San Diego International Film Festival 2025 

When an unlikely trio of women attempt to rob a rural Irish Credit Union, a told-backwards chronology reveals what led to such an inadvisable and desperate act. 

In this hard-bitten past-regretting look at a small Irish town on the brink of financial ruin, there is no joy to be found anywhere. The town is plagued by funerals, thinly-disguised bad guys in expensive suits, and the womenfolk seemingly left behind after the men have gone are all more bitter than decades-old vinegar. Make sure those really are blanks in that gun, and lets get into this. 

So Mairead (Carrie Crowley) has very little left to lose, and even less restraint than usual, which says a great deal, as she’s not really known for having any. Her sister Cait (Brid Brennan), volatile and with even less give-a-sh*t than Mairead, is more prone to give into the violence apparently simmering just below the surface at any given moment too. Yet somehow Mairead is the one townsfolk often go to for help in their desperation, like bruised Sheila (Eva-Jane Gaffney). Until the day comes when Mairead discovers she too is in dire straits, and can only turn to her own desperate measures. And after a long tearful rant explaining why the town doesn’t even have a bank anymore, just a beleaguered Credit Union, Mairead stumbles into the idea of robbing the place. Her robber gang would get at least some funds, and the town would get the influx they sorely need when the insurance money for the Credit Union heist came in. Simple, right? 

One of the towns few remaining revenue making jobs, the quarry, has been shut down by the biggest local slimeball, Dara (Marcus Lamb), almost gleefully. Irate protestors follow, along with exhausted local police, possibly connected recent funerals weighing down everyone too, and panic when the villages finances through the Credit Union take a nosedive, all lead in to some very tough decisions to be made and carried out, if Mairead wants herself, her sister, and those few folk left of the town to survive. But predicting how the downtrodden will react in this kind of standoff the movie began with, is about as easy as herding cats, and Mairead can’t foresee everything. 

The title of the film, Aontas, is translated to mean ‘union’ and in this context, has several potential meanings. Not only the poor credit union itself of course, but the dying union of a town that used to be vibrant before a rich developer arsehat decided to give it the Mar-a-lago treatment, and the union of women brought to the very edge of tolerance by their varied circumstances, to lash out with one final desolate scheme. Where they, and the remainders of the town, end up when the whole plan is all over, whether or not their circumstances have changed for any better or remarkably worse, is up for debate. 

Reviewed by Alicia Glass