British director Nicholas Roeg's first film in 15 years is a supernatural drama set amidst the rolling hills of the Irish countryside. Needing to escape the city and her demanding boss Lars (Donald Sutherland), young architect Liffrey (Kelly Reilly) and boyfriend Richard (Oscar Pearce) buy a cottage in the Irish hills to restore. The Tucker family, who lived there previously and have now moved to a nearby farm, soon make the couple uneasy, especially mother-of-three daughters Mabs (Miranda Richardson), who can't hide her desire to have a son. The atmosphere takes a turn for the worse when Liffrey announces she's pregnant, mainly because Mabs's mother Molly (Rita Tushingham) has been trying, through use of the black arts, to finally have her own grandson. Isolated in her pregnancy, Liffrey is soon surrounded by a family convinced that the baby she is carrying rightly belongs to Mabs.

Based on the second of Roddy Doyle's "Barrytown" trilogy, which includes The Commitments and The Van, The Snapper is a warmly comic and moving look at working class Irish life - full of vibrant and eccentric characters, heartaches and laughs.

Sharon Curley is 20, works in a Dublin supermarket, lives at home and is pregnant. If that isn't bad enough, she adamantly refuses to name the father. In turn shocked, concerned, defensive, embarrassed and angry, her own father, Dessie, is determined to support her but as the small town is driven into a frenzy of gossip, his loyalty is soon put to the test.

As speculation, suggestion and rumour mount will Sharon manage to keep her secret intact? Will Dessie continue to stand by his daughter and how will the 'snapper' be welcomed into the world?