That They May Face the Rising Sun

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That They May Face the Rising Sun

2025,

1h 51m,

Drama

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97%

34 Reviews

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34 Reviews

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Joe and Kate Ruttledge have returned from London to live and work among the small, close-knit community near to where Joe grew up. Now deeply embedded in life around the lake, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characters around them unfolds through the rituals of work, play and the passing seasons as this enclosed world becomes an everywhere.

Philip Concannon

Sight & Sound

Dec 31, 2025

Pat Collins approaches John McGahern’s final novel about a couple’s return to rural Ireland with the attentive eye of a documentarian, encouraging viewers to adjust to a slower pace of life along with the film’s protagonists.

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Sheila O'Malley

RogerEbert.com

Apr 11, 2025

3.5/4

Collins and Eamon Little adapted the novel together, keeping the book’s formless structure (no chapter headings, no separations to show time jumps), and slowing everything down, reflecting the book’s hypnotic pacing.

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Tara Brady

Irish Times

Apr 26, 2024

5/5

The provincial life, told in delicate movements in a script by Collins and Eamon Little, asks big questions about the nature of happiness. A half-finished garden structure is emblematic of a larger temporal standstill.

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M. Faust

The Buffalo Hive

Aug 28, 2025

3.5/4

[It] reminded me of two other films about the simple pleasures of everyday life, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days (2023) and Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016). All have found inspiration in the work of Yasujiro Ozu, Japan’s patron saint of contemplative cinema.

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Kat Halstead

Common Sense Media

Jul 23, 2025

Based on the final book from Irish author John McGahern, this unassuming but evocative drama is a beautifully shot reflection on the nature of life itself.

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Codie Allen

The Curb

Jul 18, 2025

In the end, That They May Face the Rising Sun is a meditation on impermanence, a reflection on the quiet dignity of compromise and the inevitability of change.

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Pat Collins

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Barry Ward

Joe Ruttledge

Anna Bederke

Kate Ruttledge

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That They May Face the Rising Sun: Trailer 1

1:38

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Synopsis

Joe and Kate Ruttledge have returned from London to live and work among the small, close-knit community near to where Joe grew up. Now deeply embedded in life around the lake, the drama of a year in their lives and those of the memorable characters around them unfolds through the rituals of work, play and the passing seasons as this enclosed world becomes an everywhere.

Director: Pat Collins
Producer: Tina O'Reilly, Brendan J. Byrne
Screenwriter: Eamon Little, Pat Collins
Distributor: Juno Films
Production Co: South Wind Blows, Cyprus Avenue Films
Genre: Drama
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Apr 11, 2025, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Apr 11, 2025
Runtime: 1h 51m

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