A Want in Her
Debuting filmmaker Myrid Carten has been filming since she was a child, and when her mother goes missing, she picks up her camera again in response to this new crisis. Her mother Nuala, once a successful social worker, suffered a mental breakdown after the sudden death of her own mother. She shuffles between rehab clinics, psychiatric hospitals, and occasionally the street.
Intimate, surprising, and often darkly funny conversations with her mother and other family members reveal the trials of loving someone who struggles with addiction and madness. Home videos from Myrid’s childhood and recordings of video installations from her current work as an artist form a playful blend of fictional and documentary elements, which compellingly capture the vicious cycle of care and rage.
Atmospheric Irish ballads about vagrant drinkers and dreamlike images of the neglected family home conjure the cultural and relational roots at play. In fresh and inventive ways, the film returns to a familiar, universal question: how can we be with those we love without losing ourselves?
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. A Want in Her is her debut feature.
Recent solo exhibitions
Preta Act 2, Mother’s Tank Station, London
(2023)
Preta (Hungry Ghost), Mother’s Tank Station,
Dublin (2022)
Recent group exhibitions
In the Same Breath, Freelands Foundation, London (2023)
Bones in the Attic, Hugh Lane Gallery (2022 A Different Horizon, Lismore Castle Arts,Waterford Ireland (2022)
My Body is an Exhibition, Sadler’s Wells London (2021)
Recent residencies
ISCP NYC 2020-21
Hospitalfield 2020-2021
Artlink Dunree 2020
British Council/ACNI International Artist residency, India 2017-18
Recent awards
Arts Council of Ireland’s Commission Award 2020-21
DocsIE Pitch Award 2019
TBG&S Project Studio Award 2018-19
Fire Station Artists Studio Digital Media Award 2018
Arts Council of Ireland’s Next Generation Artist Award 2018-19
Her work is in the Arts Council of Ireland and Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s national
collections.