Into the West

A story of two children and a horse, set in Ireland. Ossie and Tito are brothers living with their father in a Dublin housing block. The family are Travellers; after their mother died the father stopped travelling and took to drink. One day their grandfather turns up with a white horse. They name it Tír na nÓg, the land of the ever-young in Irish mythology. The horse rides the lift with the boys and comes into the flat; that scene establishes the film's register. Then the horse is sold to a rich man, and the boys take it back and ride west. Behind them are the police, the newspapers and their father. Underneath the film lies the pressure on travelling communities to settle: the father is running from his own past and the children are calling him back. Gabriel Byrne plays the father and Ellen Barkin his companion on the road. Jim Sheridan wrote the screenplay; Mike Newell directed. A warm and sad choice for anyone who likes family films and Irish cinema. Before you watch, know this: it begins like a children's film but is built on grief and the ending is not light.