Creative Insight
“I was always painting and watching old movies as a kid,” says Aoife McArdle, who’s directed ads for Nike, Honda and Under Armour, as well as music videos for Jon Hopkins and Coldplay. “I remember wanting to be a director and wanting to make films, even if I didn’t know what a director was. I remember wanting to make films from about the age of seven, but because I didn’t know anyone that had that type of job, I never thought it was an attainable dream.”
From running up late fees at a video rental shop in Dublin to a music video for U2 and an episode of sci-fi TV show Brave New World, director Aoife McArdle has come a long way. Here’s how she did it
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However her parents had already introduced her to the world of film with movies such as Taxi Driver and Paris, Texas, which the director says had catapulted her down a rabbit hole of art and independent film – in particular French, Japanese and South Korean directors such as Robert Bresson, Bruno Dumont, Leo Carax, Beat Takeshi and Lee Chang-dong.
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However her parents had already introduced her to the world of film with movies such as Taxi Driver and Paris, Texas, which the director says had catapulted her down a rabbit hole of art and independent film – in particular French, Japanese and South Korean directors such as Robert Bresson, Bruno Dumont, Leo Carax, Beat Takeshi and Lee Chang-dong.
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McArdle grew up in Omagh, Northern Ireland, and attended an all-girls convent school where she says students were “cursed to become a teacher, lawyer or doctor” with little encouragement to be artistic. When she mentioned her filmmaking ambitions at school, she was simply told it wasn’t a real job.
