‘Samanta Nobody’ review: A homeless girl struggles to make her way in muted Irish drama

Dir/scr: Ciaran Creagh.  Ireland. 2025. 104mins

Music is both a comfort and a potential saviour in Samanta Nobody. The latest feature from Irish writer/director Ciaran Creagh offers a sombre, slow-burn portrait of a homeless girl living on the streets of Sligo, a coastal town in northwest Ireland. A soundtrack of nine original songs expresses Samanta’s emotional turmoil and proves to be one of the strongest elements in an uneven but sincerely-handled tale. Modest festival exposure could follow a world premiere at Dublin.

The screenplay holds few surprises

Newcomer Ruby Jean Lennon, a nominee for Dublin’s Rising Star award, plays 16-year-old Samanta (“social services spelt the name wrong on the birth certificate” ), a youngster who has carved out a precarious existence in a world that has largely rendered her invisible. She has taken up residence in an abandoned prefab hut, making it a sanctuary from the world with its collection of candles and notebooks in which she writes potential song lyrics. She showers at a homeless facility and makes enough money from begging to buy food. “She doesn’t even take welfare,” declares her pal and fellow rough sleeper Mary Ann (Maggie Hannon).

There are mild echoes of Agnes Varda’s much grittier Vagabond (1985) in the character of Samanta and hunger for an independent life. Samanta adheres to her own rules – she will not deal drugs and will not busk. Virtually nobody knows of her talent as a singer and songwriter. Composer Roger Taylor (not the Queen drummer) has created a collection of soulful ballads that convey Samanta’s loneliness and the realities of her daily life, while Lennon’s own singing helps to capture a sense of the character’s vulnerability and inner ache more readily than her somewhat muted performance. 

Shooting in widescreen, cinematographer David Grennan makes the most of Sligo’s gloomy atmosphere. Samanta spends her days in soggy graveyards, derelict buildings and graffiti-strewn streets, surrounded by a sense of physical and emotional abandonment. The brighter side of the city feels guarded by places that are unlikely to welcome someone like her. 

The screenplay by Creagh (who was last at Dublin in 2023 with teen pregnancy drama Ann) gradually reveals more of Samantha’s background but holds few surprises, with Declan Drohan’s Marky providing a one-dimensional element of menace as a local dealer who wants Samanta to sell his product and bend to his will; terrorising Mary-Ann might be the one way to apply pressure on her. Marky crops up as often as the story needs to reassert the threat facing Samanta, but his presence always feels a little half-hearted.

The story is more convincing when it depicts the kindness that Samanta encounters. Frankie (played with twinkling charm by Brendan Conroy) is an avuncular record shop owner who treats her with endless patience and understanding. He presides over The Record Room, a real life independent music shop in Sligo that is an Aladdin’s cave of guitars, vinyl records, sheet music and paraphernalia. It also boasts a snug soundproof booth in which Samanta can strum an instrument and perfect her lyrics in solitude. 

The tentative, wary bond that develops between Samanta and Frankie is conveyed with a good deal of quiet charm and helps the film to find its heart. The support of one individual comes to mean the world to Samanta, and also helps the film to move beyond its initially glum storyline to reach a note of hope.