‘A Want In Her’ Trailer: First Look At Irish Artist-Filmmaker Myrid Carten’s Feature Debut — IDFA 

EXCLUSIVE: Irish artist Myrid Carten will debut her first feature-length project A Want in Her this month at IDFA. We can share the first official trailer for the film above. 

Described as an “exploration of the messiness of family love,” the film follows Carten as she returns home to find her troubled mother Nuala. Once a successful social worker, Nuala suffered a mental breakdown after the sudden death of her own mother. She shuffles between rehab clinics, psychiatric hospitals, and occasionally the street. When Nuala goes missing somewhere in Ireland, Myrid returns from London to find her and picks up her camera again in response to this new crisis. Home videos from Carten’s childhood and recordings of video installations from her current work as an artist form the film’s hybrid fiction-documentary form. 

The film’s synopsis reads: Her search takes her into a feuding family, a contested house. Intimate, surprising, and often darkly funny conversations with her mother and other family members reveal the trials of loving someone who struggles with addiction and madness. 

A Want in Her was produced by Tadhg O’Sullivan and Roisín Geraghty for Irish production outlet Inland Films in co-production with Kat Mansoor for Snowstorm Productions (UK) and Eline van Wees for Basalt Film (the Netherlands).

“My mother is one of 10 children and they were all big, fascinating characters. I’m an only child and I’ve always thought it would be good to have an archive of their stories from the past,” Carten said in a statement introducing the film. “When my uncle died in 2018, I thought it was the start of something so I should start recording their history as a family, and all the dramas I grew up around. And I was right, that first death had a knock-on effect, because from then on, every six months, basically, another sibling passed away. Six of my mother’s siblings died in those three years. In the middle of this, my mother started to spiral. I think she was affected by the death of her siblings, for sure, but also in that spiraling, she was made homeless. It was the first time she had to go back to the family house to live as an adult.”

Carten added: “The extraordinary thing about people is how they deal with their own hauntedness. More than their skills or their talents, and it’s only when I look at my darkness that I can see other people’s darknesses. I’m not the most public person, but my work is deeply personal and exposing. I suppose I trust people enough that this specific and quite extreme story can be also universal. Many people’s loved ones have struggles, it doesn’t have to be an addiction. And the rage that comes along with that care is universal. I trust that these are feelings that a viewer can share.”

Best known for her moving image works, Carten has had solo shows at Mother’s Tankstation in London and Dublin. Her work is in the Arts Council of Ireland’s and Arts council of Northern Ireland’s national collections.

A Want in Her was supported by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, BFI Doc Society Fund, Northern Ireland Screen, The Netherlands Film Fund and New Dawn Fund and was previously selected at Doc Market (development) – Belfast Film Festival (2019), IDFA Producers Connection (2021), DOK Leipzig Market (2021) and IDFA Project Space (2022).

Check out the trailer above.