U.S. Premiere

In the town of Mosney on the beautiful Irish coast lies a holiday resort whose glamour and amusement-park atmosphere have long since faded. Today, it houses nearly 800 asylum seekers from around the globe who wait for permission to start their lives over, offering a surreal and incongruous backdrop to their stories. This lyrical and deliberately displacing film captures the irony of a space repurposed and stories of migration put on hold.

Directors Paul Rowley and Nicky Gogan’s approach to storytelling is solemn and innovative. As rolling waves and echoing seagull cries carry away the voices of the past, empty  spaces are revealed.  Mosney seems vacant. Then new voices enter:  voices from interviews with individuals who require anonymity. They are people from Afghanistan, Nigeria, Croatia, Bosnia, Russia and South Africa. They reflect upon the gangs and hired assassins who once threatened their lives. Slowly, faces are aligned with voices. Children dance and play like the Irish vacationers who preceded them. The cafeteria bustles and we meet the hairdresser of the facility.

Yet, while life returns to Mosney, hope is elusive. Acts of pleasure are undermined by uncertainty. SEAVIEW captures the insecurity and fear of the participants through contemplative visual and sound studies of a space without resolve.

—Giovanna Chesler