Message in a Bottle

Award-winning director Finn Keenan has turned a brutal schoolyard game into a poignant meditation on memory and mental health. His new short film ‘Bottle’ premiered at the Clones Film Festival, and is set to screen at the BAFTA and Oscar-qualifying Foyle Film Festival (November 22 to December 1).

Keenan vividly recalls his first day at secondary school: the smell of floor polish, wet wool, too much Brylcream and the stench of Lynx Africa.

“Everyone was smiling, introducing themselves, bright-eyed. There were no tribes yet,” he says of his induction.

But by the end of year one, Keenan remembers grimly: “all that light had gone. You could see it in their faces. These lads were twelve years old, but they looked like angry old men.”

It’s a small but haunting image that has stayed with him, an unnerving snapshot of his formative years, and one that serves as a seed of inspiration for his new film, ‘Bottle’.

Recognition

The short takes its name from a real-life hazing ritual that once stalked the ‘green tile corridor’ at St Patrick’s College in Cavan Town.

A “game” so absurd it could pass for urban myth, a bottle sits in the middle of the floor, unassuming, waiting. A dozen boys line up alongside lockers like silent sentries, trainers squeak in anticipation. Then someone kicks the bottle - that’s when bedlam erupts - a flurry of fists, shouts, school bags thrown - a ritualistic explosion of boyhood violence disguised as play.

“If bottle toppled, everyone piled in. It didn’t even matter who knocked it. The poor kid in the middle just got battered.”

Not as culturally unique as you might think, and mercifully it’s confined to the past, but in his research Keenan found iterations existed in other schools- with similar consequences.

Yet, as a tentative 11-year-old First Year, Keenan didn’t have the vocabulary or colour palette of emotional awareness to explain what he was witnessing in this Catholic all boys school. “I remember thinking, what on earth is happening? The fear in that kid’s eyes - that’s stayed with me.”

Now, as an adult filmmaker, Keenan sees the deeper layers of that chastening experience - a system predicated on fear and hierarchy - core ingredients of what he calls the “shame cycle” that forces children to grow up too fast, stripping them of their innocence long before they’re ready.

Self-conscious

Keenan’s career has taken him from directing Nike commercials in China to collaborating with Danny DeVito to explain Discord. More recently, he’s gained recognition for his music videos with the rap group Kneecap. But Bottle is different: it’s smaller, rougher, and deeply personal.

The director speaks of Bottle as both a film and a metaphor. For him, the green-tile corridor is a tunnel of adolescence, and the bottle represents a ticking bomb of shame and self-consciousness.

“It’s about how a kid loses the light behind their eyes. And how fast that can happen,” he explains. “At that age, you’re so susceptible to shame. It can come from anywhere - teachers, older students, your mates. You arrive as this warm, open kid, and you’re taught, slowly but surely, that affection, enthusiasm, emotion - those things make you weak.”

Sliding doors- where a single moment can change everything.

“One day, you want to hug your dad when he picks you up from school. The next, someone slags you for it, and you never do it again. It might sound dramatic but I don’t think we realise how these seemingly insignificant moments can rear their ugly heads later in life.”

Keenan contends that shame is passed down through generations like a bad heirloom. Although reluctant to use the term toxic masculinity - a “buzzword” he believes fails to adequately empathise with how someone can become trapped in such negative headspace. He notes the boys involved weren’t “bad” per se. Rather, they were simply caught in the same cycle of hurt and fear that ensnared others before them.

“The film’s structured as a loop because that’s how shame works - it trickles down. You’re either the one doing the hitting or the one being hit. Sooner or later, you become both.”

Authentic self

To achieve authenticity, Keenan recreated the scene as close to the real St Pat’s corridor inside the Gonzo Youth Theatre on the Dublin Road.

The set, built by Joe Doherty, was made even more authentic by Noelle Slacke and Paula McQuillan, who tracked down the exact same doors and lockers from the original school - courtesy of John Conlan.

“It gave some of us genuine PTSD,” Keenan jokes.

Shot in a day and a half, Bottle features masks galore and a cast of young actors discovered through a local casting call. Only one had ever heard of the game Bottle.

“Apparently, it disappeared some years ago,” Keenan says. “Which might be a good sign. Maybe things have changed.”

The film’s powerful score comes courtesy of the Dublin band The Scratch, who Keenan reached out to after seeing them perform at Cavan Townhall. Instead of just licensing a song, the band composed a unique, often feral-sounding score, which pulses throughout the film like blood in the ears.

As for the Foyle Film Festival nod, Keenan reflects: “It’s mad, isn’t it? We made this ludicrous little film with the help of Cavan Arts, a few mates, and a bunch of local lads. And now it’s playing at an Oscar-qualifying festival.”

Divergence

In many ways, Bottle might never have been made were it not for a pivotal leg break.

The injury kept Keenan out of school for months - offering a sustained respite from the dreaded green tile corridor. At age 14, he had no interest in school, and nothing to do but stew in discontent. But then his parents, Joe and Jane, bought him his first video camera, and something clicked.

“The shame stopped for a bit. I think looking back that I maybe reconnected with that part of myself I’d lost.”

That creative drive became a survival mechanism. And later it transformed into Keenan’s career. But shame has a tendency to creep up on you.

Keenan is open about his mental health struggles.

“I had to take time off for my mental health,” he admits. “Between jobs, you start comparing yourself to everyone else. You open Instagram and suddenly everyone’s winning. Everyone except you.”

He jokingly refers to this as the “comparison epidemic”.

Radicalised

To combat it he did something radical. He reached out. Sought help. Told the truth.

He started posting behind-the-scenes clips on TikTok- nothing polished, just raw moments unfiltered moments from the past 15 years.

“The boring bits. The failures. And weirdly, those are the ones people have connected with.”

Incredibly, between them, the snippets have now amassed more than 11 million views. Then other directors began messaging him, sharing their own struggles and thanking him for his authenticity.

“One guy said, ‘I’ve forgotten why we do this in the first place, then I saw the video’. That meant a lot. It reminded me that being honest is a kind of rebellion against the epidemic.”

It’s a very un-Hollywood philosophy, but then again Keenan doesn’t do the tortured genius act, happy to admit he’s winging it, right before the chaos transforms into something beautiful.

He made Bottle to get something out of his system, themes he’s only just scratched the surface of on a path towards something much larger- his first feature length film.

There’s a theme that runs through Keenan’s most recent work, a fascination with control and its collapse.

The symmetry of life also comes into play: it was the space afforded by his broken kneecap that set a teenage Keenan on the path to filmmaking, and it was the support of the Belfast rap trio that offered him redemption from a difficult period in his adult life. In ‘The Recap’, Keenan helps Kneecap take aim at the moral panic that has stalked the band for their outspoken views on genocide in Palestine, remixing that faux outrage into blistering satire. In ‘Sayonara’, Keenan again deftly directs the indomitable Derry Girls’ actress Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, as the camera spins through a gambit of earth-shattering emotion - euphoria, comedown, and lastly paranoia.

“When you can’t escape the fear, just embrace it,” suggests Keenan. “And dance your goolies off.”