Join us on Sunday 20 March, 5.30pm for a relaxed afternoon after the festivities of St Patrick’s Day. The Tricycle is delighted to welcome Irish Director Ken Wardrop for an exclusive Q&A alongside a special screening of one of the most successful Irish films of recent times. Book here

Featured in The Irish World (12 March 2011) read Ken Wardrop’s interview on making his award-winning film.

How did the idea for ‘His And Hers’ come to you?

This is one of the toughest questions to answer in relation to our film “His & Hers”. There was no one eureka moment that inspired the idea behind this film. Rather it was a combination of moments and considerations.

Back in 2008 I attended the Irish Film Board’s Catalyst workshop for low-budget filmmaking. This was perfect timing, as my producing colleague Andrew Freedman and I were hoping to make our first feature length film. Our experience to-date had been in short form documentaries and it felt appropriate that our next move should be a long form documentary.

This coincided with being at that age where all my friends were getting married and making those serious life long commitments. I however was very happy single and of course would cynically question my friends’ life choices. I saw the potential in this as idea to investigate in a documentary.

With this in mind, I decided to consider my Mum’s story as a way to create a narrative. She married her childhood sweetheart and they spent a happy life together until my father died prematurely from cancer in his early sixties. I then considered telling this narrative using ordinary stories from characters at varying stages of life. From these “ordinary” stories I hoped to create a composite of an “extraordinary” story of sharing life’s journey. (more…)