Sloan

Mr Sloan said he later built the cathedral at Inch Abbey as "an act of penance" and made that into a Cistercian monastery.

Brian Sloan, from Queen's University Belfast who was helping to guide the team, said Erenagh's significance was in it being one of the first Cistercian monasteries in Ireland.

A small, hunched New Jersey woman named Frankie with intense eyes and a severe pixie cut is the central protagonist of the low-budget mystery “Gazer,” from first-time feature director Ryan J. Sloan.

The movie’s DIY-to-OMG backstory alone is invigorating: A movie-mad New Jersey electrician, director Sloan and his cinephile collaborator Mastroianni crammed in filming on weekends over two years, then shockingly landed “Gazer” in the Directors’ Fortnight at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, an unheard-of triumph for so unpedigreed an entry.

And yet none of that is really a minus, since Sloan, working in evocatively dingy concert with cinematographer Matheus Bastos across a concrete-jungle playground of warehouses, motels and side streets, still achieves his own aura of roiling unease with every blind corner.