Irish Stories Are Dominating Global Screens — Here's How (And Where to Watch Them)
TL;DR: Deadline just kicked off its "Local to Global" series in Dublin, bringing together six top Irish screenwriters from hits like The Quiet Girl, Kin, The Surfer, and The Dry. Their message? Irish identity isn't a niche; it's a superpower for global storytelling. This piece breaks down their insights, explains why hyper-local stories are traveling further than ever, and tells you exactly where to stream their groundbreaking work right now.
Want to know the secret to global storytelling in the streaming era? Ireland just gave us a masterclass.
Deadline officially launched its "Local to Global" panel series in Dublin, held in association with Screen Ireland. This inaugural event, filmed on the eve of Element Pictures' third annual Storyhouse screenwriting festival, gathered six of Ireland's most impactful screenwriters: writer-director Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother, Soulm8te), screenwriter Thomas Martin (The Surfer), playwright-screenwriter Nancy Harris (The Dry), showrunner Peter McKenna (Kin), screenwriter Cara Loftus (Spilt Milk), and writer-director Colm Bairéad (The Quiet Girl). They weren't there for a press event. They were there to dissect how Irish narratives are, frankly, punching well above their weight on the international stage.
Why Irish Stories Are Hitting Big: The Dublin Panel's Take
The conversation wasn't just promotional fluff. These six writers dove deep into craft, the nuance of identity, and the seismic shifts in the Irish film industry itself thanks to streaming. It was a fascinating look behind the curtain.
Key takeaways from the panel:
- Event: Deadline's inaugural "Local to Global" series, filmed in Dublin.
- Partner: Screen Ireland — Ireland's national film and television funding body.
- Occasion: Filmed on the eve of Element Pictures' Storyhouse festival (its third edition).
- Participants: Kate Dolan, Thomas Martin, Nancy Harris, Peter McKenna, Cara Loftus, Colm Bairéad.
- Featured Projects:
- The Quiet Girl (Oscar-nominated, 2023)
- Kin (RTÉ/BBC/AMC, multiple seasons)
- The Surfer (Cannes 2024 premiere, starring Nicolas Cage)
- The Dry (RTÉ, currently in its third and final season)
- You Are Not My Mother (TIFF 2021)
- Spilt Milk (Dublin International Film Festival 2024)
The big theme? Specificity travels. The more deeply a story is rooted in a particular place and culture, the more universally it connects—provided its emotional core is honest. That’s why Irish stories resonate.
Peter McKenna, who created and showran Kin (which scooped up eleven Irish Film and Television Awards), put it bluntly. The streaming boom means the old "captive audience" is gone. Now, everyone competes globally, and the only smart play is to write with "a unique sense of place." He genuinely believes Irish work already does this. And that's exactly why it travels. If you're wondering where to actually watch this wave of Irish content outside Ireland, Movie OTT tracks streaming availability across platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, and regional services. It's a solid starting point.
Hyper-Local to Global: The Secret Weapon of Irish Storytelling
Here's the thing nobody mentions often enough: Ireland's film industry isn't succeeding by mimicking American or British models. It's succeeding by refusing to.
The numbers don't lie. Colm Bairéad's An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) — shot entirely in the Irish language, mind you — became the highest-grossing Irish-language film ever. It picked up two BAFTA nominations, including Best Adapted Screenplay, and secured an Academy Award nomination for International Feature Film in 2023. An Irish-language film, competing at the Oscars. That's not a fluke; that's proof of concept.
What really strikes me is how each of these writers found global reach through hyper-local honesty, rather than by sanding down their material for export. Take Thomas Martin. He wrote The Surfer — a psychological thriller starring Nicolas Cage, which premiered in Cannes' Midnight Screenings section in May 2024 and was shot in Australia. Yet, he's openly stated the film's emotional DNA is Irish. The violence, the masculine hierarchies, the community dynamics he wove into that sun-scorched Australian setting came directly from his upbringing in Ireland. He just gave himself permission to tell an Irish story without labeling it as one.
That's a subtle but crucial distinction. And it fully explains why these films and series connect across cultures without losing their edge. For context, Screen Ireland's development funding guidelines offer a glimpse into the structural support making these projects viable. The funding ecosystem here is genuinely distinctive.
The Craft Behind the Hits: Bairéad, Harris & More on Writing
The panel offered a rare peek into the writers' creative processes.
Bairéad, for example, described his approach to writing in terms genuinely unusual for a working screenwriter. Worth quoting in full:
"When I'm at the genesis stage of an idea, it's sort of a visual thing," he told the Deadline panel. "I always imagine like a medium close-up from behind the protagonist and it's moving and I'm following this person, but I can't actually see their face. For me, the whole process of writing is moving the camera around and seeing into the face of the character and into the eyes of the character. That to me, is the visual metaphor that I always have when I sit down to write."
That's not just a writing tip. It's a philosophy — and it perfectly explains why The Quiet Girl feels so intimate, so controlled in its perspective. The film follows a quiet, overlooked child sent to stay with distant relatives for a summer, and Bairéad keeps the camera tightly focused on her experience without ever over-explaining it. The Oscar nomination wasn't a surprise to anyone who saw it. What was surprising was that a film this quiet could command that much attention.
Nancy Harris, on the other hand, offered a different kind of insight. Having built her career largely in London, she found that returning to Dublin for The Dry — a sharp, funny, and emotionally honest series about a woman navigating sobriety within her chaotic Irish family — gave her an unexpected freedom. "I understood the humor and I felt like I knew the world on a really naturalistic, gritty, detailed emotional level," she said. "And it just felt free because it felt like home." That's the power of writing what you know, isn't it?
Who's Behind the Hits? Meet the Irish Screenwriters
Context matters when you're talking about creative success. Here's a quick primer on the six panelists:
- Colm Bairéad — Writer-director. The Quiet Girl (2022) was his narrative feature debut, following a career in documentary and Irish-language film. It won seven Irish Film and Television Academy awards.
- Nancy Harris — Dublin-born, London-based screenwriter and playwright. Creator of The Dry (RTÉ, BAFTA-nominated 2023). She has extensive theatre credits, including work at the Abbey, the Bridge, and the RSC.
- Peter McKenna — Creator and showrunner of Kin, Hidden Assets, and Red Rock. He's currently writing and executive producing Bad War for Severn Screen/BBC, to be directed by Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans (The Raid).
- Thomas Martin — Wrote The Surfer (2024). His TV credits include Prime Target for Apple TV+, Tin Star for Sky, and Ripper Street for the BBC. He's currently adapting Jo Nesbo's novella The Cicadas for Closer Media — described as a sun-drenched noir thriller set in San Sebastian and Pamplona.
- Kate Dolan — Writer-director. You Are Not My Mother premiered at TIFF Midnight Madness 2021. Her next film, Soulm8te, is a Blumhouse/Atomic Monster production for Universal Pictures, due in 2026.
- Cara Loftus — An IFTA-nominated screenwriter. Her film Spilt Milk won four audience awards and a jury prize on its festival run. She's currently writing two episodes of The Hardacres Season 2.
For a fuller release history and franchise context on Kin, Movie OTT has episode-level tracking across all three seasons.
Watch Now: Where to Stream The Quiet Girl, Kin, The Dry & More
Good news: tracking down these Irish gems is getting easier. Here's a guide for streaming availability, especially for US, UK, and Indian audiences (though availability can shift).
-
The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin)
- Runtime: 94 minutes.
- Language: Irish (with subtitles).
- Globally: Widely available on art-house platforms like MUBI (including MUBI India). It’s also often available for rent/purchase on Apple TV+, Prime Video, and Google Play.
-
The Dry
- Runtime: ~25 minutes per episode.
- Globally: Aired on RTÉ in Ireland. In the US and UK, it’s often available via BritBox or as an add-on channel on Prime Video. International distribution for Season 3 (its final run) is expected later in 2026. Worth setting a watchlist alert on Movie OTT for country-specific updates.
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Kin
- Runtime: ~50 minutes per episode.
- Globally: Available on AMC+ in the US. In the UK, it's found on BBC iPlayer and RTÉ Player in Ireland. Indian availability via Prime Video channels can be region-dependent, so check your local listings.
-
The Surfer
- Runtime: 101 minutes.
- Globally: Premiered at Cannes 2024. Keep an eye on Prime Video and Apple TV+ for wider streaming releases, as Nicolas Cage's star power will likely secure broad distribution.
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You Are Not My Mother
- Runtime: 93 minutes.
- Globally: Limited streaming availability. Check MUBI or Shudder if those platforms are accessible in your region.
If you enjoyed Normal People (also an Element Pictures production, incidentally), this panel clearly signals that the creative ecosystem behind that show is much deeper and more active than most people realize.
What's Next for Ireland's Screenwriting Scene?
The pipeline is absolutely full. Thomas Martin’s The Cicadas adaptation — a Jo Nesbo thriller blending surfing and Spanish locations — is in active development at Closer Media. McKenna's Bad War, with Gareth Evans attached to direct, is one of the more intriguing pairings in current European production. Kate Dolan’s Soulm8te arrives via Blumhouse in 2026. Nancy Harris’s The Dry concludes its run on RTÉ this year before international broadcast.
It's hard to say if any single one of these becomes the breakout success that The Quiet Girl was at the Oscars. But the infrastructure — Screen Ireland funding, Element Pictures' Storyhouse festival, Deadline's new platform for Irish voices — is clearly building toward something sustained, not just cyclical. For global streaming audiences tracking Irish storytelling, the next eighteen months are definitely worth watching closely. For current availability across all regions, keep an eye on movieott.com.
