Jesse Gilbert
Writer / Director
Ireland
Jesse Gilbert is an award winning filmmaker from the Beara peninsula in Ireland. His work spans both narrative fiction and documentary, taking inspiration from the landscape and people of his native region. These stories focus upon rural communities and peripheral lives. He has been named an emerging talent by Canon-Nahemi, was shortlisted for the Bingham-Ray new talent award and his screenwriting has been awarded by the Irish Writers Guild. Gleann, his most recent work, is a feature length documentary which offers an intimate portrait of a rural community. He is the current Filmmaker-in-residence in the County of Kerry where he works intergenerationally with those interested in filmmaking.
Project
The Whale
It’s 2005, The Pope is dead, Roy Keane has left Manchester United, and the West coast of Ireland is stumbling into modernity. Corporations have been granted full ownership to the fossil fuels in the Atlantic. The only thing standing in their way are a few remote communities along the ragged coastline. Trafask and Larkin are two of these communities. They sit facing each other across a deep bay and have hated one another for as long as anyone can remember. Sean is 10 years old and trying to stay afloat in a world recently removed of his mother. He lives in silent grief with his father and finds joy in his best friend, Liam. The two boys are inseparable, despite Sean being from Trafask and Liam from Larkin. One day everything changes. On this day, they find a beached whale, a visitor from the sea. As news spreads, competition for its bones ensues. Old rivalries are reignited, distracting from the existential crisis posed by the oil corporation. Under the pressures of this conflict the young friendship is torn apart. Sean must make a choice, learn to hate and become a member of his community or resist and fight for his friendship.
