Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) returns with this jewel of a tragicomedy, a shimmering tale of friendship, feuds and Irish identity.

On a small island off Ireland’s coast, life delivers few surprises. While a civil war of increasingly senseless violence rumbles on the mainland, sleepy days on Inisherin are marked by lifelong pals Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm’s (Brendan Gleeson) late-afternoon trips to the pub. Until one day, when it doesn’t happen.

McDonagh offers an undulating wave of a story, one that moves from hoot-inducing black comedy and a tender ode to filial love, to a film about a fiery rage that’s lost sight of its original purpose. Farrell and Gleeson dazzle throughout. But the film also centres scintillating performances by Barry Keoghan as an inchoate but harmless pest and Kerry Condon as Padraic’s sister, the island’s sagest resident who longs for something more.

As heartbreaking as it is hilarious, The Banshees of Inisherin is arguably the finest work from this major filmmaker.

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