Rachael Moriarty

Before completing their first feature film, Traders, college friends turned co-directors Rachael Moriarty and Peter Murphy collaborated on four short films, a TV mini-series (RTE’s Desperate Houses!), and made-for-TV documentary (The Ultimate Guide to Everything). The Irish film-making duo’s short films are perfect set-up material for the dark comedy seen in Traders. In 1993, Moriarty and Murphy made their behind-the-camera debut with Die-Cycle, a priest fights a knife-wielding madman who’s also riding a motorcycle; the comedy of errors Swag (1996) follows an inept thief; in 2004, the award-winning Waterloo Dentures kept their comedic sensibilities intact with its look at “love, loss, and rudimentary cosmetic dentistry; and with The Family Tree (2006), Moriarty and Murphy veer into fantasy and mythology through a group of Irish pub dwellers and their knack for overwrought barroom storytelling.