TJ O’Grady-Peyton and Gabriel Adewusi spoke to David Hennessy about the Academy Award qualified short film Room Taken which deals of themes of homelessness, grief and sight loss.
With both World Homeless Day and World Sight Day coming up this week, the short film Room Taken tells the story of two outsiders who form an unexpected connection.
The story follows Isaac, played by Gabriel Adewusi, who is desperate for a place to stay and finds an unexpected answer to his temporary homelessness when he takes refuge in the home of Victoria, an elderly blind woman, without her knowledge.
Victoria is played by the great Irish actress, Bríd Brennan.
As the two strangers coexist, a touching and unexpected bond forms between the unlikely pair.
Room Taken tackles pressing themes including the challenges faced by asylum seekers and the rising homelessness population in Ireland.
It also shines a light on the growing epidemic of isolation and loneliness in the elderly communities.
The film has so far been selected for over 39 film festivals and has won 10 awards, including Best Irish Short Film at the Dublin International Film Festival.
Room Taken has qualified to be considered for the 2025 Oscars after winning “Best Short Film” at the 2024 Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF). It also qualified by becoming a finalist in Manhattan Short 2024, where it will screen with 9 other films in over 500 venues globally.
The Irish World chatted to director TJ O’Grady- Peyton and lead actor Gabriel Adewusi.
TJ first gained recognition at the Young Director Awards at Cannes in 2013. He has received awards at prestigious festivals, including the “Discovery Award” at the Dublin International Film Festival and the” Bingham Ray New Talent Award” at the Galway Film Fleadh. His short film WAVE won an Irish Film and Television Award in 2018 and SILENCE earned a nomination in 2021.
Gabriel Adewusi has also starred in Sean O’Casey’s trilogy of Dublin plays (The Plough and the Stars, The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock) for Druid.
How did the story first strike you and how did you first get involved?
TJ: “I wanted to make a short film to bring to Screen Ireland with their Focus scheme.
“I was working on a commercial for the Irish Cancer Society and I got chatting with one of the creatives after the shoot.
“His name was Michael Whelan and he had written a script which he was passionate about.
“I read it and the story really resonated.
“It was really a moving, poignant and original story.
“And after that we kind of said, ‘Look, shall we try and get this made?’”
Gabriel: “Honestly, I knew from the first moment that I read it that I wanted to be a part of it.
“Like TJ said, it’s a wonderful script. It’s very moving. It’s topical.
“It touches subjects that are central for Irish society at the moment.
“Just thinking about what is actually required of me in the script is the main thing that made it really interesting for me because I read it and I realised there’s essentially almost no dialogue for me, it all has to be so physical.
“I knew this was something that I wanted to tackle because I love any kind of performance that feels rooted, feels grounded, that can express and experience something just in the present, in the moment.
“All those things kind of came together to instantly inform me that this was something I really wanted to be a part of.”
TJ you volunteered with Dublin Simon Community for a year, the housing crisis has been with us for years now and is another reason this film is so relevant.
TJ: “The housing crisis and the homelessness figures in Ireland, year on year, are getting worse and worse.
“A couple years ago, there was an all-time high of over 10,000 people either in emergency accommodation or sleeping rough.
“On top of that, you’re seeing asylum seekers or refugees living in tents in various parts of the city.
“While that was happening, we had had this story which touched on those themes and organically, it kind of evolved into something that was kind of capturing the zeitgeist or relevant to what was happening in modern day Ireland.”
Gabriel: “We’re all human.
“The main things that separate us from each other are the circumstances that we’re lucky enough to find ourselves in.
“Literally anyone could be Isaac. It’s really just a matter of circumstance and one of the interesting things for me in the writing was that it’s about a housing crisis and this guy that’s struggling on the street, but in a lot of ways it’s also just about a human being kind of looking for an opportunity to find some dignity in himself again, some small space where he can treat himself and feel like a human being and feel safe, feel safe to do that and then try to move forward from that situation if at all possible.
“Things get tough and when you don’t feel safe, it’s really tough to pull yourself out of how tough things are.”
What is beautiful about the story is that anyone can be down on their luck like Isaac..
TJ: “That’s one of the reasons I think Gabriel was such a strong person for this role, because it’s kind of a nuanced sort of character and a nuanced story in many ways.
“The character Isaac does something morally wrong. He does something really bad, something that if anyone was to do that and get caught, they would get in trouble and probably rightfully so, but he’s doing it out of a place of desperation.
“It was so important to find someone who was likable, someone you could root for because if you don’t at least feel a little bit of empathy or connect with the character, you’re going to lose them and they’re not going to really want to see them succeed.
“But Gabriel was able to do something that was morally wrong but still make you like the character and also root for him, so that was really important.
“It all relied on that. Without the character being super likable, we would have been screwed.
“You (Gabriel) brought that empathy.
“People respond, and it resonates with people because of the aura of the character that you created.”
Watching the film I was thinking about what a house can come to mean. It is just bricks and plaster etc, but it comes to mean so much more: Memories, family…
Gabriel: “Yeah, security, safety, memories, grounding.
“I think it’s really important for Isaac’s character all those things that a home could be because he’s just left from somewhere else that he was calling a home, and he’s trying to make a home in a completely different context, a completely different environment.
“Home is security, home is safety. Home is a moment of stillness and respite that you can rest to figure out what you’re going to do the next time you step out into the world.
“Home is where, ideally, there isn’t all sorts of craziness happening around you and you can think, but home is also grounding.
“Home is where you belong.
“It’s where you and your husband have lived for the past how many decades together, where you’ve raised kids, where there’s all sort of knickknacks and artifacts that you can call your own, that you can just feel grounded in and I think that’s really salient for Isaac, because, like I said, he’s just come from somewhere else. He’s trying to make a new home here and he just doesn’t have that and he’s so desperate the whole time to find just a small piece of that that he can sort of build from.
“That was a really big thing for me in thinking about his background and thinking about his story, and thinking about his sort of emotional state that he’s bringing into that moment with Vicky.”
TJ: “On that note of Isaac arriving in Ireland, he was going there to try and build a life for himself, to better his life, to send money back to his family.
“He was doing a very kind of admirable, courageous and selfless thing in many ways.
“He is fixing things in the home.
“We actually made him a builder.
“At the end, he has this visor on.
“The back story was, from our perspective, that he was working on a construction site.
“He actually was literally building, which was meant to be metaphorical for him building a new life as well.”
Bríd Brennan is someone we have interviewed in this newspaper before.
She won a Tony Award for playing Agnes in the original production of Dancing at Lughnasa.
You knew you had a class act for your cast in her..
Gabriel: “Amazing.
“Honestly, I was in awe actually watching her perform a lot of the time.
“So many times we’d be shooting the scene and Bríd would be performing and I’d be like, ‘Oh gosh, I really gotta get in gear here because I’m actually getting lost in what she’s doing’.
“She’s just incredible and an inspiration, and absolutely the perfect fit for the role.
“I had a blast working with her.”
TJ: “She’s such a legend on camera and off camera.
“These are two characters who are very much from different worlds or are very different in many ways, but they also are connected by this lonely moment that they’re going through in their life.
“It just shows how people from all different parts of the world have similar emotions, similar feelings, and similar struggles.
“Maybe they’re because of different reasons, but we still are human.
“It was lovely as well to see Gabriel who’s kind of at the beginning of his journey as an actor and Bríd, who’s very experienced.”
Gabriel: “I think you’re absolutely right, especially about the thing that connects them.
“You almost kind of think, ‘Jesus, in a better organised world or in a context that makes more sense, Isaac could have almost just asked her character, ‘Hey, listen, do you think I could have the spare room for a while?’ And she’d be like, ‘Yeah, absolutely. You can come in here and you can, without having to sneak around, fix things up and be another voice in the house, and we can just be a comfort, a support to each other during this trying time’.
“But the connection between two of them is part of what I think really sells it and really brings forth some of the more salient themes of the short.”
Bríd’s character Vicky knows something is happening. She might not know Gabriel is there, she thinks she feels the presence of her late husband Martin…
Gabriel: “The thing I love about Bríd’s character, the way she played it, is you never quite get the sense he pulled the wool over her eyes at all.”
TJ: “Totally, you feel like, even though in some way, she’s being ‘fooled’, she’s definitely not foolish. She’s very tuned in and aware and observant.
“That would also be bad from our point of view if we were kind of portraying a blind character in that way, we didn’t want to make it have any negative impact, we didn’t want any feelings of condescension.
“We had a visual impairment consultant who was someone from the blind community, and she really helped make things more authentic.
“We tried to be very inclusive when dealing with such sensitive subject matter.
“Our editor Derek Holland played such an important part in sculpting the narrative together.
“In one of the scenes in the café, there is a take where Bríd’s character misses the door.
“And Derek, astutely, got rid of that and just had her leaving because that gave her more power, more agency, and less a victim which was important.
“Think about walking around the streets not being able to see with nothing but a guide stick, it takes a level of confidence, bravery.
“They shouldn’t be portrayed in a way where they’re victims.
“It’s very admirable to be able to just do that.
“It’s a scary thing to do so we didn’t want to portray her as weak, we wanted to portray her as strong.”
I like the relationship between Vicky and Isaac. Although there is little dialogue, there is also nothing that needs to be said. At the end, they are chatting and laughing and I like how we don’t know what they are talking about..
Gabriel: “Absolutely.
“I think ultimately, when it comes down to it, pretty much any relationship that exists between two people is that we kind of offer and take what we need from and of each other.
“And, if in that moment, it’s just another presence in the room, then that’s all that it needs to be.”
The film is now long listed for the Oscars which shows how much it is resonating..
Gabriel: “It just keeps surprising me, seeing how much people seem to really enjoy it.
“It’s not surprising in the sense that when I first read it, I knew it was a good script.
“I had a feeling this would do really well, but still, to see it be well received in all these different contexts, all these different festivals, all these different audience responses to it, it is continually gratifying.
“It’s continually surprising and it feels continuously worthwhile.”
TJ: “It won two awards this week alone.
“It’s crazy.
“We premiered in Cork last year.
“When we went to Dublin Film Festival, we won best Irish short and that kind of got the ball rolling big time.
“We went to Cleveland, we won the Jury Prize for Best Overall short, and that then long listed us for the Academy Awards next year which is crazy.
“Out of the 40 festivals or so we’ve played at, we’ve won something like 13 awards now.
“We have about six or seven more festivals that we haven’t even announced yet that we’re about to play at.
“We’re mounting a campaign trying to get it seen by as many people as possible before the vote in December.
“It’s wild to even just be having this conversation about it all.
“We’re delighted with the fact that people are enjoying it.”
How does it feel to even be talking about Oscars?
I doubt you think about it when you set out to make a thing..
TJ: “You definitely dream about it.
“You have to believe it for it to be possible.”
Gabriel: “It’s insane. It’s insane to be talking about that.
“It’s incredible.”
I was reminded of the film An Irish Goodbye, which of course won the Oscar for Best Short in 2023 as well as the BAFTA and IFTA, by your film. Although they are very different, I think they are both great and quirky little stories with similar themes of family and home.
TJ: “That’s a lovely compliment because that film did so well and those two guys are really impressive filmmakers.
“I agree with you, I don’t think that they’re crazily different in terms of their tone or genre.
“Our producer wasn’t sure when I said that to him. He thought theirs was a comedy, ours was a drama. But I said ours is a comedic drama, and theirs is a dramatic comedy.”
Gabriel: “These are the things people care about the most.
“That’s what resonates because that’s what we all relate to. That’s what’s real for all of us.”
TJ: “They say write what you know.
“That doesn’t you can’t write a sci-fi but there’s definitely characters that you know in the stories you tell.
“For instance Michael, the writer, his great aunt is blind.
“There’s a lot of her, I’m sure, in Victoria.
“I hope he wouldn’t mind me saying this: He lost his brother a couple years ago and the story deals with grief.
“I’ve no doubt that there’s some kind of elements of that through human emotion that he’s experienced that he’s put into this as well.
“It can definitely help add some authenticity to a story if you know about the subject matter.”
World Homeless Day and World Sight Day are both Thursday 10 October.
Room Taken will play at Norwich Film Festival 11-24 November.
