Song of Granite

More than the story of an individual, the film is a stirring tribute to endangered folk traditions.

If Andrei Tarkovsky had grown up in rural Ireland, he might have made a biographical cine-memoir as luminously beautiful as Song of Granite.

This patient and luminous life-of-the-artist film freshens everything stale about its genre.

There's a unifying purpose to this seemingly scattered approach, underlining the essential unknowability of a retiring figure who left principally his art as evidence of a jagged, unstable life.

Mr. Collins doesn't shed light on what makes his subject tick, and the arty shards never cohere.

For an artist whose work in a proud and robust tradition carried a recognizable grace, Song of Granite is a stirring, solemn tribute.

... one of the most adventurous explorations in the field of the musical documentary. [Full review in Spanish]

The biographical details are of far less interest to Collins than the music, and the film will be a particular delight to lovers of Irish folk music, with its keening textures and melancholic tones.

The director and co-writer Pat Collins does a superb job with this strange biopic of Joe Heaney, a sean nós singer who became a big name in American folk music.

An elliptic, bracingly experimental feature told mostly in Gaelic.

Director Pat Collins's approach to visual composition is more interesting in theory than practice.

An enchanting lyrical look at the life of the enigmatic legendary traditional sean nós singer Joe Heaney.