Director’s Statement

Turnaround is a story about grief, loss, healing, and hope. It focuses on ordinary women facing extraordinary circumstances, set in a contemporary and authentic Ireland. At its core, Turnaround explores themes of class, economic struggle, and the redemptive power of female friendship. Visually and tonally, I wanted to make a film that would juxtapose the cinematic magnificence of the West of Ireland landscape with an intimate portrayal of the ordinary lives within it.

Across all my work I am drawn to crafting character-driven narratives that highlight seldom-heard voices and offer new perspectives from within our communities in contemporary Ireland. Turnaround was a film that was inspired by a personal story, when someone close to me took on the work as cleaner and keyholder, turning over luxury properties for a largely wealthy, American clientele holidaying in Ireland. I was inspired by the enormously cinematic metaphor of the high-end holiday home ‘turnaround’, wiping the slate clean week after week so that the performance could begin again. 

Tonally and thematically films like Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, and Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland influenced the development of these ideas– character-driven narratives focus on the lives of people within the larger contemporary mechanism and machine. With Turnaround I wanted to thematically explore the contemporary social realities of the people who occupy one of our most cinegenic landscapes- a landscape that is so often performatively packaged by the tourist industry to perpetuate well worn tropes of ‘Irishness’. I wanted to craft a story that shone a light on what I feel bears more resemblance to the real, authentic stories of Irish women– women facing the hardships of economic struggle and displacement– women who could not hope to afford even a single night's accommodation in the property that they clean weekly.

However, Turnaround is less about these divisions and more about what unites us. It’s about women helping women, the universal experience of grief, and the communities formed through shared experience and solidarity.  

In the brief glimpse we are afforded into Ann and Mags relationship we see that it is their friendship that sustains them despite the ardour of their low income day job. The sheer importance of their companionship is highlighted by Mags’s sense of deep loss upon Ann’s passing. Her grief is overwhelming, as now too is the job and that lies ahead without her. When Hana reveals her presence, we realise that Ann’s solidarity and support for women within the wider community was farther reaching than Mags had known. In her initial anger and overwhelming grief; Mags fails at first to realise what she will discover in time- that Hana will ultimately help Mags more than she could ever hope to help her. In their burgeoning friendship - through which we glimpse an insight into the empathy and incredible tenacity of Hana- a young displaced woman who came to Ireland for a protection she has not been afforded- Mags is offered some much needed assistance with the turnaround at hand, but also a brief respite from her own loneliness and an opportunity to begin to heal from her grief and shock at Ann’s passing.

While Mags's situation remains largely unchanged by the film's end, the redemptive power of female friendship, mutual support, and a sense of justice provide a symbolic relief, lightening her load.