Joe Comerford

Directing

Joe Comerford

Born

1947-12-12 (78)

Place of birth

Dublin, Ireland

Known for

Directing

Credits

17 titles

Joe Comerford was born in 1947 in Dublin, Ireland, graduating from the National College of Art and Design in the 1960s. In the 1970s, he began working for RTÉ, Ireland's national broadcaster, where he learned camera operating and general studio production. Two years later, he left RTÉ to make independent films. All his films share a general concern for those on the margins of what was an increasingly-affluent Irish society. His films of the 1970s and 1980s featured dysfunctional familial settings, as analogous to Ireland's political and religious conditions at the time. His early films have been described as challenging to watch, as they often do not follow a linear narrative, but move forw…

Known for

Reefer and the Model poster
5.4

Comerford’s signature sharp realism infuses this drama about Reefer, an ex-IRA man who picks up hitch-hiker Teresa, a pregnant woman trying to overcome a drug addiction. They head to the trawler where he lives with friends Spider and Badger, that operates between Galway and the Aran Islands. The makeshift family are forced to turn to crime to make a living.

Reefer and the Model

1988

Waterbag poster
NR

A precursor to Reefer and the Model, Waterbag involves the relationship between two fishermen and a pregnant woman, and ends with an apparently self-induced miscarriage.

Waterbag

1984

Cinegael Paradiso poster
7.0

Cinegael is an independent cinema set up by filmmaker Bob Quinn in the 1970's, in which his son, the director Robert Quinn, lived as a child. The film focuses on the contribution the cinema made to the cultural life of the community, but also to the Irish film industry itself, acting as a home for, and catalyst to, radical ideas and attitudes within the film industry at the time.

Cinegael Paradiso

2004

Traveller poster
9.0

Reluctantly-married young Irish travellers Michael and Angela head north of the border at the behest of Angela’s father, to smuggle electrical equipment back to resell. Joining up with IRA man Clicky on the way, the ill-matched couple embark on an uneasy journey marked by blood and murder.

Traveller

1981

Roadside poster
NR

Comerford's first digital short which evolved into an installation, is an audacious blur of ugliness and beauty. Drawing on found footage from personal archives, it outlines an encounter between a man and a woman in a stolen car.

Roadside

2008

High Boot Benny poster
8.0

A police informant is found dead in a boarding-school situated near the border between Ulster and Eire. There are three suspects: the protestant school headmistress; Marley, an unfrocked missionary priest; and Benny, a seventeen-year-old criminal who has taken sanctuary in the school...

High Boot Benny

1993

Film credits

Behind the camera

Reefer and the Model poster
5.4

Comerford’s signature sharp realism infuses this drama about Reefer, an ex-IRA man who picks up hitch-hiker Teresa, a pregnant woman trying to overcome a drug addiction. They head to the trawler where he lives with friends Spider and Badger, that operates between Galway and the Aran Islands. The makeshift family are forced to turn to crime to make a living.

Reefer and the Model

1988

Reefer and the Model poster
5.4

Comerford’s signature sharp realism infuses this drama about Reefer, an ex-IRA man who picks up hitch-hiker Teresa, a pregnant woman trying to overcome a drug addiction. They head to the trawler where he lives with friends Spider and Badger, that operates between Galway and the Aran Islands. The makeshift family are forced to turn to crime to make a living.

Reefer and the Model

1988

Waterbag poster
NR

A precursor to Reefer and the Model, Waterbag involves the relationship between two fishermen and a pregnant woman, and ends with an apparently self-induced miscarriage.

Waterbag

1984

Waterbag poster
NR

A precursor to Reefer and the Model, Waterbag involves the relationship between two fishermen and a pregnant woman, and ends with an apparently self-induced miscarriage.

Waterbag

1984

Waterbag poster
NR

A precursor to Reefer and the Model, Waterbag involves the relationship between two fishermen and a pregnant woman, and ends with an apparently self-induced miscarriage.

Waterbag

1984

Traveller poster
9.0

Reluctantly-married young Irish travellers Michael and Angela head north of the border at the behest of Angela’s father, to smuggle electrical equipment back to resell. Joining up with IRA man Clicky on the way, the ill-matched couple embark on an uneasy journey marked by blood and murder.

Traveller

1981

Roadside poster
NR

Comerford's first digital short which evolved into an installation, is an audacious blur of ugliness and beauty. Drawing on found footage from personal archives, it outlines an encounter between a man and a woman in a stolen car.

Roadside

2008

Roadside poster
NR

Comerford's first digital short which evolved into an installation, is an audacious blur of ugliness and beauty. Drawing on found footage from personal archives, it outlines an encounter between a man and a woman in a stolen car.

Roadside

2008

High Boot Benny poster
8.0

A police informant is found dead in a boarding-school situated near the border between Ulster and Eire. There are three suspects: the protestant school headmistress; Marley, an unfrocked missionary priest; and Benny, a seventeen-year-old criminal who has taken sanctuary in the school...

High Boot Benny

1993

High Boot Benny poster
8.0

A police informant is found dead in a boarding-school situated near the border between Ulster and Eire. There are three suspects: the protestant school headmistress; Marley, an unfrocked missionary priest; and Benny, a seventeen-year-old criminal who has taken sanctuary in the school...

High Boot Benny

1993

Down the Corner poster
7.0

A group of Ballyfermot schoolboys attempt to rob an orchard in the more affluent, nearby suburb of Chapelizod.

Down the Corner

1977

Withdrawal poster
8.0

Based on the writings of David Chapman and Jimmy Brennan, Withdrawal is about Jimmy, a heroin user in a Dublin psychiatric hospital. His thoughts and observations dominate, his subjective voice-over speculating on the lives of his companions. Jimmy leaves the hospital, returning to the city to reconcile with his loved ones, but his withdrawal leads ultimately to a dead end.

Withdrawal

1973

Withdrawal poster
8.0

Based on the writings of David Chapman and Jimmy Brennan, Withdrawal is about Jimmy, a heroin user in a Dublin psychiatric hospital. His thoughts and observations dominate, his subjective voice-over speculating on the lives of his companions. Jimmy leaves the hospital, returning to the city to reconcile with his loved ones, but his withdrawal leads ultimately to a dead end.

Withdrawal

1973

Emtigon poster
NR

In this pitch-black vaudeville of impotence and aggression, Emtigon tragicomically details a homeless old man's covert intrusion into the life of a young female social worker.

Emtigon

1971

Emtigon poster
NR

In this pitch-black vaudeville of impotence and aggression, Emtigon tragicomically details a homeless old man's covert intrusion into the life of a young female social worker.

Emtigon

1971

Emtigon poster
NR

In this pitch-black vaudeville of impotence and aggression, Emtigon tragicomically details a homeless old man's covert intrusion into the life of a young female social worker.

Emtigon

1971