FILM: The Swimming Diaries / 2024 / 100 minutes / Dir. Susan Thomson

This deeply moving and visually rich film by artist and filmmaker Susan Thomson is adapted from her memoir of the same name. The original book was composed of exactly 25,000 words — each one representing a metre swum by Thomson during the final month of her mother’s life. In this film, the memoir is translated back into movement, sound and image, tracing an intimate journey from life to death.

Hovering between experimental documentary, contemporary musical theatre and opera, The Swimming Diaries is a feminist exploration of matrilineal creativity and care. At times surreal, the film evokes the altered states of the body and mind in the last stages of illness, weaving together choral, orchestral and pop music with underwater imagery, dance sequences and archive footage from musicals directed by Thomson’s mother. Filmed in an outdoor pool in Clontarf, Ireland, under the sea in France with freediver Julie Gautier, and on the south coast at Peacehaven, the film creates a vivid and immersive mosaic of memory, grief and love.

Following the screening, Susan Thomson will be joined by artist and Luna Arts founder Wendy Pye for a post-film conversation exploring the themes of the work. The discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A.

A Reel Art film funded by the Arts Council of Ireland.

The Swimming Diaries screened on a loop as an installation at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on the Living Canvas outdoor screen in May of this year, at the Depot Cinema, Lewes, and at the Bradford Literature Festival this Summer. The Swimming Diaries film premiered at the Dublin International Film Festival in 2024, has received a number of Accolade awards (Cinematography, Original Score, Script) and IndieFEST awards (Experimental, Direction), as well as Impact DOCS awards (Documentary Feature, Experimental) and has been selected for industry markets in European festivals (Visions du Reel, Thessaloniki, Ji.hlava), and excerpts from the film featured in the Derek Jarman Modern Nature concert in London in April 2025. It screened recently at Kerry International Film Festival, is Official Selection at Tokyo Lift Off Film Festival, and a live concert version of the film took place at the Ramsgate Festival of Sound featuring Apollo5 sopranos and cello, in the WW2 tunnels there last year. Film Director Guy Maddin has described The Swimming Diaries film and its soundtrack as “astonishing” while Donald Clarke in The Irish Times described the film as “ingenious”. The soundtrack album by composer Donna McKevitt was released by Dharma records and has been played on BBC Radio 3 Night Tracks, RTE Lyric FM, Scala and Soho radio. The film features cinematography by IFTA winning Director of Photography Piers McGrail, performances from freediver underwater dancer Julie Gautier, dancer Isabella Oberländer and actor Richard Thomson (World War Z, Shetland, Eastenders, Pirates of the Caribbean) and choreography by Mufutau Yusuf, of whom the New York Times said, “When Mufutau is on stage it is hard to look anywhere else.” The Swimming Diaries book on which the film is based, was exhibited and sold at Artbook@PS1 MoMA for many years.