After a powerful premiere at Foyle Film Festival, journalist Mark Hernandez catches up with talented filmmaker Seán Treacy about his short Save Me From Heaven. Aged just 21, he is a three-time winner of Young Filmmaker of the Year, won Best Direction at the 2022 All American High School Film Festival in New York City, and was awarded the 2024 Ardmore Studios Recognition Award.
What do you see as being the biggest hurdle for upcoming actors today?
The biggest hurdle is probably exposure. Getting on the right radars as an actor can be really difficult. That’s why a lot of young, up-and-coming actors are now producing their own work that they can star in themselves. If they can get that work into festivals or even just in front of casting directors, the work can be a really great calling card for them. Another issue is scarcity of work, which is a massive reason why I myself wanted to go behind the camera in filmmaking. As a child actor, I just hated how little I would be on set. It would just be a couple of days a year, if I was lucky. I was so jealous of the crew, who got to be on set every moment of the working day. That was all I wanted as a kid, to consistently be a part of that community, making magic.
How was this idea brought to light? Was it a personal story needing telling or what was the process of having this idea made this way?
This concept dates way back to when I was in my early teens, when I first came to terms with the notion of sudden death. This idea that we can be living the adventure of life at an increasing intensity, only for things to suddenly just end. Realising the potential for that to happen was pretty daunting, but it sparked a curiosity surrounding how one might react to that in an afterlife. How does someone first feel in heaven, if they died without any space to process that their death was going to take place? How do they come to terms with that? The idea just evolved from there.
In the credits, it says ‘In loving memory of Julian Benson’. I also noticed Julian’s name as a producer. Can you please tell me what the story is there?
Julian Benson represented me as a writer, director and actor for a number of years. Besides my parents, he was my biggest supporter, my greatest cheerleader. When it came to crowdfunding for Save Me From Heaven, Julian was generous enough to donate €1,000 towards the production of the film, which also officially meant he would be an Associate Producer on the film. During our three-day shoot for the short, Julian actually launched Tranquility House, which is Ireland’s first home-away-from-home for families dealing with Cystic Fibrosis. This was a major project for Julian and it felt rather special that our two biggest pursuits to date occurred at the same time. Just three days before the film’s private cast and crew screening in April, Julian passed away. It only felt right to leave an In Loving Memory note for him at the top of the credits. I hope we made him proud.
While watching this film, the idea of what happens to us after we die is put in a way where computers are in charge of how we deal with the afterlife. Was this a commentary on modern culture or was this another idea?
This element of the film is more of a commentary on how much control humanity wishes to acquire over the things it can’t control by nature alone. If technology enables us to control the afterlife, if it enables us to guarantee the afterlife, would we pursue that? For me, that is a radically interesting world to imagine.
This film has an incredible amount of feeling in the 15 minutes of duration. It had me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what happened and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure out what exactly was happening. What was the hope of this project?
I am delighted to hear that the film translated. For me, the drama at the heart of this story is all that really matters, with the surrounding sci-fi elements hopefully only functioning as bonus aesthetic and stylistic details. As the filmmaker here, all I can hope for is that audiences are engaged with the story, that their curiosity is provoked, and that their disbelief is suspended for the duration of the film’s runtime. Those are obviously the fundamental boxes to tick for audiences, but I don’t take them for granted. If I am to really ambitious, however, I would say that I hope the film provokes a little bit of reflection on the fragility of life, as well as the value of life.
And lastly for now, what was it like making this film? Not the technical aspect but the community around it. It feels like a passion project with very professional presentation.
It was probably the best experience of my life. I am proud of the final product, for sure, but what I really hold close is the production process in making it. The cast and crew were out of this world, they really all bought into the vision, and seemed to be properly excited by it, which is literally the greatest feeling as a writer/director. I think that means a little bit more to me because of my age. I was twenty when the production for Save Me From Heaven took place, and in many cases I was bringing on cast and crew who were light years more experienced than I am. For them to all take the project so seriously really meant the world to me.
Thanks for chatting with us Seán!
About Seán Treacy
Seán is a 21-year-old Irish writer, director and actor, with an education in Film Studies at Trinity College Dublin. With numerous narrative short films under his belt as a writer and director, his achievements include being the first filmmaker to be titled ‘Ireland’s Young Filmmaker of the Year’ on three occasions (2017, 2019, 2022), winning ‘Best Direction’ at the 2022 All American High School Film Festival in New York City and being awarded the 2024 Ardmore Studios Recognition Award. Seán has also directed a number of music videos for up-and-coming international artists, as well as the eight-episode kids’ series Ruck And Roll for Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ. As a young actor, Seán starred in BBC’s Dave Allen At Peace as well as Sky’s Four Kids And It, as well as The CW’s Reign and The History Channel’s Vikings. Recently, Seán starred as Young Oscar in the Dutch-Irish-Belgian co-production Whitetail, which earned an Official Selection at Toronto International Film Festival 2025.
