The film examines the legacy of Institutional abuse by the Irish Church and State over the last century. The story follows the writer, Gerard Mannix Flynn, together with generations of his family who for the first time, speak openly together about their childhood traumatic experience of being removed from the family home and being incarcerated in children’s homes and industrial institutions run by religious catholic orders. Here the children worked the land from dawn until dusk, ill-clothed, half-starved day in day out. The regime was merciless.

The film focuses on the impact that violence had and is still having on them and their class. Why did this happen? How does one exit the trauma buried deep in the bones of generations? Is it possible to walk away free? And will they let you?

Flynn leads us through the story of modern structured slavery. He becomes the receiver of the intimate tales of his family. He listens, witnesses and carefully archives their stories within his own story.

What The Press Say....

‘’Flynn’s brothers and sisters recall many years spent behind high walls. They speak frankly about how truanting and troublesome children were routed into industrial and reformatory schools, and later into mental hospitals and prisons. In doing so they provide an articulate and dignified commentary on an approach to poverty and delinquency that left an enduring mark. The cumulative impact of their recollections is almost overwhelming’’..    Ian O’Donnell, March 2019, The Times

“Last Thursday, I had the privilege of seeing Mannix Flynn’s autobiographical film, Land Without God, a powerful evocation of an individual and a family harrowed by the suffering they endured in various institutions in Ireland”...  Caitriona Crowe, 2019, Irish Examiner