Having scripted last year's runaway Irish hit Man About Dog, Pearse Elliott has turned to directing for his latest feature project. James Gracey talks to him about the genesis of The Mighty Celt, working with name actors in West Belfast, and the supreme importance of story.

On the surface, Belfast appears to be a thriving cosmopolitan city full of people getting on with life after thirty years of bloodshed. Yet it isn't hard to see, if one looks closely enough beneath the bustling surface of shiny new buildings and trendy bars, that it is a city still scarred by the past. In the words of one character in Pearse Elliott's film The Mighty Celt, 'people are either victims or survivors'. It is against this backdrop that The Mighty Celt is set: a Belfast in constant metamorphosis; people trying to find their feet and maintain their identity in a constantly changing environment. The Mighty Celt began shooting in Belfast on Monday 17th of May 2004. The film is directed by Pearse Elliott, writer and occasional director of BBC's Pulling Moves. His writing credits include last year's box-office success Man About Dog and A Rap at the Door, a BBC 2 film about the disappeared.

Dogs of war
In The Mighty Celt a young boy from Belfast named Donal (Tyrone McKenna) wants to adopt a greyhound from Good Joe (Ken Stott, Messiah), an unscrupulous local greyhound trainer for whom Donal works after school. Joe makes a deal with the boy: if he can train the greyhound to championship standards, and it wins three races in a row, he can keep it. Gillian Anderson (The House of Mirth, The X-Files) plays Kate, Donal's mother, and Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The Full Monty) plays O, an enigmatic stranger from Kate's past who has reappeared and is trying to re-establish contact with her. The story takes place against the backdrop of West Belfast – post-troubles – and focuses on familial relationships, trust and loss.

The film's original title was Valhalla, the Hall of the Slain in Norse mythology and the final port of call for heroes killed in battle. The featured greyhound was originally called The Mighty Thor, named after the Norse god of Thunder and a character in the comics read by Donal. However, bureaucracy intervened once filming began, and problems with copyright meant that the title of the film had to be changed. The greyhound became The Mighty Celt, consequently giving the film a more Gaelic feel. 'It was the first feature film script that I ever wrote,' claims Pearse. 'A few years ago Paddy Breathnach and Rob Walpole and I were going down to Galway to have a meeting about Man About Dog, and I told them about the first script I'd ever written; they said it was a great story and told me I should go back to it. Funny enough I was just thinking about going back to that script. It kind of went through a few difficulties in 1996 because the ceasefires had just been called and the political connotations here were slightly against it getting made. But with that distance it was able to become what it is now, a post-conflict film.'

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 106.