Deadline has launched its Local to Global series in Dublin, Ireland, which kicked off with a host of top Irish screenwriters who discussed their work, their processes and the shape of the current film and TV landscape on the Emerald Isle. The inaugural edition, which was held in association with Screen Ireland and filmed on the eve of Element Pictures’ third screenwriting festival Storyhouse, brought together writer-director Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother), screenwriter Thomas Martin (The Surfer), screenwriter-playwright Nancy Harris (The Dry), screenwriter-showrunner Peter McKenna (Kin), screenwriter Cara Loftus (Spilt Milk) and writer-director Colm Bairéad (The Quiet Girl).
Harris, whose award-winning Irish series The Dry has just aired its third and final season in the country, reflected on returning to Ireland for the show. “Because a lot of my start was in London, it was interesting to me how coming back and setting something in Dublin was so freeing because it was second nature,” she said. “I understood the humor and I felt like I knew the world on a really naturalistic, gritty, detailed emotional level. And it just felt free because it felt like home.”
Dolan, who recently wrapped M3GAN spinoff Soulm8te with Blumhouse, touched on how she leaned on Irish changeling folklore for her debut feature You Are Not My Mother, which premiered at TIFF Midnight Madness in 2021.
“As an artist when you’re making, creating and writing, you can’t really escape your own identity,” she said. “The reason you make art is to explore things about yourself but also explore things about people and your culture. I think, as Irish people, we’re probably drawn to look at our histories and our culture. You Are Not My Mother was about how, about how, in Ireland, we bury secrets and we try not to address things that should be talked about openly and expressed and how that changes generationally.”
Loftus is coming off the back of writing her first feature Split Milk, which is set in the 1980s and sees an 11-year-old boy dream of becoming a great detective like his TV hero Kojak. She said that her background in documentaries and research played a pivotal role in telling that story.
“Looking at the past and looking at patterns that tend to repeat themselves across history, across Irish history, was really important to me,” she said. “Also, I had big questions about community and individualism in Ireland and how you find community and where you can find that. That all played a big part in Spilt Milk as well.”
Martin, who wrote Nicolas Cage starrer The Surfer, which premiered in Cannes 2024, admitted that even while shooting that film in Australia, he was able to draw upon his Irish heritage. “It was a space where you could tell things that were emotionally true to me from here about violence, community and masculinity and the things that I’ve experienced from where I grew up in Ireland, but in a safer way, where I was free to tell an Irish story without it being an Irish story and there was an emotional truth about it.”
Martin also revealed that he is currently adapting a novella by Jo Nesbø, dubbed The Cicadas, which is being financed by Closer Media. “It’s a sunshine noir thriller set in San Sebastian and Pamplona with some surfing in it,” he said.
Bairéad’s Irish-language feature The Quiet Girl was nominated for an International Feature Oscar in 2023 and when the writer-director was pressed about his writing process, he said: “When I’m at the genesis stage of an idea, it’s sort of visual thing. I always imagine like a medium close-up from behind the protagonist and it’s moving and I’m following this person, but I can’t actually see their face. For me, the whole process of writing is moving the camera around and seeing into the face of the character and into the eyes of the character. That to me, is the visual metaphor that I always have when I sit down to write.”
Kin writer and showrunner McKenna noted the change in the landscape of Irish TV since the rise of the streamers. He said that while there was “much more room” for work to travel globally, the captive audience is no longer there, and everyone is “competing on a much broader stage”.
McKenna added that successful writing has to have a “unique sense of place” and he feels a lot of work that comes out of Ireland “has a very strong sense of place and the themes that they deal with are quite universal.”
Check out the video above.
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Cara Loftus - Screenwriter Cara Loftus is an IFTA nominated screenwriter and Screen International Rising Star. Her debut feature film SPILT MILK (2024) had its Irish premiere at Dublin International Film Festival where Cara won the DIFF Discovery Award. SPILT MILK won four audience awards and a jury prize during its festival run and was nominated for four IFTA’s including Best Script and Best Film. For television, Cara wrote the third episode of HIDDEN ASSETS Season 3 and was subsequently nominated for an IFTA for Best Drama Script. Her upcoming work includes two episodes of THE HARDACRES Season 2 which will broadcast later this year.
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Kate Dolan - Writer/Director Kate is a Writer / Director hailing from Dublin. After cutting her teeth with no-budget shorts and music videos, she achieved recognition for her horror short Catcalls in 2018. Her debut feature, You Are Not My Mother premiered at TIFF Midnight Madness in 2021 - the film enjoyed a successful festival run that culminated in six IFTA nominations, including Best Director and Best Screenplay. Since then, Kate has directed episodes of the AMC/RTE TV crime drama KIN and the BBC thriller The Tourist. Her second feature film Soulm8te is due for release in 2026, produced by Blumhouse and Atomic Monster for Universal Pictures.
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Colm Bairéad - Writer/Director Colm is a writer-director with a diverse filmography in both documentary and narrative film. In 2012, he received a distinction from the Screen Directors’ Guild of Ireland for his “outstanding work as a director in the Irish language”. Colm’s debut narrative feature film An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) became the highest-grossing Irish-language film of all time, winning seven Irish Film and Television Academy awards, receiving two BAFTA nominations (including Best Adapted screenplay) and securing an Academy Award nomination for International Feature Film.
Thomas Martin - Screenwriter Thomas Martin is an Irish screenwriter. He wrote The Surfer, starring Nicolas Cage, which premiered in the Midnight Screenings section of The Cannes Film Festival in 2024. He has written for many international TV dramas including Prime Target for Apple TV+, Tin Star for Sky, and Ripper Street for the BBC. He is currently adapting a Jo Nesbo novella for Closer Media. He is represented by Curtis Brown, Black Bear, Brillstein Entertainment Partners, and Ziffren Brittenham LLP.
Garry Carbon, courtesy of the BFI London Film Festival
Nancy Harris - Screenwriter Nancy Harris is an award winning screenwriter from Dublin who lives in London. Nancy is the creator and writer of the IFTA and BAFTA nominated comedy/drama series The Dry. An 8 x 30’ series directed by Paddy Breathnach and starring an ensemble cast including Roisin Gallagher, Pom Boyd, Siobhan Cullen and Ciaran Hinds. The third series is currently airing on RTE and will air internationally later this year. Nancy was BAFTA nominated in the Writer: Comedy Category for The Dry in 2023. Nancy’s first tv credit was writing the final episode of the hit TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, starring Billie Piper. She wrote two episodes of the series Dates for Balloon/C4, directed by Charles Sturridge and starring Sheridan Smith for which she was nominated for a BAFTA Breakthrough Talent Award. Nancy also writes extensively for theatre. Plays include: Somewhere Out There You (Abbey), Two Ladies (Bridge), The Beacon (Druid, Gate, Irish Rep), Our New Girl (Bush, Atlantic, Lyric Belfast) and No Romance (Abbey). She wrote the book and co-wrote the lyrics (with composer Marc Teitler) for the musical based on Kate DiCamillo’s The Magician’s Elephant. She adapted Hans Christian Andersen’s dark fairy-tale The Red Shoes (Gate, RSC) and The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy (Gate, La Mama). Nancy also wrote the book for Baddies the Musical, and a new version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes for children, The Man With The Disturbingly Smelly Foot (Unicorn). Nancy is a past recipient of The Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and the Stewart Parker Award and has been a finalist for The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Nancy Harris is represented by Frances Arnold.
Peter McKenna - Screenwriter / Showrunner Peter McKenna is a leading Irish writer and producer, best known for creating and Showrunning the critically acclaimed crime drama Kin (RTÉ/BBC/AMC), which has won eleven Irish Film and Television Awards. Kin won the Best Television Drama and Best Script Awards in both 2024 and 2024. Peter McKenna also created and produced the hugely successful dramas Hidden Assets (RTÉ/Acorn) and Red Rock (BBC/Amazon). From 2015 to 2018, Red Rock won Best Television Drama Series/Soap three times, with Peter earning an additional nomination in 2015 for Best Writer - Soap or Comedy. Peter was also nominated for Best Script for Television for The Clinic in 2009. He is currently writing and executive producing Bad War (Severn Screen/BBC) which will be directed by Welsh director Gareth Evans. Peter was most recently the lead writer and executive producer of Gangs of London Series 3 (Sky/AMC). Further television credits include episodes of Around The World In 80Days (BBC), The Last Kingdom (BBC/Netflix), The Gloaming (Stan/Starz), The Living & The Dead (BBC) and The Musketeers (BBC). In 2018, Peter's genre-breaking episode of Eastenders, incorporating the testimonies of family members of knife crime victims, was awarded a BAFTA.
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