Recorded at the 2025 Capital Irish Film Festival in Washington DC, this episode features a conversation with two Irish women who have both made significant transitions into film from other careers.
Kathleen Harris, a former Irish Times video journalist, discusses her environmental documentary Birdsong, which won the 2025 CIFF Audience Award for Favorite Irish Feature. Denise Deegan, a novelist, talks about her award-winning short, The Innkeeper.
Birdsong follows ornithologist Seán Ronayne as he attempts to record every bird species in Ireland, traveling to some of the country's most remote locations along the way.
The Innkeeper is a short comedy drama set around a school nativity play, which carries a quiet but powerful message about homelessness in Ireland.
Both guests left stable careers — Harris from journalism, Deegan from running a PR business — to pursue film making, and both talk candidly about the leap involved. A thread running through the conversation is how each approached social issues in their work: Harris structured Birdsong to balance wonder with concern about Ireland's biodiversity crisis, while Deegan deliberately withheld The Innkeeper's central point until the final moment. Neither wanted to lecture. Both wanted to leave the audience feeling something had shifted.
Links
Kathleen Harris
Denise Deegan
The Films
Irish Stew Links
Episode Details: Season 8, Episode 6; Total Episode Count: 147
