Ross McClean’s intimate and insightful film offers up a frank and unsentimental look at a young man (Ryan) who is a regular with in the prison system, accepting of how institutionalised he has become, but who also sees the possibility of another alternative life, and one that does not entail crime and subsequent incarceration. Of all things, this new life would involve sheep.
Magilligan – the film’s title is drawn from Ryan Craig’s serving time in HM Prison Magilligan, a medium security prison situated in Northern Ireland’s County Londonderry – offers up an interesting variation on standard prison life, whereby prisoners are offered the opportunity to tend sheep within a correctional programme.
Director McCLean (whose Mean City screened at Vision du Reel in 2025) first profiled his protagonist in another eponymously titled, and similarly themed, short film, Hydebank (2019), named after a similar correctional institution. In Magilligan he continues his portrait of Ryan, exploring the effects of family and environment on his life, and from which he struggles to escape and move forward.
The film opens with him tending sheep at the prison, before cutting back to the gritty realities of life behind bars. He is turned down for early release via video, but his reaction is sanguine. “It doesn’t really bother me…I’m just used to it…happy enough in here,” he says, despite having another 8 months to serve.
Finally released, he returns home to his mother and her small dog. At one point he is chased by paramilitaries, but refuses to call the police. Still taking drugs and struggling to find a way to break out of his cycle of life, he soon finds himself back in prison.
Ryan has inherited the burden of a family history marked by prison and unrest. He admits that his father, grandfather and uncles were all incarcerated. “Jail is in my DNA,” he stresses, before the film cuts to him holding a lamb.
Initially he claims not to like sheep anymore, but after a brief time he is back outside, tending the animals with a smile. He oversees a 10-sheep flock, hoping to get them “breeding and skipping about the field,” adding that it is “time for a fresh start once I get out”. While he tends to lambs, other prisoners shout abuse at him.
The weight of addiction and a history of violence hangs heavy on him. While his exterior is tough, with tattoos and an unsmiling demeanour, as the film comes to a conclusion he is seen visiting a farm where a cheerful farmer explains what work he could do. Ryan smiles when he sees the sheep again…
There is an undoubted poignancy to the film, with Ross McLean (as director and cinematographer) with Ryan in the prison cells, in his home and out on the streets. As a filmmaker he makes sure he grants Ryan the space to reflect, to change and (hopefully) to develop as a man.
UK-Ireland-US, 2026, 73mins
Dir: Ross McClean
Production: Nightstaff, Here and Elsewhere Films, Little Rose Films
Sales contact: Bronte Stahl
Producers: Ross McClean, Bronte Stahl, Roisin Geraghty
Scr: Ross McClean, Bronte Stahl
Cinematography: Ross McClean
Editors: Dragoș Apetri, Ross McClean
Music: Irene Buckley
