His & Hers

His & Hers is a beautiful and charming Irish-made film. It is not often that those words are used to describe a documentary but this one deserves them and more.

Directed by Ken Wardrop and produced by Andrew Freedman, His & Hers won the Audience award in the Dublin International Film Festival as well as The Feature Award in the Galway Film Fleadh, an IFTA for Best Feature Documentary and the Cinematography Award at the Sundance Film Festival 2010.

Men, if you have an Irish mammy or sister, girlfriend, wife, daughter I recommend that you see this. Women, it describes perfectly in the words of other females every male-female relationship you have ever had in your life.

The film starts out looking at a new baby girl, then progresses on to young toddlers and then a little older, teenagers and so on. Every girl and woman in it except for the first baby talks about a man in her life. Some about their daddies, some about husbands, some about sons. You can gather from how they talk about them which one it is, and sometimes you’re not too sure! The honesty of each woman in the film is overwhelming, refreshing, amusing, entertaining, emotional. The frankness of some would have anyone close to tears.

The film brought home to the audience the reality of the human experience…we are all just people getting along. Loving each other for as long as we have together and making the best of things. And if you are lucky, experiencing a great love along the way be that of a child, parent or partner.

As I left after seeing the preview of His & Hers, I heard one woman say that she was going straight outside to ring her mother. She’d already spoken to her earlier that day but she wanted to ring her again. Others wanted to bring their mothers back to see it with them. There is only one man in a non-speaking part in His & Hers and that is just one in a number of unique things about this film. See it.

Thanks to Element Pictures for inviting me to their preview. His & Hers will be in selected cinemas from 18 June 2010.