Light Years Away

Jonas is young and has nowhere to be. He cannot hold on to anything in the city. Dublin looks crowded and worn to him. One day he ends up in the country. There he meets an old man. The man has a falling down garage. Rotting cars stand around it. He makes a strange claim. He says the birds taught him to fly. He is building a flying machine. Jonas stays on with him. The old man sets him tasks that never end, and inside those tasks Jonas finds what he was after. Filmed in the west of Ireland and taken from a novel by Daniel Odier, the hundred and seven minute picture stars Trevor Howard and Mick Ford, and took the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1981.