Sliabh Liag Distillers: Still He Waits Film | Belfast Whiskey Week 2025

Name: Belfast Whiskey Week 2026
Start: 2026-07-24
End: 2026-08-01
Location: Belfast

Filed: 15 Jul 2025
By: Belfast Whiskey Week
Read: 5 min
Ref: BWW/25/036

There are drams that warm the throat, and there are stories that warm something deeper. On the afternoon of 22nd July 2025, Belfast Whiskey Week made room for both, as Sliabh Liag Distillers brought the second ever screening of Still He Waits — a feature-length documentary about exile, homecoming, and the stubborn, beautiful act of reclaiming what was nearly lost — to a room full of people who understood, perhaps more than most, exactly what that means.

About This Event

3pm - 4.30pm

Still He Waits - A Powerful Story of Homecoming, Heritage and the Revival of Donegal Whiskey

The Ardara Distillery, the home of Sliabh Liag Distillers, is proud to announce the second screening of Still He Waits, a feature-length documentary directed by Paul McGuckin, that premiered at this year’s Galway Film Fleadh. The film tells the moving story of founder James Doherty’s return to Donegal to revive a long-lost style of Irish whiskey-making.

Originally invited to capture archival footage, filmmaker Paul McGuckin quickly saw the potential for a deeper narrative: “What began as quiet observation grew into a powerful portrait of place, ambition, and ancestral memory” McGuckin said. “The camera started rolling to capture history, but what emerged was a powerful emotional arc – a man returning to the home of his ancestors, not just to build a distillery, but to rebuild ties to a place and a way of life that had almost disappeared. It’s a film about memory, identity, and belonging; and a reminder that sometimes the road home is the longest, but the most meaningful.”

Shot over several years, the film follows James Doherty’s journey from Hong Kong back to Donegal, where he set out to reclaim a lost Irish whiskey tradition. At its heart, the film is a meditation on identity, exile, and belonging. “This isn’t just a business story – and it isn’t just mine,” said James Doherty. “It’s about going home. My parents, like so many others, left Donegal in search of work in England. This is about bringing something back. Something they, and generations before them, were forced to leave behind. It’s about reclaiming a Donegal heritage lost to time and exile.”

A key element of the documentary is its original soundscape, composed by Orri McBrearty. Designed specifically for the film, the score brings emotional depth to a story that is both intimate and epic in scope.

The film’s release comes just ahead of another major milestone for The Ardara Distillery: the launch of the Ardara Single Malt Irish Whiskey. A heavily peated, triple distilled, grain-in expression, the whiskey revives a distinctive Donegal tradition not seen in over a century.This unapologetically bold and smoky spirit mirrors the same sense of revival, place, and pride that lies at the heart of Still He Waits.

******A complimentary tasting of Ardara Single Malt that is due to be released next month will be offered at the end of the screening******

Looking Back

The event took place from 3pm to 4.30pm, and from the outset it was clear this was something apart from the usual festival fare. Ninety minutes set aside not for masterclasses or cocktail shakers, but for quiet, concentrated attention — the kind a good film demands, and the kind a story this layered deserved. Directed by Paul McGuckin and premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh earlier in 2025, Still He Waits follows James Doherty's journey from Hong Kong back to the hills and coastline of Donegal, where he set about reviving a style of Irish whiskey-making that had been absent for over a century. McGuckin had been brought in originally to capture archival footage; what grew from that quiet observation was something far more resonant — a portrait of a man rebuilding not just a distillery, but his relationship to a place and a people.

The film carries the weight of the Irish diaspora experience without ever leaning into sentimentality. Doherty speaks plainly about his parents leaving Donegal for England in search of work — a story woven into the fabric of Ulster and the northwest — and frames his return not as triumph but as obligation: a debt to the generations who had no choice but to go. The word duchas might never be spoken aloud on screen, but it hangs over every frame. Orri McBrearty's original score served the film with rare sensitivity, swelling and receding like the Atlantic itself, never overwhelming the human moments but always there beneath them, like a current. Attendees sat in genuine stillness through much of the screening — which, in a festival atmosphere, is its own kind of praise.

Sliabh Liag Distillers brings that same quality of attention to its spirits. The Donegal-based producer, home to An Dulaman and the Silkie whiskey range, has always carried the landscape of the northwest in its work — the same Atlantic that shaped the tír here for centuries finds its way into the character of the liquid. What made this particular afternoon so fitting was the coda: a complimentary tasting of the then-forthcoming Ardara Single Malt, offered to attendees at the close of the screening. Heavily peated, triple distilled, grain-in — a whiskey that revives the distinctively smoky Donegal tradition the film had just spent ninety minutes building towards. To taste it in that context, with the story of its making still fresh, was to understand why uisce beatha has always been about more than what's in the glass. You can explore the full Sliabh Liag Distillers range at our brand collection, and find them on the Belfast Whiskey Week Whiskey Map.

This was one of those events that reminded you what a festival can be at its best: not just an excuse to drink well, but a space for the seanchas — the old storytelling — to find new rooms and new ears. Belfast Whiskey Week 2025 offered plenty of excellent ways to spend an afternoon, from the Belfast Boiler Makers to cocktail masterclasses across the city, but Event 60 occupied its own quiet category. It was an act of witness — to a filmmaker's care, a founder's conviction, and the long, slow homecoming of a whiskey tradition that had waited long enough.