Ciara Moloney

Since 2023, I have been chief film critic for Current Affairs magazine. I’ve also written for Fangoria, Paste, Cineaste, IndieWire, Crooked Marquee, MUBI Notebook, Bright Wall/Dark Room and the Irish Independent, among other publications. Links to my writing are collected here.

I cut my teeth as a critic on The Sundae, an award-nominated blog of film, TV and music criticism which I co-founded in 2017. Amongst many other things, this is where my book-length series on Eminem, God Sent Me To Piss The World Off, was published in 2020.

podcaster

I co-host two film podcasts: The Sundae Presents, on which since 2021 myself and Sundae co-founder Dean Buckley have been showing each other favourite films that the other hasn’t seen, and since 2024, Friday Film Showcased with Conor Hogan, on which we reflect on our self-programmed film seasons.

I’ve appeared as a guest on the Newstalk show Younified, on The 250, Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney’s podcast reviewing the top-rated films on IMDb, and on the Current Affairs podcast.

academic

In 2025, I completed my PhD at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, supported by the Irish Research Council and the CRC. My thesis was about diaspora and interculturalism in Martin McDonagh’s work for stage and screen. I am currently adapting it into a monograph. In March 2024, I organised the Irish People in Great Britain symposium at MIC.

I’ve published peer-review journal articles on Rocky and neurodiversity, James Bond’s national identity, Alison Bechdel’s comics, and Martin Scorsese’s gangster movies, and written book chapters on German silent cinema and nineteenth-century Irish women playwrights. I’ve delivered conference papers on topics from Samuel Beckett to slasher movies. Links to my academic publications are collected here.