How to Skin a Cheetah

Ireland2023fiction20'International Short Competition

Meghan O'Shaughnessy invites the viewers to a maze full of traps, where fantasies of revenge intertwine with illness, lies, solitude, hopelessness, violence and dreams of a journey-escape to Tanzania. This film is a macabre, coming-of-age story and a thriller in one. As if Carol Ledoux met Van Pelt. A metaphor and projection of dark desires sit on Freud’s couch. Teenage Bobby knows where a rifle is hidden in the cluttered house, full of old issues of ‘National Geographic’, dust and animal antlers. Is she going to use it, persuaded by her loopy friend Lucas? Both of them have serious problems with their demanding – nay! – castrating mothers. All is set in green Ireland.