Syndicado Boards Myrid Carten’s ‘A Want in Her’ Following World Premiere in IDFA’s Competition (EXCLUSIVE)

Sales agent Syndicado has boarded Irish debut filmmaker Myrid Carten’s “A Want in Her,” which had its world premiere earlier this month in IDFA’s International Competition section.

In the documentary, Carten returns from London to Ireland to look for her troubled mother Nuala. Once a successful social worker, Nuala suffered a mental breakdown after the sudden death of her own mother. She shuffles between rehab clinics, psychiatric hospitals, and occasionally the street.

Her search takes her into a feuding family. “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,” according to a press statement.

Home videos from Carten’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?

Carten says: “My mother is one of 10 children and they were all big, fascinating characters. I’m an only child and I’ve always thought it would be good to have an archive of their stories from the past.

“When my uncle died in 2018, I thought it was the start of something so I should start recording their history as a family, and all the dramas I grew up around. And I was right, that first death had a knock-on effect, because from then on, every six months, basically, another sibling passed away. Five of my mother’s siblings died in those three years.

“In the middle of this, my mother started to spiral. I think she was affected by the death of her siblings, for sure, but also in that spiraling, she was made homeless. It was the first time she had to go back to the family house to live as an adult.”

She adds: “The extraordinary thing about people is how they deal with their own hauntedness, more than their skills or their talents, and it’s only when I look at my darkness that I can accept other people’s darknesses. I’m not the most public person, but my work is deeply personal and exposing. I suppose I trust people enough that this specific and quite extreme story can be also universal.

“Many people’s loved ones have struggles, it doesn’t have to be an addiction. And the rage that comes along with that care is universal. I trust that these are feelings that a viewer can share.”

“A Want in Her” is produced by Tadhg O’Sullivan and Roisín Geraghty for Irish production outlet Inland Films and Kat Mansoor for the U.K.’s Snowstorm Productions in coproduction with Eline van Wees for Basalt Film of the Netherlands.

The film is supported by Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland, BFI Doc Society Fund, Northern Ireland Screen, the Netherlands Film Fund and New Dawn Fund and was previously selected at Doc Market (development) – Belfast Film Festival (2019), IDFA Producers Connection (2021), DOK Leipzig Market (2021) and IDFA Project Space (2022).