In this episode of the Film Ireland Podcast, supported by Coimisiún na Meán, we shine a light on two powerful new documentaries.
Beo Faoin Bhfód (Buried Alive) was supported by Coimisiún na Meán’s Sound & Vision Scheme, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. First, we catch up with director Daire Collins to discuss the film, which recently aired on TG4 and is now available to stream on the TG4 Player.
Then, actor and musician Olivia Phoenix sits down with award-winning photographer and filmmaker Ian Thuillier to talk about his moving documentary Conflicted.
Listen now on SoundCloud, or subscribe to Film Ireland wherever you get your podcasts.
Daire Collins
Daire is an Irish documentary filmmaker and animator whose work explores humanity’s enduring fascination with legacy. Before moving into creative documentaries, he worked as a multimedia journalist for major international outlets including Channel 4 News, BBC, HuffPost and AJ+. Daire’s shift into creative filmmaking began in 2020, just as the world shut down. That year he directed his first creative short documentary, For Emergency Use Only, for The New Yorker magazine. Inspired by a childhood experience that echoed the collective fear of the pandemic, the film premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh in 2021.
In the years that followed, Daire undertook a self-taught crash course in cinema, supported by several acclaimed development schemes. He was selected for the Documentary Campus Masterschool in 2022 and has pitched his feature projects at the Galway Film Fleadh, Docs Ireland and DOK Leipzig. In 2024, Daire directed Beo Faoin Bhfód. Supported by TG4 and Coimisiún na Meán, the film premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh before screening at the Irish Film Institute Documentary Festival, OFFline Film Festival, IndieCork and KIFF, culminating in a television broadcast in November 2025.
His debut feature film, The Fool or The Holyman - a Swiss-Irish co-production - begins production in May 2025. His second feature documentary, The Sperm King, is currently in development; supported by Screen Ireland, it was showcased at several festivals throughout 2024. In 2025, Daire founded Paper Mountain Films Ltd, a production company dedicated to developing his own creative work. Paper Mountain also operates in the commercial and branded content space, bringing a distinctively empathetic, documentary-led approach to every project.
Ian Thuillier
Ian is an award winning photographer and documentary maker based in Bray, Co. Wicklow. Past documentaries include Ladies and Gentlemen, Gavin Friday and Ghost Blues – The Rory Gallagher Story. Both documentaries include interviews by Ian with Edge and Bono of U2, Johnny Marr, Slash and Bob Geldof to name but a few. His 2003 debut documentary Darkroom about his late brother, the fine art photographer Harry Thuillier Jnr, won best documentary at the Boston Irish Film Festival and Ian was also nominated for an IFTA award for Best New Talent.
His recent short film called Driven was selected for the Cork Independent Film Festival, IndieLisboa 2014 and Glasgow Short Film Festival. Driven also won an Honourable Mention Award at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival. 2013 saw Thuillier travel to Cambodia and Thailand where he made a photographic study of the Monks of Angkor Wat and the Sea Gypsies of southern Thailand.
2015 saw Thuillier selected from over 100,000 photographers worldwide for the finals of the Sony World Photography awards. He also spent seven months in Asia on a photographic journey which resulted in the highly acclaimed photographic exhibition in Dublin called Vietnam 40, and he also released a book of the same title, which captured the people and landscape of Vietnam forty years after the war. A selection of his photographic work can be seen at www.ianthuillierphotography.com