Film Club: Ancestor

What to Expect

Esker Arts screens Ancestor on Tuesday 27 October 2026 at 8pm, a 90-minute film by Dublin choreographer Fiona Quilligan, made in Ireland in 2024. Shot across four segments in Cruagh Woods, County Dublin, the film uses dance and cinematography rather than dialogue to imagine the Neolithic period: how early communities related to the landscape, marked time and season, and carried out burial rites and passage grave construction. Dancers Robyn Byrne, Anderson De Souza, Olwen Grindley, Joshua Scott and Roisin Whelan perform the choreography to a score composed by Ed Bennett, Tom Adams and the Faran Ensemble, so the screening plays as much like a piece of dance theatre captured on film as a conventional documentary or drama. The event is listed on Esker Arts’ own booking system as a members’ event, so it is worth checking membership and booking terms with the box office before turning up. Esker Arts is a member venue of Access>CINEMA, the national body that places festival and independent cinema not otherwise booked into commercial multiplexes into local arts centres, and this screening sits within that occasional cinema strand rather than a weekly programme.

Good to Know

• Date and time: Tuesday 27 October 2026, 8pm
• Venue: Esker Arts, High Street, Tullamore, Co. Offaly
• Price: €7 plus booking fee, listed as a members’ event on Esker Arts’ booking system
• Booking: 057 938 3801, info@eskerarts.ie, or via eskerarts.ie
• Esker Arts opened through a joint project between Offaly County Council, Tullamore Community Arts Centre CLG and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, and runs a wider visual and performance arts programme, including gallery exhibitions and concerts, alongside its occasional film screenings

Getting There

Esker Arts is on High Street in Tullamore town centre, Co. Offaly, R35 NY50, reached through a street-level front entrance with an automated door. There is no on-site car park, but paid public parking with disabled spaces is available nearby. The venue has a wheelchair-accessible auditorium (allocated at booking, first-come first-served), a lift to the upper gallery floors, and accessible ground-floor restrooms; guide and hearing dogs are welcome with advance notice, and anyone with specific access needs can contact the box office in advance.