Hungry Hill

Filmed in and around Hungry Hill, the highest peak in the Caha Mountains on the Beara Peninsula in the southwest of Ireland, Hungry Hill follows the day-to-day lives of a community of sheep farmers who are in perpetual negotiation with the demands of the terrain, changing societal attitudes and the impact of globalisation. Central to the film is the story of three generations of Vanmechelen’s family, who moved to Ireland from the Drowned Land of Saeftinghe in Holland/Belgium in the 1980s. The camera does not focus primarily on humans as central characters in the world but rather on the affective relations between them, the mountain and the animals that live their lives there. The film contains elements of both the personal and the political, speaking directly to the consequences of unhindered industrial expansion and lost tradition from a personal and familial point of view. It presents the real and ever-present struggle for survival, while addressing urgent contemporary concerns regar