Christy

Directed by Brendan Canty
Starring: Danny Power, Diarmuid Noyes, Emma Willis
Released 5 September 2025
8/10

“Knocknaheeny rules”, as anyone familiar with the north side of Cork (or its representation in Peter Foott’s film and spin-off sitcom, The Young Offenders), will tell you, are a simplified version of the Queensberry Rules: “if someone dies, no one says who did it”.

This unspoken code seems to govern the life of Christy (Danny Power), a traumatised 17 year old lad growing up in the care system. He barely remembers his mum, who died when he was a kid, his dad isn’t even a rumour, and as we meet him he’s being rescued from his latest foster home by his older brother Shane (Diarmuid Noyes). On the face of it Shane has overcome his own trauma - he’s married with a new baby and a steady career as a painter decorator. But he’s in no position to take on another dependant, and is exasperated by his younger brother, who on the cusp of adulthood, seems part bewildered toddler, part prematurely ruined old man.

Shane reluctantly takes him into his tidy family home which feels like an oasis of calm among the boarded up windows, feral teens, wild ponies and bonfires of North Cork. But only until he can find another foster home - even if that’s on the other side of the country. 

Christy initially comes on like it’s going to be a gritty corrective to the fizzy Beano-meets-Trainspotting larks of The Young Offenders, telling a story of the same lives without the sitcom shenanigans, soundtrack or sunshine (this Cork is more accurately permanently overcast and threatening to tip it down). Days before his 18th birthday, Christy is caught between the overbearing, anxious respectability of Shane, a dismal future in a residential care home, or the wild, reckless freedoms offered by his estranged cousins across town.

But Brendan Canty’s debut feature unfurls into a more complex, surprising and moving film through its feel for the everyday textures of estate life. Christy encounters the bare knuckle fighting and drug gangs that you might expect. But after his talent for haircuts (or “bazzers” - the film is, among other things a crash course in Cork slang) is spotted and he’s offered work as a barber, he also reconnects with the women, old forgotten childminders, who are the enduring lifeblood of the community and reconnect him with memories of his mum.

But the heart of the film are the younger kids, scouring skips to fuel their signature bonfires. Many of the cast here - notably 10 year old rapper Sombrero Girl - may be familiar from last year’s irresistible viral hip hop banger, “The Spark”. Though it by no means shies from the darkness, and doesn’t always avoid the familiar, sentimental beats of the social realist coming-of-age drama, Canty’s film taps into something of their fierce spirit. In his own deadpan way, Christy searches for his spark and he finds it.