An intimate portrait of a resilient and spirited young girl and her proud and dignified family, who are part of Ireland's "traveller" community.An intimate portrait of a resilient and spirited young girl and her proud and dignified family, who are part of Ireland's "traveller" community.An intimate portrait of a resilient and spirited young girl and her proud and dignified family, who are part of Ireland's "traveller" community.
- Awards
- 6 wins & 5 nominations
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- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
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- TriviaAlso selected for the following film festivals:
- Galway Film Fleadh (2005) Best Feature Film Award
- Venice Film Festival/ Critic's Week (Sept. 2005)
- Leeds Film Festival (2005)
- Festival Cine de Gijon (2005)
- Mannheim Film Festival (2005) (Rainer Werner Fassbinder Prize/The Ecumenical Jury Prize)
- Thessaloniki International Film Festival (Nov. 2005)
- London Film Festival (2005)
- 35th New Directors New Films Festival (New York 2006)
- Buenos Aires 8th International Festival of Independent Films (Argentina,2006)
- Indie Lisboa (Portugal, 2006)
- SoundtracksBecause the Night
Written by Bruce Springsteen & Patti Smith
Performed by Jan Wayne
Produced by Achim Jannsen & Jan Wayne at Studio 14, Hamburg
Published by Bruce Springsteen Music/Zomba Music Publishers Ltd.
Copyright 2002 Product Recordings/Incentive Music Limited
Under exclusive license from Kontor Records GmbH.
Licensed Courtesy of Incentive Music Limited
Featured review
Lack of budget is no excuse for lack of structure
Let me say, straight away, that I am always suspicious of films that set themselves among the most under-privileged. There seems, for the most part some element of directors gazing down with virtuous intent from a great height onto these poor sods.
Pavee Lackeen suffers less than most from this syndrome, but it falls into the trap of thinking that a slice of life is the same thing as a slice of cinema. It isn't.
Two things stick out like a sore thumb in this film. The first is that it has no dramatic structure. We join the family of travellers on whom it focuses at, apparently, some random moment, some things happen, and then we leave them at another apparently equally random moment. On the way, have we seen character development? No. Have we been given any insight into the human psyche? No.
What we have had is a glimpse into the life of a young traveller girl, who is full of fun and life, and has lots of problems. We are sorry for her (we were probably that within five minutes of the start). We have learnt a few things about the way that travellers live in outer Dublin - but less than we might have by reading a well-written newspaper article.
At the screening I attended, the director, a nice man and former still photographer, declared himself to be in the line of film-making that came from Alan Clarke and early Ken Loach - that later Loach films, he thought, were too contrived. Hmmm. Yes. That says it all.
Here we have a naive belief that to film 'reality' without interference is art if that reality features the under-privileged. It isn't.
The director pointed out that it was shot on a minuscule budget (£320,000) - and, in fairness, he wasn't saying that this meant we had to make allowances.
It would be my belief that one of the most important things in a film is what is taken out. I don't mean edited. I mean that as much of what we see must be expressive and not confuse the viewer as to what each shot is about. Here, everything is cluttered and unstructured. I am not looking for 'beautiful squalor', but I am looking for some obvious attempt by the filmmakers to direct my eyes in a particular direction. I don't see it.
The 'acting' by these mainly non-professionals is fine. The archetypes created as characters are fine. But there is no structure and no visual strategy... that is, until the last shot, when the camera which has been jiggling about like a yo-yo for the rest of the film, is allowed to come to rest and in a single shot, say more about the plight of the characters than the previous 90 minutes - and for the first time, it uses non-diegetic music!! Great!
Pavee Lackeen suffers less than most from this syndrome, but it falls into the trap of thinking that a slice of life is the same thing as a slice of cinema. It isn't.
Two things stick out like a sore thumb in this film. The first is that it has no dramatic structure. We join the family of travellers on whom it focuses at, apparently, some random moment, some things happen, and then we leave them at another apparently equally random moment. On the way, have we seen character development? No. Have we been given any insight into the human psyche? No.
What we have had is a glimpse into the life of a young traveller girl, who is full of fun and life, and has lots of problems. We are sorry for her (we were probably that within five minutes of the start). We have learnt a few things about the way that travellers live in outer Dublin - but less than we might have by reading a well-written newspaper article.
At the screening I attended, the director, a nice man and former still photographer, declared himself to be in the line of film-making that came from Alan Clarke and early Ken Loach - that later Loach films, he thought, were too contrived. Hmmm. Yes. That says it all.
Here we have a naive belief that to film 'reality' without interference is art if that reality features the under-privileged. It isn't.
The director pointed out that it was shot on a minuscule budget (£320,000) - and, in fairness, he wasn't saying that this meant we had to make allowances.
It would be my belief that one of the most important things in a film is what is taken out. I don't mean edited. I mean that as much of what we see must be expressive and not confuse the viewer as to what each shot is about. Here, everything is cluttered and unstructured. I am not looking for 'beautiful squalor', but I am looking for some obvious attempt by the filmmakers to direct my eyes in a particular direction. I don't see it.
The 'acting' by these mainly non-professionals is fine. The archetypes created as characters are fine. But there is no structure and no visual strategy... that is, until the last shot, when the camera which has been jiggling about like a yo-yo for the rest of the film, is allowed to come to rest and in a single shot, say more about the plight of the characters than the previous 90 minutes - and for the first time, it uses non-diegetic music!! Great!
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- Balthazar-5
- Jan 21, 2006
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- Flickan i husvagnen
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- Runtime1 hour 28 minutes
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Top Gap
By what name was Pavee Lackeen: The Traveller Girl (2005) officially released in Canada in English?
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