Silent Roar – from where does your hope come? #bff23

This year’s Belfast Film Festival certainly isn’t afraid to explore faith and spirituality. Silent Roar calls out false spirituality and false hope as it explores a young lad’s grief after his father was lost at sea.

Set in the Outer Hebrides, Dondo (Louis McCartney, Hope Street/BBC) is at one with the water, surfing and searching in the waves off the shoreline. He is convinced by an inner belief – and recurring visions – that his father will return. The level of Dondo’s distress is painful to watch; his confidence on the water only matched by his belief that his father isn’t dead. While he’s falling behind at school, classmate Sas (Ella Lily Hyland, Fifteen Love/Prime Video) effortlessly excels at her studies, winding up the staff, and attracting the eye of young men she has no interest in.

McCartney shines with his moody demeanour and consistently expresses an otherworldliness on screen, what one character describes as being ‘touched’. (While McCartney can surf in real life, there are moments when his island’s accent is a little less convincing.) Hyland delivers a bewitching naughtiness, with comic timing, good eyebrow action, and a warm persona.

The new minister played by Mark Lockyer is a wild-haired firebrand with a past, and his waterproof gift encourages Dondo to explore faith with the fervour of a new recruit. Jesus (Swiss) makes an appearance. So do a trio of other-earthly surfers. Silent Roar is both blasphemous and spiritually accurate, though the Virgin Mary statues adorning the home of Sas’ straightlaced mother (Fiona Bell) feels out of place with the Calvinist free church. The unaccompanied Gaelic psalm singing is an unexpected aural treat.

Silent Roar is simultaneously funny and disturbing. That’s a fine line to tread, but writer/director Johnny Barrington mostly manages to keep his debut feature on a secure course amid the absurdity of the plot.

Hannah Peel’s soundtrack with its sustained brass and playful percussion is unexpected but fitting, and the final credit song Let It Go aptly wraps up the emotion of the film. Jon Frank’s underwater shots melds with Ruben Woodin Dechamps’ cinematography in what must have been blustery and challenging conditions. Taff Williamson must surely win an award for the most lurid colour combination for a school uniform: a yellow and pink school tie, twinned with banana-coloured shirts and blouses. (To be honest, it grew on me as the school term progressed.)

Filmed on the Isle of Lewis, I’d love to be a fly on the wall at a local screening. Silent Roar celebrates island life, recognises that piety can be shallow, and acknowledges that grief is unpredictable. And it’s going to further stoke the fire under the career prospects of Hyland and McCartney. One to catch when it gets a wider release next year.

Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 11 November.

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