Magilligan – Films – Visions du Réel

Ross McClean
United Kingdom, Ireland, United States | 2026 | 73 min
World premiere
Language : English
Subtitles : French, English

Between the all-too-familiar prison walls and his mother's house, Ryan grapples with himself, eventually finding an escape with the sheep in the verdant fields of Northern Ireland. Ross McClean (No Mean City, VdR 2025), whose great-grandfather was also a unionist, offers his protagonist a space for freedom, a friendly and graceful embrace, in which to escape determinism.

Between the all-too-familiar walls of prison and his mother’s home, Ryan grapples with himself, finding an escape by tending sheep in a correctional programme amid the green fields of Northern Ireland. Ross McCLean (No Mean City, VdR 2025) had met his protagonist during a previous project at Hydebank Prison, making an eponymously titled short film with him. Here, he continues his portrait, exploring the role of family and environment as frameworks from which it is difficult to escape. While the filmmaker’s grandfather managed to break free from the controversial Unionist fraternity of the Orange Order, Ryan has inherited the burden of a family history marked by prison and unrest, from which he must now free himself, with all the weight of grief, addiction and the threats that such a past continues to carry. In this poignant film, Ross McLean grants him a space for freedom, a gentle and gracious embrace in which to try to escape determinism.

Émilie Bujès

Magilligan, 2026
No Mean City, 2025
Echo, 2023
Hydebank, 2019