A reference to Johnathan Swift’s satire essay from 1729, the title conjures a gruesome image of cannibalistic economics and apocalyptic self-sufficency.
Swift’s essay A Modest Proposal, suggested that the solution to Ireland’s poverty would be for Irish people to rear their young to be sold off to the aristocracy as food, an analogy that directors Treasa O’Brien and Mary Jane O’Leary feel is akin to the terms of the bailout in Ireland.
Directors Treasa O’Brien and Mary Jane O’Leary’s film explores the culture of apathy and the pockets of people who are resisting the hereditary debt Ireland is passing onto the next generation.
Eat Your Children is fiercely aware that it isn’t a journalistic piece, instead it is an emotional film, a plea and a provocation. The directors who travelled Ireland in a white transit van did not set out to debate austerity, instead they present their argument in a film about activist by activist, a film for anyone who has lost their appetite.