This little piggy laughed all the way home!

Academy Award-winner director Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview With the Vampire) probes deep inside the damaged emotional psyche of a child, where fantasy desperately strives to block out a brutal and depraved reality. But what happens when a small boy's most outlandish dreams of revenge are passionately realized as The Butcher Boy?

Ireland, 1962. In a remote village, 12-year-old Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) escapes his alcoholic father, Benny (Stephen Rea) and mentally unstable mother, Annie (Aisling O'Sullivan - Michael Collins), by retreating into a haze of daydreams, relying on his "blood brother" Joe (Alan Boyle) as his sole link to the outside world. But when tragedy strikes, Francie slips deeper into surreal inhuman misery. Now, with nothing left but rage towards the people who forced him into a private netherworld of dementia, will Francie act on his deep-seated desire for revenge?

Filmed on location in Ireland, this darkly comic and powerful portrayal of cruelty, madness and loss captures the spellbinding, odd and often humourous world of The Butcher Boy.

Based on a novel by Patrick McCabe.