Every river has a source, a place that calls the salmon back home. But a river is never born in only one place. It gathers itself from countless streams, mountain lakes, hidden springs… each one adding something to the whole.

Stories are much the same. No single voice can tell the story of a river.

The River Remembers - Stories of Salmon & Stewardship on the Coomhola River is a Heritage Council-funded oral history documentary that follows the Coomhola River from source to sea, weaving together the voices of the people who know it with the remarkable journey of the wild Atlantic salmon.

Their stories are funny, surprising, and sometimes heartbreaking… childhood adventures & courtship, farming & floods, folklore & emigration, poaching & protection. Memories of a time when salmon seemed inexhaustible in Irish rivers, gradually meet the reality of a species now on the brink of extinction. 

Yet, this is a film about what remains as much as what has been lost. Knowledge is still being passed on. Children still know the river. People are still noticing, remembering, and caring for it.

And the salmon are still coming home.

The River Remembers is an ultimately hopeful film about our relationship with the places we inhabit - and the difference it makes when we learn to pay attention.