From Omeleto.
A family has a picnic.
CRUSTS is used with permission from Alfie Dale. Learn more at https://grey-moth.com.
Kathleen is a widow who has gathered her family for a picnic. This is no ordinary picnic: they are meeting at her late husband’s grave, exactly one month after he died unexpectedly.
As they share sandwiches, they mostly engage in small talk at first, in the way that families often do, and reminisce about memories. But the chat soon reveals fissures, as deeper tensions and buried grief simmer underneath the surface, gradually exposing unspoken feelings that threaten to boil over.
Directed by Alfie Dale from a script written by Ben Ferrity, this darkly comic short family drama balances humor and sorrow, capturing how Irish families often express grief through laughter, food, and conviviality. Though confined to one setting, it’s richly written, full of wit and wisecracks that build levity right into the film’s balance of tragedy and comedy. But as we slowly learn the circumstances around the death of Kathleen’s husband, we see that humor can’t quite keep raw devastation at bay.
Set in a remote, windswept graveyard in Northern Ireland, the visuals create an atmospheric contrast between the coziness of a picnic and the starkness of the setting. A graveyard is a strange place for a family picnic, but Kathleen has gathered the family as a way to deal with her grief. As in many films centered around family gatherings and food, there’s a lively spark of ribbing, affection and agendas when many people who know each other well converge, and we can feel and experience this particular family’s quirks, humor and eccentricities well in the keen dialogue.
But the situation is also ripe for conflict, and as the chatter builds, so does a determination to avoid talking about something darker and more tragic, which rubs some members the wrong way. The ritual of the picnic becomes a metaphor for how families process loss: through shared rituals that sometimes skirt deeper pain and symbolically mask what remains unsaid. The agile storytelling captures this psychological balancing act, charting both a growing denial in some and an equally growing need to speak authentically and truthfully about genuine pain.
The ensemble cast all deliver strong, naturalistic performances, led by actor Claire Rafferty as the family matriarch. Rafferty conveys a natural strength, but her performance is finely textured with grief, vulnerability and a determination to keep her family going. But as younger son Fergal, actor Louis McCartney — currently nominated for a Tony Award for his role in the Broadway production of STRANGER THINGS: THE FIRST SHADOW — is her foil, barely able to conceal his anguish and sometimes aghast at the effort he’s asked to make to go along with the conviviality. He explodes with the effort — but it also clears the air to address the more harrowing aspects of their grief at how the family patriarch died.
Both earthy and delicate in tenor and beautifully observed, CRUSTS addresses the aftermath of taking one’s life in a subtle but powerful way, focusing on those who are left behind to put the shattered pieces back together. Inspired by the writer’s personal experiences, the Northern Irish setting is important — the rates of suicide in Northern Ireland are significantly higher than in many other countries in the U.K. There’s beauty in how Irish culture can find the sometimes dark humor in tragedy. Still, it can also keep those difficult feelings at arm’s length, perhaps making them even harder to look at and address. Both insights coalesce beautifully in a film that’s quietly tragic, darkly funny, and emotionally resonant.
