Last night 22-year-old writer-director Kirsten Sheridan picked up the Best Newcomer Award at the annual Irish Film Ball in the RDS. She's the first non-actor to win the award, which marks the culmination of a year in which her short film, Patterns, has also taken prizes at the Galway and Cork film festivals, and at the Jesuit Film Awards. "I was really surprised," she says. "Because it was such a personal story for me that at the script stage a lot of people didn't get what I was trying to do."
Patterns, which arose out of a documentary she made last year about three autistic children and their mothers, features a remarkable performance from young Ben Engel as an autistic boy struggling to deal with the problems of everyday life. "I read a book called Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams, who was mildly autistic herself until she was in her 20s, and she was saying that monks in Tibet meditate to lose all sense of their surroundings and go into themselves, but she was doing that for 20 years without knowing it. I think anyone who can survive in their own head for that length of time turns out to be a pretty strong person."
What particularly interested her in the subject of autism? "My dad quoted me these lines from Beckett's The Unnameable, which I used on the poster for Patterns, and it's been the basis for a lot of my films: `My inability to absorb, my genius for forgetting, are more than they reckoned with. Dear incomprehension, it's thanks to you I'll be myself in the end'."
Given that Kirsten's dad is director Jim Sheridan, it's probably not surprising that he's had some influence on her film-making, although she doesn't really agree with me that there are some parallels between Patterns and My Left Foot.
"I suppose with My Left Foot, dad didn't want to make it about a disability as such, and I was the same with Patterns. Most films on this subject are about how the family deals with the autistic kid, with the kid in the corner freaking out. But I really wanted to go inside that kid's head, and keep the shots from his point of view incredibly simple, the way he'd see it. That's the only similarity I can think of, although I wouldn't have minded getting Daniel Day Lewis in a cameo role!"
Patterns is her fourth short film, and her graduation piece from the film course at Dun Laoghaire College. "Our particular year there was very competitive, which was good for all of us. Basically, I used the college as a facilities house for three years. You have to fight to get your hands on the camera and get your film made, and go in and finish editing it late at night, which is good discipline."
The Sheridan family lived in New York from when she was five years old to when she was 12.
"I love New York; it's my favourite city, the only big city I'd live in if I had loads of money, but I'm a true Cancerian, a home-bird, really. Also, I've only realised recently how accessible people are here, and how they'll agree to meet you. It's not a big deal like it would be in the States."
Her father is now working on a film based on the family's experiences in the US, and has enlisted her help in putting it together. "But what I've written isn't a script; it's more a diary. He got me and my sister Naomi each to write the story from our own perspectives. So each of us save the family, and now he has to decide which one actually does it."
Life in the Sheridan household can be a little frantic, she says.
"It's all `what about my film or my idea'. Luckily we have my mam, Fran. She's a buffer to all that. But I love to sit there listening to him going mad on the phone."
Her own first experience of movie-making was at the age of 12, as an extra on My Left Foot. "I've never actually seen it since I was 13. I'd be embarrassed to look at it. The most important thing I've learned from my dad on a film set is that he's not afraid to say when he has no idea. He has a kind of honesty that people trust. What he says is that the only thing actors don't want is for you to let their performances die on film. He's getting more interested in camera now, but I think he's basically still a `story and actors' kind of director."
Those are her priorities too, she agrees. "Once you have a good script and cast well, 80 per cent of the director's work is done. I suppose, growing up in the theatre with my mam and dad, there were always actors staying in our house, and I just thought they were amazing. They have the hardest job of all. So I knew lots of actors as people, which has been a help to me in directing, not being afraid of them and their opinions."
I wonder whether she feels at all under her father's shadow, but her answer is unequivocal. "Some people might think it would be a disadvantage, but it's definitely not! You could be all paranoid about it and think `Oh this is happening because of my dad', but that's no way to live, really. He did get me my first job, but I do believe that once you get your foot in the door in the film industry, if you screw up you're not going to last long, because everyone's under so much pressure. You've got to prove yourself."
Now she's working on feature film scripts of her own, one of which she describes as "not a comedy, but it's definitely not depressing. It's about an innocent and vulnerable kid who goes into a mental institution when he's six because his mam has died, and the domino effect he has on all the patients and doctors. Maybe it errs on the sentimental side, but I don't mind if it's subtle and gentle. It all stems from that idea of standing on your own".
The award in Galway carried an opportunity to qualify for the Oscars, with a screening in a Los Angeles cinema. "Unfortunately, because it was screened for RTE, it was disqualified for the Oscars. Winning this newcomer award is cool, though, because I thought you would have had to have made a feature for that."
She might not have to wait too long to make that feature. Kirsten didn't know it when we met last week, but the Best Newcomer Award was not the only prize she was due to pick up at the RDS last night. The script she co-wrote with Audrey O'Reilly for Honor Bright, a drama set in turn-of-the-century Dublin, won the prestigious Miramax scriptwriting award, which provides £10,000 for the best screenplay from a first-time Irish feature-film writer. According to one source close to the international jury for the award, Honor Bright was the "clearcut winner" from a big field of entries. With all this recognition, it looks as if we'll be getting accustomed to the name of the daughter in the next few years.