A young woman who left an island community as a damaged teenager returns to her childhood home with a secret and her own troubled adolescent son. The remarkable Ruth Negga is a potent presence as the eponymous central character, who was named after the Hebridean island where the story unfolds. Iona, we learn through flashbacks, is fleeing the aftermath of a violent relationship. Her son Billy – or Bull as he prefers to be called – is a taciturn 15-year-old who thrashes in his sleep, soaked in the sweat of the night terrors that plague him. As with his feature debut Shell, writer/director Scott Graham here captures the tensions peculiar to an isolated community. Iona – the film as well as the central character – is complicated by prickly questions of religious faith. It’s a striking piece, and director of photography Yoliswa von Dallwitz evocatively captures the exposed, untamed island landscape. However, a melodramatic ending rather lets down the intelligence and restraint of what precedes it.
