KILDARE TV COLUMN: Five miles from somebody in effective slavery

Every Five Miles is a new Storyland short feature that you can view on the RTE Player.

It was written by Limerick woman Sinéad Collopy and stars Danielle Galligan and Sameer Baloch. Vincent Lambe directs.

The film follows the story of Saoirse (played by Galligan) who is a petrol station attendant. She is a mature student, just about to go back to college. In the period before college begins, she whiles away her days in a forlorn looking petrol station, spending the long intervals between customers gossiping with her workmate Katie.

Beside the petrol station is a car wash, staffed by immigrants. Saoirse, like those around her, pays very little attention to goings on at the car wash and is consumed by her own day to day worries.

That is until she has an interaction with one of the workers at the car wash, David. He has very little English and struggles to communicate with her, but it is quite obvious that he is in dire straits.

As the days go by, Saoirse begins to pay more attention to David’s plight. Her eyes are opened when she starts to notice the rough way David is treated his ‘employers’.

All this culminates in Saoirse following David’s thuggish boss, who has just assaulted David and bundled him into a van.

When David’s captor realises that he is being followed, he stops the van and, in an attempt to intimidate Saoirse, takes a picture of her car registration.

At this point, she has a very difficult decision to make. Does she report what she knows to the authorities and put her own personal safety on the line, or should she turn a blind eye?

In the interests of self preservation, Saoirse opts for the latter.

Towards the end of the film, when a customer enquires about paying for the car wash, Saoirse gives the stock response: ‘They’re nothing to do with us.’ She has washed her hands of any responsibility for David’s plight.

As a viewer, your first and understandable reaction is to be critical of her actions. When you think about it, though, Saoirse’s decision to put her own self preservation above the needs of others is no different to what the majority of us do every day. To emphasise this point, the closing credits feature an arresting quote from Oonagh Buckley, when she was Director General of the Workplace Relations Commission. She states that one of her inspectors would regularly inform her that ‘you’re only ever about five miles from somebody in effective slavery in Ireland’.

This, coupled with another statistic quoted on screen, that there are an estimated 8,000 modern day slaves living in Ireland, really drives home the point.

The message from the director and writer here is quite clear: none of us is above reproach. How many times have we noticed things that seemed a bit off, but were too absorbed in our own lives to do anything about it?

In the final scene, director Vincent Lambe has Sameer Baloch stare straight into the camera. It then fades to black.

This short film is as much a call to action as it is a piece of art, and if at times it makes for uncomfortable viewing, it’s because we are looking in the mirror. Although this is a powerful production, the acting is a bit unconvincing in places, and the portrayal of both the petty gangsters and the trafficked migrants is a bit clichéd.

Having said that, this film’s merits are never in doubt, and it is certainly worth a watch.