A WANT IN HER
a film by Myrid Carten
FEATURE PRESENTATION
MAY 31, 2025 • 4:00 PM
@ THE BUS STOP THEATRE
(2203 GOTTINGEN STREET, HALIFAX)
2024 / IRELAND, UK, NETHERLANDS / 81 mins
In English & Irish Gaelic with English subtitles
A Want in Her, the debut feature documentary by Irish artist Myrid Carten, is a fierce, loving family portrait and a cathartic admittance of powerlessness.
A Want in Her centres on Carten’s relationship with her mother, Nuala, and Nuala’s battles with addiction and mental illness, the combination of which often lead to disappearance and devastation.
We meet Nuala as she seeks refuge with her family in a house contested by her feuding brothers, beginning another period of recovery. Familial obligation, the resulting guilt and off-setting of it, and family patterns of mental illness, addiction and avoidance are evocative subjects that Carten expertly explores through thoughtful interviews and revealing home video footage. A Want in Her is a triumphant personal narrative and a refreshing, comforting acknowledgment of the pains and frustrations of loving family we can’t save. —Rebecca Falvey
TRAILER
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Myrid Carten
Myrid Carten is an Irish filmmaker who makes works for cinemas and galleries. She trained in Artists’ Film at Goldsmiths University London and Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, UAL. Her work interrogates both the struggle for intimacy and the ways we are compromised by our pasts. She received the Arts Council of Ireland’s Next Generation Artist Award 2018- 19. Her films have screened internationally and been supported by the BFI, Doc Society, Screen Ireland, NI Screen, New Dawn Fund and the Netherlands Film Fund.