Iorram, the first cinema documentary entirely in Scottish Gaelic, will have its theatrical world premiere at the Glasgow Film Festival on February 28th 2021, followed by a virtual UK theatrical release from March 5th 2021.
Iorram (Boat Song) is an impressionistic portrait of the Gaelic fishing community in the Outer Hebrides, past and present. The inhabitants of the islands today are observed on land and on water, while the ghostly voices of their ancestors tell stories and sing songs about life at the mercy of the sea. This dialogue between past and present is set to an original score by Aidan O'Rourke of Lau, to create an immersive audience experience.
It's also a love song to a language and culture at risk of extinction within a decade. Once spoken across most of Scotland, Scottish Gaelic has now shrunk to just 11,000 habitual speakers, mainly in the Outer Hebrides, according to a recent study by the University of Highlands & Islands. Yet at the same time, interest in lyrical beauty and cultural value of Scottish Gaelic is booming, with Gaelic schools flourishing in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and more than 560,000 registered learners worldwide signed up to Scottish Gaelic Duolingo.
The fate of Scottish Gaelic language and culture is intertwined with that of the Hebridean fishing community, whose survival is threatened by the shifting tides of Brexit, globalization and climate change.
Iorram brings the beauty and power of Scottish Gaelic to a wider audience, and shows that losing this ancient language and culture will impoverish us all.
It is also a unique cinematic experiment in sound and vision, composed 100% of archive sound recordings of Gaelic speakers in the Outer Hebrides from the 1940s to 1970s, matched with stunning 4k observational footage of island life today, shot by director Alastair Cole over the past three years in all seasons and weathers, on land and on sea. The trailer is at the link.
