The latest by powerhouse artist-filmmaker duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor picks up a thread from their last film THE FUTURE TENSE, a soulful investigation of Ireland’s tumultuous history. Here, using the form of a heist movie, they tell the true story of Rose Dugdale (played by Imogen Poots), a young heiress who rebelled against her English aristocratic upbringing to volunteer with the Irish Republican Army. In 1974, Dugdale and her collaborators swiped 19 paintings—including Rubens, Goya, and Vermeer—from a private home, using these treasures as leverage for the liberation of four IRA prisoners. Lawlor and Molloy’s highly atmospheric thriller plunges us into the Troubles with heart-stopping intensity, and Poots is riveting as the revolutionary. Beneath her radical facade, we see her fragility and inner turmoil, as she wrestles with appreciation for the beautiful artifacts of a world she has set out to destroy, and the fear of the chaos she has unleashed.
Brilliant but emotionally guarded Caro Drake arrives in Oxford with the singular goal of attaining her PhD - but through a turbulent friendship with a charming young man, Caro begins to open herself up to mystery, vulnerability, and love.