Guth Gafa Documentary Festival 2008

Seaview
Ireland, 2008, 82 min
Directors: Nicky Gogan, Paul Rowley

Sun 18th • Cinemobile • 12:00pm

An hour north of Dublin beside the sea is a bizarre looking collection of grey cement buildings with brightly painted doors, and run down, rusting fairground rides. This is Mosney - until recently a Butlin's holiday camp, a place where Irish families would escape the daily grind of work in order to relax and enjoy themselves.
A visit to Mosney today presents a radically different picture that is still a picture of escape. This former holiday camp is now a camp of another kind, a ‘holding centre’ for asylum seekers from all corners of the globe. Here new residents wait years for the results of their asylum claims. Once brought to Mosney, how do these displaced people adapt to this strange new environment? How does this prolonged detention affect their aspirations, ambitions, their mental health? Is this a place to begin healing, or does the uncertainty create new forms of trauma? And how does the culture of hospitality carry over with the staff, many of them working and living here for forty years?