The North Country

A Clash of Faiths

Duncan, a Protestant minister from Scotland, suffered immeasurable loss when Belfast was hit by IRA bombings on Bloody Friday, 21 July 1972. Driven by grief and dissolution, he finds a new life in America. Hoping to flee the rising sectarian hatred back home, Duncan leads a church in Clayton, a small town in upstate New York. It’s not long before he encounters Niall O’Doherty, the local priest of next door’s Catholic Church. Duncan learns with surprise that O’Doherty has his own history with Northern Ireland’s Troubles.
When his cousins, Malcolm and Billy, unexpectedly arrive for a visit from Scotland, Duncan discovers there is no escaping from the Troubles’ division and violence, even in America. Events begin to spiral out of Duncan’s influence. Clayton slowly looks less like the simple, rural escape that he’d hoped for, and more a complicated enclave holding secrets. Slowly, the town becomes a no man’s land of the encroaching Troubles and individual perversion. As God’s voice deserts him and he loses control of incidents around him, Duncan tries to practice what he once preached, despite the siren call of revenge. Life and death becomes balanced on a single decision. The language of mercy is lost amongst the aggrieved.