Broken Law, a film by Irish director Paddy Slattery, makes its theatre debut today.

Starring Tristan Heanue, John Connors and Gemma-Leah Devereux, the film is among the first to screen in theatres as they begin to return from lockdown.

The film tells the story of two brothers: Joe, who just got out of prison, and Dave, who is a garda. Joe soon gets roped into a bank robbery, but encounters his brother during the raid.

The movie turns into an electrifying thriller, full of gangsters and guns, and Dave must decide whether he values the law or his brother more.

Initially crowdfunded, the film screened at the Galway Film Fleadh and the Dublin International Film Festival, where Slattery won the Aer Lingus Discovery Award.

Slattery overcame many obstacles on the way to his first feature film. At the age of 17, Slattery suffered a car accident which left him a quadriplegic.

But surviving the accident gave Slattery a newfound creative drive. “I genuinely feel like that was the moment when my body switched off and my imagination on,” Slattery told The Irish Times.

Stuck in the Dún Laoghaire rehabilitation hospital for a year, Slattery started watching movies — first, action movies like Taxi Driver and Pulp Fiction, then films by Andrei Tarkovsky, Werner Herzog, Ingmar Bergman and Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Eventually, Slattery told The Irish Times, “I started to think that if I could make something then someone might watch it or listen to it and maybe be inspired or entertained.”

In 2006 — ten years after the accident — Slattery completed his first short film, Out of Tune. Since then, he’s also released an album, titled Stand and Deliver, and accumulated numerous credits as a director, writer and producer.

Check out the trailer for Paddy Slattery’s debut feature film, Broken Law, below. You can watch it in full at theatres around the country starting today.