--- name: "Colm Bairéad" canonical: "https://film.one/person/colm-bairead" fi1m_id: "colm-bairead" imdb_id: "nm2128139" tmdb_id: 2294822 wikidata_id: "Q110419555" roles: ["Director"] born: "1 January 1981" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 average_as: "director" average_over: 1 updated: "2026-09-30T21:50:46.060873+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Colm Bairéad ## Identity Colm Bairéad - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/colm-bairead - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** colm-bairead - **IMDb ID:** nm2128139 - **TMDB ID:** 2294822 - **Wikidata ID:** Q110419555 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colm_Bair%C3%A9ad, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q110419555, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2128139/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2294822 Director. Born 1 January 1981 in Dublin, Ireland. ## Details - **Work:** Director - **Born:** 1 January 1981, Dublin, Ireland - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colm_Bair%C3%A9ad, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q110419555, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2128139/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2294822 ## Fi1m on Colm Bairéad > One feature in, Colm Bairéad has shown a rare gift for watching a child without explaining her, and for filming kindness as small acts nobody comments on. The risk, on this evidence, is that his pictures are sometimes too handsome for their own good. A biscuit on a kitchen table, left there and not mentioned. In *The Quiet Girl* (2022) that is how Seán, played by Andrew Bennett, first lets Cáit know she is wanted, and Colm Bairéad does not cut to the girl's face to check we have understood. He trusts the object and the silence around it. That is the clearest thing we can say about how he directs: he stays at the child's eye level and lets the adults' meanings arrive late and sideways, which is how they arrive for children. He took a long road to that table. Bairéad began with short films, *Screwed* (2003), *Mac an Athar* (2005) and *Finscéal Pháidí* (2009), moved into documentaries about Irish culture including *Lorg na gCos: Súil Siar ar Mise Éire* (2012), and directed for television, the miniseries *The Joy* (2015) and the TV film *Murdair Mhám Trasna* (2018). Nearly two decades of work, most of it in Irish, before a first feature. So the language in *The Quiet Girl* is not a flourish. He grew up bilingual, and the Irish-speaking farm is simply where he lives as a filmmaker. What he can do is get a performance out of a child without asking her to act. Catherine Clinch's Cáit barely speaks, and Bairéad builds the film around what she notices rather than what she says. Bennett is given a silence long enough that we began to fear him, and then that biscuit, and a few days later Seán timing her run to the postbox, and we felt something loosen in our chest. John Murphy cuts these scenes without underlining, and Kate McCullough lights the farm so that the summer looks remembered rather than filmed. Bairéad has said of how the film shows care that "It's more gestural and rooted in the mundane," and for once a director's account of his own method matches what is on the screen. The reservation is McCullough's light, which is the best and the most dangerous thing about the film. Now and then a shot of long grass or a lane at evening is so composed that the girl in it becomes a figure in a picture rather than a child we are worried about, and the film is at its weakest when it lets us admire it. Slowness is his method and mostly it pays, but a director who withholds this much has to be certain every held frame is earning its keep, and not every one does. One feature is a promise, not a career, and this one had Claire Keegan's *Foster* underneath it, a book that had already done the hard work of deciding what to leave out. The test of Bairéad will be a story without that spine. We would like to see him try one, and we would like him to resist the postcard. ## Biography Colm Bairéad is an Irish film director and screenwriter. Born in Dublin in 1981, he studied film and broadcasting at the Dublin Institute of Technology. He has directed award-winning short films and documentaries for Irish broadcasters including TG4 and RTÉ. Bairéad wrote and directed his feature debut *The Quiet Girl* (2022, also known as *An Cailín Ciúin*), an adaptation of Claire Keegan’s short story “Foster”. The film premiered at the Berlinale, won seven Irish Film & Television Awards including Best Film and Best Director for Bairéad, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. He is married to producer Cleona Ní Chrualaoí. His second feature, *Mary Rose*, completed principal photography in 2026. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, sdgi.ie.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *The Quiet Girl* (2022), Fi1m 84, Director, Screenplay — [page](https://film.one/film/the-quiet-girl.md) ## Complete filmography (12) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *The Quiet Girl* (2022), Screenplay, Director — Fi1m 84, [page](https://film.one/film/the-quiet-girl.md) - *The Mám Trasna Murders* (2018), Director, Screenplay - *Frank O'Connor: Between Two Streams* (2016), Director - *The Joy* (2015), series, Director - *Cumann na mBan: Women of the Revolution* (2015), Director - *Finding the Footprints: A Look Back at Mise Éire* (2012), Director - *Luck* (2011), Director - *Páidí’s Tale* (2009), Writer, Director - *His Father's Son* (2005), Director, Writer - *Screwed* (2003), Writer, Director - *Aisling* (2003), Editor - *Mary Rose*, Director, Screenplay --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/colm-bairead