Pain Portraits - Film Screening
Étáin Nash

Pain Portraits – Étáin Nash
30 May, 4:00pm to 4:45pm
Film Screening 20 minutes, followed by Q&A with Étáin Nash and Justine Foster
Booking through Eventbrite, no entry fee: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/pain-portraits-tickets-1988615459371

People associate arthritis with ageing. Worn, creaky, stiff joints. But it’s more than that.
Pain Portraits explores the lives of seven young people aged 11 to 29 who are living with arthritis and other chronic illnesses. They include Becky, a 29-year-old ballet dancer on the brink of her final performances; Evie, a 16-year-old theatre enthusiast with big dreams of being an actor, and Abbie, an 11-year-old girl who loves baking, sports and spending time with her family. The film touches on the physical, emotional and social side of living with the various conditions the contributors have, from not being believed by teachers to having to leave lifelong passions behind. The film takes a poetic and visually driven approach, bringing together portraiture, body movement, still life and archival material with personal interviews. These elements are woven into a short film that moves between the physical and emotional, creating a layered and intimate portrait of each contributor.

Pain Portraits is supported by the Arts Council’s Arts and Disability Connect Scheme managed by Arts & Disability Ireland.

Note from director Étáin: “Pain Portraits is deeply personal to me. I have lived with chronic pain since childhood due to a type of Arthritis called Ankylosing Spondylitis. Due to a lack of understanding, both socially and within the healthcare system, I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 21, over a decade after my symptoms started. Arthritis, pain and chronic illness in young people is extremely misunderstood and dismissed and I wanted to share different perspectives of young people through an artistic and human centred lens.”

KEY HOD CREDITS

Director: Étáin Nash
Contributors: Becky, Saoirse, Eoghan, Robin, Evie, Aoife and Abbie
Producer: Aoibhin Murphy
Director of Photography: Fionnuala McCormack
Editor: Adam O’Dwyer
Production Designer: Ben Harte
Sound Recordist: Fionn Walshe
Stills Photographers: Bobbi Fay & Leah O’Toole
Body Performers: Walé Adebusuyi, Aoibhin Murphy and Hansun Lamb

ÉTÁIN NASH 

Étáin Nash is a director from Schull, West Cork, currently based in Dublin. She works across short film, documentary, and music video, creating intimate, experimental, character-driven work that explores emotion, identity and lived experience. Her practice is rooted in human-centred and visually poetic storytelling, often focusing on female and youth perspectives, with work that engages with the human body, physical pain and chronic illness.

Her short film Sisters screened at festivals in Ireland and internationally, earning a nomination for an Emerging Director Award in 2022. More recently, her music video Belly for Niamh Regan premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival and screened as part of the Directed by Her showcase at the Irish Film Institute.

In 2024, she was selected for the X-Pollinator professional development initiative and the Kino Guarimba Film Residency in Italy in both 2024 and 2025, where she explored both fiction and documentary filmmaking collaborating with filmmakers from all over the world. In 2025 she was a finalist for the Puttnam Script Award and pitched at Fastnet Film Festival.

Alongside her creative work, she has built an extensive career in the film and television industry, working in production management, coordination and extras casting roles across large-scale projects such as Bad Sisters, Small Things Like These and Bodkin.

She also has a background in photography, working across portrait, product and creative projects. Photography plays a key role in her filmmaking, particularly in how she approaches light, texture and people. Her interest in portraiture has become central to her current work, particularly for Pain Portraits.

In 2024, she received an Arts Council Agility Award to develop her documentary Pain Portraits. Through this process, she began researching the project in depth, connecting with contributors and forming key creative collaborations, laying the groundwork for the film. The project began filming after receiving the ADI/Arts Council New Work award in 2025.