As you get the bus into work or hop on the train or Dart, have you ever wondered about the lives of your fellow passengers? Or the people who work at the train stations, who get to watch the misadventures of all those souls traveling across the country for work or adventure or family or romance? Well, Lost & Found is the film for you!

Written, directed by and starring Liam O Mochain, this is a film with seven inter-connected stories, set in and around the lost and found office of an Irish train station. Much of it was shot at stations in Co. Laois and Dublin and on an actual trains travelling across Ireland, and many of the stories were inspired by true events. United by characters who weave in and out of each others' lives in unexpected ways, the film is about what we have lost and what we have found - and these aren't always physical things.

If you've heard of the Oscar-nominated film Boyhood, then you'll know that the Richard Linklater film was filmed over twelve years, with shooting happening over a few days every summer. O Mochain took a similar approach.

"We filmed over five years but then with post-production it's taken us seven years in total to bring it out, so it's been a long, long time!" laughs O Mochain. "It's an insurance policy in a way, in case the crew didn't come back, in case we couldn't fund the other pieces, in case the stories didn't come together - at least then I'd have a couple of short films!"

Luckily for O Mochain, the actors and crew loved getting back together over the same Bank Holiday weekend every summer.

For O Mochain, finding inspiration for the stories was the easy part - he had already amassed a wealth of tales on his travels through Ireland and beyond. He plays Daniel in the film, the new train station employee who mans the Lost and Found counter. In one of the vignettes, a baby is found on the platform - and handed into the hapless Daniel.

"That's based on the story of a guy who's picking up kids from a preschool, and there was a child left alone on the bus," O Mochain explains. "He didn't know where to bring the child, so brought him to a homeless shelter - as you do! It was just the idea that someone would find a child somewhere and not know where to go or what to do, and what's the weirdest, strangest place you could bring them - the lost and found office, of course!"

Other chapters revolve around a man who begs for money outside the train station, and his surprising backstory; a nervous man planning a very romantic trip for his girlfriend, that all goes a bit wrong; and an adventure to search for a family heirloom that may or may not exist. The stories are sweet and funny and occasionally heartbreaking.

"All the stories are linked through the idea of something lost or something found, whether physical or metaphysical," explains O Mochain.

The film has been receiving rave reviews both at home and abroad. It was an audience favourite at the Galway Film Fleadh, won Best Foreign Film at the Arizona International Film Festival and has been picked up by Film 4 in the U.K.

"It's like a short story collection," asserts O Mochain, "but visual, about characters that will feel relatable and recognisable. Having a collection of little stories means there's something for everyone - if you don't like one, you can move on to the next, like singles on an album."

Lost & Found is in cinemas now