In 2004, Naomi Sheridan was nominated for an Academy Award at the 76th Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay. An accomplished writer and director, she has since written and directed three award-winning short films. Her most recent, KiKi (Screen Ireland/Virgin Media Discoveries), was Academy Award-longlisted and went on to win the prestigious Cleveland International Film Festival.
Now, with her feature screenplay Racing Time, Naomi has reached the finals of the Austin Film Festival, widely regarded as the “writers’ festival” and one of the most prestigious festivals in the world. Her script was selected from more than 12,500 submissions, an extraordinary achievement.
Emma Donnelly sits down with Naomi to discuss her beautiful screenplay, the inspiration behind the project and what she hopes the future holds for Racing Time.
What is the name of your script, and what is it about?
My script is called Racing Time. It's about a boy, Finn, from Darndale who has a horse called Enbarr. Finn is dealing with a lot of personal challenges. As a kid with a Nigerian father and an Irish mother, he often feels out of place and has to deal with bullying at school and in his neighbourhood.
He is struggling to deal with the recent death of his father. The thing that keeps him going is the love he has for Enbarr. His horse is named after the Irish God of the Sea's horse, and Finn feels that Enbarr is magical. He feels that with Enbarr at his side, he can get through anything, but his world is shattered when someone calls the council and they confiscate the horse.
Finn is then presented with a huge dilemma – pay a 700 euro fine in five days or Enbarr will be euthanised. He sets out to raise the money, and while there are huge challenges and upsets, the journey he takes ultimately brings him closer to his family and also to the community around him.
Austin is renowned as a writers’ festival. Tell me how your script progressed through the stages?
I was notified a few weeks ago that I was a semi-finalist and was really surprised and delighted. Then, a couple of weeks later, I was told that Racing Time had made it to the final. I was very excited and very grateful. It is a film that I have meditated over for a long time. It is a message, I suppose, I would have appreciated as a kid. The world can be isolating, and finding a commonality, a community, can help us through our struggles.
What is your hope for the film now?
The thing that made me really happy about Austin is that there are a lot of international eyes on the script, so I felt that for it to progress, it meant the story resonated with an international audience. It is probably more important now than ever to make uplifting stories, authentic voices that represent the majority.
I am hoping I'll get to make the film within the next year. I'm really grateful that Screen Ireland have supported it for development, and I've done a lot of work on it, so I'm hoping to connect with industry nationally and internationally and go into production soon.
What made you want to write it?
I saw a documentary a few years ago about kids in Darndale and the horses they owned. When I heard that if a horse is confiscated, there's a fine of 700 euro that has to be paid in five days, I couldn't help thinking of how difficult that might be for a kid to raise that amount of money that quickly, especially if their family was struggling financially.
I kept seeing that kid in my head. I kept wondering about how you'd feel if an animal you loved was suddenly gone and what impact that would have on your life. The idea stayed with me for years, and it kept developing in my head until it was ready.
What audience is it for?
I think ultimately this is a feel-good family film. I wanted to make the kind of film you'd watch with the whole family on a Sunday afternoon. I feel we haven't seen a lot of those films lately, and I would like to change that. I want to make something that takes you on a journey of emotions, something that makes you laugh and cry, but also something that gives you hope. I do feel that, given everything that's going on in the world, we need stories that bring us together and perhaps even hark back to films we would have seen and loved in our childhoods.
Why do you think it's important?
I think it's important because I think we need to see more representations of working-class communities in Ireland, but more importantly, positive stories about those communities. My family is all from the north inner-city, and I grew up in Ballybough, so I really want to tell stories about communities we don’t often see on screen. It is also my intention to cast actors from these areas. There are so many talented and amazing working-class actors in Ireland, and we are not seeing enough of them on our screens.
What's next on the agenda – what else are you developing at the moment?
At the moment, I'm working on a horror film I'm hoping to direct soon, and I'm also working on a TV series I created called Showstopper. I have a ton of ideas. I write every day, but I can’t wait to get back into production, work with actors, HODs, creative producers. There is nothing as fulfilling as sharing your vision with like-minded people and watching it come to life. We are so lucky to have such incredible talent here, discovered and undiscovered. We need to push hard and get more authentic Irish stories over the line and give opportunity to the talented filmmakers who support the industry so much.
Naomi Sheridan
Naomi Sheridan is an award-winning screenwriter and director with extensive experience across film and television, working in a wide range of genres. One of her first screenplays was In America, which she co-wrote with her father and sister. The film received nominations for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a Writers Guild of America Award and a Humanitas Award, and went on to win the Critics Choice Award and the National Board of Review Award. Since then, Naomi has written teleplays and screenplays for Paramount, NBCUniversal, Tribeca Films, Disney and Element Pictures. She has created a television series for NBC and recently developed In America as a series for HBO. She holds a Master’s degree in Screenwriting for Film and Television from IADT and has recently completed an MPhil in Film Theory and History at Trinity College Dublin. Naomi is currently developing her television series Showstopper, with the support of Screen Ireland and Four Quadrant Films. Alongside her writing work, she has directed three short films, one of which was selected for RTÉ's Shortscreen.
