About
Mieke Vanmechelen is an artist, filmmaker, and founder of Fierce Quiet Films, an independent production company based in Kenmare, Co. Kerry. Her work explores the intersections of nature, identity, and embodied experience through a deeply personal lens. Balancing her roles as director, producer, and hill farmer, Vanmechelen brings a rare, grounded perspective to experimental and documentary filmmaking.
Born in Antwerp in 1974, she grew up between the polders of Zeeland-Flanders and the rugged landscape of the Beara Peninsula. This duality—between rootedness and displacement, pastoral life and creative inquiry, continues to inform her practice. Her films reflect a deep affinity with land, language, and the nonhuman world, and often centre on intimate, long-term relationships with place, people, and animals.
In 2023, Hungry Hill, a feature documentary Hungry Hill, co-directed with Michael Holly, premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh. The film brings together landscape and lore from the Beara Peninsula, marking a major milestone for Fierce Quiet Films. She and Holly have recently co-directed Immrám, a nonfiction film supported by the Arts Council, exploring Ireland as a site of indigenous European culture through a contemporary lens.
Vanmechelen’s recent work has been screened and exhibited widely, including at:
Galway Film Fleadh (Hungry Hill, 2023)
Chicago Underground Film Festival (2021)Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2020–2021)Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2020–2021)Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (2020)RAGFF, New York (2020).
She was the Kerry Filmmaker in Residence (2017–2023)and resident at Fire Station Artists’ Studios (in 2021 and 2023–2025).
Fierce Quiet Films received the Arts Council Film Project Award (2021) and Mieke received the FSAS Digital Media Bursary (2021)Arts Council Film Bursary (2020)Kerry County Council Creative Work Development Bursary (2020)
With a background in philosophy and classical civilisation (Trinity College Dublin), Vanmechelen turned to film after years of drawing and painting. A pivotal encounter with Mika Rottenberg’s ‘Cheese’, led her to pursue an MA at Crawford College of Art and Design in 2014. Since then, she has worked almost exclusively in film and moving image, often blurring the boundaries between documentary, performance, and landscape-based practice.
Her work is physically immersive and emotionally resonant, frequently moving between behind and in front of the camera. Whether creating durational projects or shooting in the elemental terrain of West Cork/Kerry, her process is intuitive and investigative. At its core is a commitment to kinship, place, and the lived experience of being in the world.
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Mieke Vanmechelen is an artist, filmmaker, and founder of Fierce Quiet Films, an independent production company based in Kenmare, Co. Kerry. Her work explores the intersections of nature, identity, and embodied experience through a deeply personal lens. Balancing her roles as director, producer, and hill farmer, Vanmechelen brings a rare, grounded perspective to experimental and documentary filmmaking.
Born in Antwerp in 1974, she grew up between the polders of Zeeland-Flanders and the rugged landscape of the Beara Peninsula. This duality—between rootedness and displacement, pastoral life and creative inquiry, continues to inform her practice. Her films reflect a deep affinity with land, language, and the nonhuman world, and often centre on intimate, long-term relationships with place, people, and animals.
In 2023, Hungry Hill, a feature documentary Hungry Hill, co-directed with Michael Holly, premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh. The film brings together landscape and lore from the Beara Peninsula, marking a major milestone for Fierce Quiet Films. She and Holly have recently co-directed Immrám, a nonfiction film supported by the Arts Council, exploring Ireland as a site of indigenous European culture through a contemporary lens.
Vanmechelen’s recent work has been screened and exhibited widely, including at:
Galway Film Fleadh (Hungry Hill, 2023)
Chicago Underground Film Festival (2021)Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2020–2021)Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2020–2021)Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda (2020)RAGFF, New York (2020).
She was the Kerry Filmmaker in Residence (2017–2023)and resident at Fire Station Artists’ Studios (in 2021 and 2023–2025).
Fierce Quiet Films received the Arts Council Film Project Award (2021) and Mieke received the FSAS Digital Media Bursary (2021)Arts Council Film Bursary (2020)Kerry County Council Creative Work Development Bursary (2020)
With a background in philosophy and classical civilisation (Trinity College Dublin), Vanmechelen turned to film after years of drawing and painting. A pivotal encounter with Mika Rottenberg’s ‘Cheese’, led her to pursue an MA at Crawford College of Art and Design in 2014. Since then, she has worked almost exclusively in film and moving image, often blurring the boundaries between documentary, performance, and landscape-based practice.
Her work is physically immersive and emotionally resonant, frequently moving between behind and in front of the camera. Whether creating durational projects or shooting in the elemental terrain of West Cork/Kerry, her process is intuitive and investigative. At its core is a commitment to kinship, place, and the lived experience of being in the world.
︎︎︎CV ︎︎︎Youth Work
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