/30, 5 PM.
