THE OUTCASTS

A major rediscovery for fans of fantasy and folk horror, this debut feature from Robert Wynne-Simmons (screenwriter of BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW) plays like an ancient ballad somehow captured on film, filled with the sorcery of earth and woods, musicians hooded in pagan straw masks and skirts, prejudice, myth and religion – and the peat and the mud and the bone-chilling cold. “In the dark she felt the key turning in the latch and a voice spoke to her: open the door”, whispers Maura (Mary Ryan), an impoverished rural 19th-century Irish family’s intense daughter accused of witchcraft after she’s seen consorting in the woods with conjurer / fiddle player Scarf. Her neighbors and even her own family become consumed by fear and superstition as Maura starts to experience surreal, poetic flashes of her latent powers.