Fréwaka (2025)

In 1973, a young woman named Peig is at her wedding when strange guests in straw masks arrive. She walks away from the party, follows a goat into the fields and disappears, leaving her ring behind. In the present, a woman, Shoo's mother, takes her own life.

Shoo (Siobhán) and her pregnant partner Mila clear out her mother's flat. Shoo seems emotionally cut off, but is unsettled by a red cross image. She takes a job as a live-in carer for Peig, an old woman recovering from a stroke in a small Irish village. The locals are unhelpful and seem to want Shoo to stay away.

Peig is paranoid. She believes "them", the fairy folk, are listening from beneath the house. She covers the mirrors and keeps a horseshoe on the red door to the basement. She tells Shoo that "they" took her from her wedding long ago, leaving scars on her back. Shoo shares memories of a cruel childhood, when her mother locked her in a cupboard and forced her to pray.

Shoo opens the red door and becomes trapped in the basement, where she sees a woman in a stained wedding dress, like the one her mother died in. Mila sends Shoo a box of her mother's things, including that dress. Shoo begins taking Peig's medication, and Peig, furious that she opened the door, wants her gone. Then Peig finds a document that reveals the truth: she is Shoo's grandmother. Long ago, she gave her baby daughter, Shoo's mother, away to protect her from "them". Now "they" have come for the next woman in the family line.

Shoo starts to share Peig's terror, seeing the goat and men in straw masks hunting her. She hears Mila calling for help and finds Mila's car outside. Searching the underground space, she finds a white wedding dress and a ring matching the one Peig left behind. Peig is found dead in the basement, having taken her own life. Shoo climbs a hill, where a masked woman places a crown on her head, while a horned figure watches from a nearby hill. Shoo's eyes begin to bleed.

Who are "they" in Fréwaka? The fairy folk of Irish legend, known as the Sídhe. Old stories say they steal brides and young women away. Peig believes they took her from her wedding in 1973.

How are Shoo and Peig connected? Peig is Shoo's grandmother. She gave her baby daughter, Shoo's mother, away to protect her from "them". Shoo did not know this when she took the job.

What happens to Shoo at the end? The film leaves it open. Shoo is crowned as a bride on a hill while a horned figure watches, and her eyes bleed. The most common reading is that she has been taken by "them", just as Peig was, to repeat the family's fate.

Is it real or in her mind? Both readings work. The fairy folk can be real, or they can stand for the trauma and abuse passed from mother to daughter. The film never fully confirms either.

What does the title mean? Fréwaka is an English spelling of the Irish word for "roots". The film is about the roots of trauma in a family, and in Ireland itself.