Town of Strangers

Town of Strangers, executive produced by Joshua Oppenheimer, directed by award-winning Irish filmmaker Treasa O’Brien is a ‘hybrid’ feature film using auditions, observational documentary and magical realism.
It is a documentary of the imagination, with many scenes transcending the genres of documentary and fiction, going deep into the experience of migration and home through cinematic methods.

82 mins cert 12A

Special Preview and Q&A with director at Bertha Dochouse, Frii 13th Jan, 18:20

Director to Director Conversation at the ICA, Sun 1th Jan, 18:45

Week starting 10th Feb

Week starting 17th Feb

From 24th Feb

Treasa O’Brien is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and visual artist.  She has made several short films, and two feature-length films including Eat Your Children (2015), and Town of Strangers (2021), a documentary of the imagination.  Her films have travelled internationally in festivals and gallery exhibitions in New York, Australia, Greece, Palestine, Italy, France and Germany including the Berlinale, London Film Festival, Athens Ethnographic Festival.  The influences in Treasa’s work come from a deep engagement with activist social politics, psychology and philosophy as well as art, literature, and cinema.  She makes fiction, documentary and experimental film works, but is most interested when these distinctions collapse.

Treasa was born in Ireland and originally went to art college.  She lived in London for several years, where she studied film directing at Goldsmiths, gaining a MA honours with her award winning short fiction film N25, set on a London nightbus.  She completed a PhD in Film Practice at University of Westminster where she worked on the film Town of Strangers with Joshua Oppenheimer and May Ingawanij as her supervisors.  Much of her formal teaching was undone when she participated in Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School in New Jersey.  She walked from New York to New Jersey in a heatwave to attend the school, making an essay film along her way, in which Herzog appears at the end.

Treasa teaches, writes and curates on art and film and has been published widely.  She was Executive Director of Open City Documentary Festival 2012-14 and was part of the curatorial ‘gang’ of London Essay Film Festival from 2014-2018.  She now lives in the west of Ireland between the woods and the sea and teaches film practice at Galway Atlantic Technological University.

Filmography

TOWN OF STRANGERS / 82mins / Ireland / 2021 / Writer-Director

MEASURES EXTENDED (FLATTENING THE C-WORD) / 4mins / Ireland / 2020 / Writer-Director

MEMOIRS OF A SPACEMOTHER / 14mins / Ireland / 2019 / Writer-Director

THE BLOW-IN / HDV Cinemascope / 9mins / 2016 / Writer-Director

VIKINGS / HDV / 10 mins / 2016 / Director, Editor

NOOR AT MYTILINI PORT / HDV / 6mins / Greece / 2016/ Director, Editor

INTERVIEW WITH JOSHUA OPPENHEIMER / 25mins / 2016 / Director of Video interview for DVD Joshua Oppenheimer Early Works, produced by Second Run

EAT YOUR CHILDREN / HDV / 78 mins / 2015/ Writer & Co-director

SPIRIT OF SHUHADA STREET / HDV / 70mins / 2011/ Writer-Director, Editor

TURNIP STORY / SUPER-8, transferred to HDV / 10mins / 2011/ Director, Editor

ROGUE WALK: REVELATIONS ON THE ROAD TO HERZOG / DV / 35mins / 2011 Writer-Director

CROSS YOUR FINGERS / HDV / 17 mins / 2011, Script Editor (Dir. Yun-joo Chang)

N25 / 16mm / produced by Full House Films, 2010/ Director

FILTHY / 16mm / Full House Films / 2009/ Writer-Director

THE INVENTION / HDV gallery installation / 2009/ Director, Editor

BORDERBALL / DV gallery installation, in collaboration with Einat Amir / 2008 Director, Editor

MOSQUITO BITES / DV /2007 / 10mins / Director, Camera

★★★★
"Wonderful...Irish film-maker Treas O'Brien has created a valuable and empathic documentary essay project about history, memory and community. It is executive produced by The Act of Killing's Joshua Oppenheimer, whose influence is detectable...
This film is an invigorating, refreshing experience."
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

★★★★
"A thoughtful and manifold musing on versions of home, and on filmmakin itself.  It lingers in the memory."
Saskia Lloyd Gaiger, Little White Lies

★★★★
“A nuanced portrait of what “home” means, where a sense of displacement can co-exist with a sense of belonging.”
Matt Looker, TOTAL FILM

“Refreshing....With the state of the world in the way that it is right now with many divides between race, gender, sexuality and even age, O’Brien’s documentary brings everything down to a human level and celebrates our commonality rather than our differences.”
Joel Fisher, BRWC

"You cannot help but be compelled by these strangers and their life stories, and also O’Brien herself who becomes part of this surreal documentary that explores both immigration and austerity in a unique and refreshing way.”
Maria Duarte, MORNING STAR

★★★★
"A fascinating hybrid of fact and fiction...
Delightful and sincere entertainment
A charming, beautifully composed piece
Donald Clarke, The Irish Times

"There is no doubt that Treasa O'Brien is that rare and precious thing, an activist film-maker. And given today's Ireland, with its resurgent far right, you can only root for the success of this remarkable and creative ambition."
Angus Reid, The Morning Star interview with director (see Links section)

Absolutely beautiful.
“Really stopped me in my tracks”
“Extraordinary” 
Seán Rocks, Arena, RTÉ Radio 1

This documentary offers a sensitive and engaging depiction of human connection, with all its fragilities, and, in doing so, Beautifully reflects on contemporary rural Ireland."
Loretaa Goff, Film Ireland Magazine

"The most interesting thing I have seen on the big screen resently... Too many documentaries you see now are exploitative or sensationalist.  Town of Strangers, on the other hand, was complex and unresolved mysterious and restrained, just like most real people."
Alice Maher, RTÉ Something for the Weekend

"A tenderly told story of different people and different lives."
Esther McCarthy, Sunday World

"A distinctive film that is both wonderfully offbeat and thoughtful.
Don O'Mahony, Cork Film Festival

For film bookings please contact Colin Burch at Verve Pictures — [email protected]. Press resources are on the Press page.