Oscar Nominee Mikkel E.G. Nielsen:
The Banshees of Inisherin’s Editor

By Iain Blair

The Banshees of Inisherin has scored nine Oscar noms, including Best Picture, Best Director for Martin McDonagh and Best Film Editing for Mikkel E.G. Nielsen, ACE. The film, another dark comedic drama written by McDonagh, is set in 1923 on a mythical and remote island off the west coast of Ireland. It follows lifelong friends Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson), who find themselves at an impasse when Colm unexpectedly puts an end to their friendship, leading to disastrous, anarchic consequences.

I spoke with Nielsen, who previously won the Oscar for his work on Sound of Metal, about the editing challenges and the post workflow on the film.

Can you talk about collaborating with Martin for the first time?
Although we’d never worked together before, it was a very easy collaboration. I did the first assembly on my own in Copenhagen and then showed it to Martin, and from there on we would sit together and work on the edit and find the film. He loves post, and the whole editing process, and discovering how even a tiny change in the edit can make a huge difference to the tone and feel of a scene… and then to the whole story. It was great working with him, and we had a lot of fun.

What were the main challenges of the edit? What was your approach?
The big one was keeping the simplicity of the story but also finding the right balance between the comedy and the drama, and then turning it into this tragedy. It was also about making it about the characters and tracking all of them, along with the animals and so on. Little by little you find that balance.

We also tried to edit in a way that told the story almost like a fable. You’re on this remote island, and you introduce the main characters. And then you treat the island and nature and the animals almost like characters as well. So all of that was a huge challenge for me, as I’ve never done anything like this before. It was a big learning process and really interesting from an editorial point of view to see just how much the material changes with the pacing and pauses.

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