Swing the Hammer Films is an independent Irish production company originally founded in 2012 and headquartered in Dublin since 2023. We develop and produce feature films and documentaries with a commitment to distinctive personal cinema.
The company was founded by director and cinematographer Caleb Burdeau, whose filmmaking is shaped by two decades of living and working between Ireland, Italy, and the broader international film community. Burdeau worked alongside Hungarian master Béla Tarr at film.factory Sarajevo in 2013 and is a full member of the Writers Guild of Ireland.
Our first feature, Nasumice / Adrift, premiered at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2018 and won Best Film at the Tripoli Film Festival in 2019. Our current documentary, As Leaves Turned Brown — an elegy for the ancient olive groves of Puglia and the farming families devastated by the Xylella Fastidiosa epidemic — is in production as an Irish-Italian co-production with Pharos Film Company SRL and is supported by the Apulia Film Commission. Three further feature films are in active development: Caillte, a contemporary drama set between London, Donegal and Tory Island; Interrata, an Italian-Irish co-production set in Puglia and Cork; and The Sky Between Us, a multi-strand story of transient labour set in Dubai.
Alongside our own productions, we provide production and post-production services to independent filmmakers and have collaborated on a wide range of short films, features, and documentaries since our founding.