“I felt like the camera was becoming an extension of the family, an 11th child almost”
– CANNES 2026: The French-Irish documentary-maker explains how he won the trust and captured the private world of a Traveller family living on the outermost margins
A wonderful discovery within the Critics’ Week competition at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, Irish Travellers is Alexander Murphy’s second feature-length documentary after Goodbye Sisters (2025).
Cineuropa: Where does your interest in Irish Travellers come from?
Alexander Murphy: When I first started shooting films, I knew that at a certain point in my life I was going to make a film about Travellers. Firstly because, as a child, I was really shocked by how people hated and rejected that community, despite it being Irish. They were stuck in a reputation for being extremely violent, but when I started to ask questions it turned out people didn’t really know them that much after all. There was this really strange duality: on the one hand, people deeply respected their culture, but, on the other, they absolutely hated the people themselves. I couldn’t work out why, so it was interesting to me. I also really wanted to capture and shoot that really film-friendly setting, because there’s something incredibly powerful about that environment. So I set out to meet them: I travelled all over Ireland to lots of very different Traveller communities. Some lived in extreme poverty, others are incredibly rich. To begin with, it was really difficult, because you can’t just walk into a Traveller camp and introduce yourself. I was lucky enough to know Joseph-Philippe Bevillard, a brilliant photographer who’s been working with Travellers for twelve or so years. He was my way in; sometimes I passed myself off as his son or his assistant. That’s how I managed to gently slip into that world. And I realised something that I wasn’t expecting at all. I thought the people I’d be meeting would be really proud, with a degree of freedom, but they actually seemed suffocated, stuck in a really tight space. Yet they had this extraordinary energy. I realised that if I wanted to make an honest and authentic film about them, I’d need to spend a lot of time with them and care for them deeply. And when I met the O’Reilly family, I totally fell for them. From that point on, I wasn’t making a film about Travellers anymore, I was making a film about that family.
How did you win their trust?
It was one thing to be able to take photos of them or film them from time to time, but being invited inside, talking on a deeper and more honest level was a whole other kettle of fish. I went to see them regularly with shots and photos, and I spent time with them without any cameras. I love that family, and a bond developed between us over time, because I didn’t just go there to take something, I also gave my time. At a certain point, they realised that I was making a film about them because I brought the camera with me every time and did a bit of filming. It happened naturally, but over the long-term. I met them in 2020 and I finished the film in March 2026. The entire film is based on a human relationship. It wasn’t the kind of shoot that lasts a few weeks and then we leave. That’s how I won their trust and captured some sumptuous and honest moments and sequences. Then suddenly they opened up, even though it wasn’t in their DNA to open up or talk about their vulnerability.
The children are central to the film. Was this your plan from the outset or did this approach impose itself during the editing phase?
I wanted to explore this setting through their eyes. Firstly, because the O’Reillys are a Traveller family who are slightly different from the others. They’re on the outermost margins. On the margins of their community and of wider society. That isolated caravan on the side of the road, with an enormous field and lots of children, was almost fairy-tale-esque. That’s why the film’s original title is Tin Castle: in the children’s eyes there’s nothing miserable about that space. Their perspective also helped me to maintain a certain degree of modesty, because I didn’t want to disclose everything about their lives. We talk about a lot of different things in the film, but we never reveal any details or the family’s secrets. The children feel a certain sense of tension, they know that something’s going on, but they don’t properly understand everything what exactly. I thought that was a good base. And more than anything, I loved spending time with them, and I felt like the camera was becoming an extension of the family, like an 11th child almost. And the children actually play with the camera. It exists.
What were your main intentions for the film’s mise en scène ?
I almost wanted the film to be like a family video, a home movie. We don’t know the Traveller people and I thought that the best way to get to know them would be in this intimate space. And these people are totally remarkable, visually speaking, just like the place where they live, so I didn’t have to do much to get good images. But I also wanted to introduce occasional dreamlike interludes, little moments of escape. It’s anchored in reality and then, all of a sudden, we drift off for a time, before coming back to it.
And the different chapters in the film?
It’s a kind of game, like the slightly unreal feeling you get when you open up a book of fairy tales: that caravan in the middle of nowhere, on the side of a road, cut off from the rest of the world, with that motorway alongside it… It also helped me to incorporate ellipses, because I shot for a very long time and I also wanted to paint a portrait of Ireland and show the changing seasons.
How did the O’Reilly family react when they saw the film?
We hired a room in a cinema. It was the first time they’d ever been to the cinema. So it was a big moment for everyone. They were worried because they were afraid they’d been portrayed in the usual way Travellers are shown on TV, with a focus on miserabilism or clichés. Obviously, they didn’t say anything to me at the end of the screening, as it’s not their style to reveal anything. But I did see pride in their eyes. They thought they looked good. I was really moved because they see themselves for what they’re really worth, whereas society always pushes them into a box.
(Translated from French)
