Whether above a pub, beside the sea or within the walls of a castle, the homes of childhood remain with us long after we leave them.
In the reflective short documentary Home, Irish director Aoife Kelleher journeys across Ireland to ask how the places where we grow up shape who we become. Through the memories of people from varied backgrounds — including a Zimbabwean immigrant, an artist raised above a busy pub, a fisherman’s daughter and an heir to a castle — the film gathers intimate stories that speak to Ireland’s layered history, class divisions, migrations and traditions.
Kelleher pairs these voices with carefully composed images of childhood spaces: rooms, doorways, coastlines, streets and buildings that seem to hold traces of the lives once lived inside them. Accompanied by a delicate piano-and-strings score, Home becomes a quiet meditation on belonging, memory and emotional inheritance. It asks how a place can be shaped by love, absence, hardship or care — and how it can call us back, even when it has also taught us to leave.
Director: Aoife Kelleher
Producer: Rachel Lysaght
Website: Screen Ireland
