The Quiet Girl

Cáit is a nine year-old girl from an overcrowded and impoverished family in rural Ireland. Quietly struggling at school and at home, she has learned to hide in plain sight from those around her. As summer arrives, Cáit is sent to live with distant relatives, farming people, like her own, but hard-working and wanting for nothing. She slowly blossoms and discovers a new way of living, but in this house where affection grows and there are meant to be no secrets, Cáit discovers one painful truth.

A tender coming-of-age story from writer-director Colm Bairéad and introducing the astonishing Catherine Clinch in her debut performance, The Quiet Girl is one of the most acclaimed and moving films of the year, nominated for an International Film Academy Award and winner of seven Irish Film and Television Awards including Best Film. Adapted from the novella, Foster, by Claire Keegan.

Through heart-wrenching, nuanced and arresting performances by Clinch, Crowley and Bennett, The Quiet Girl technically lives up to its name, but speaks volumes about the transformative power of what it means to be loved. Anne T. Donahue/Globe & Mail

A genuine work of art by a genuinely empathetic artist, and one of the single most moving, heartfelt, and heartbreaking movies from any country in the last decade. That only sounds like hyperbole until you see it. David Fear/Rolling Stone

The Quiet Girl is a small gem of a film. The acting is excellent and the simple but affecting story, with its setting of a lush green and surprisingly sunny Ireland, packs an emotional wallop. David Stratton/The Australian