There has been a surge of interest in recent years in Grace O’Malley – or Granuaile – Ireland’s pirate queen, who took to the high seas aged 11, defied Queen Elizabeth I, rebelled against the English army, and plundered away, occasionally while pregnant. The Cry of Granuaile is an entirely unique addition to the burgeoning Grace canon. Of course, it is.

With three features to his credit – including the post-immigration drama Out of Here and The Image You Missed, a reverie concerning the life and work of the director’s estranged father, Arthur MacCaig, an American documentarian – Donal Foreman is establishing himself as one of Ireland’s most imaginative cinematic talents.

Dale Dickey, the veteran character actor who once hard-stared Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, plays a grieving American filmmaker who travels to the west of Ireland with an Irish assistant (Judith Roddy), in order to research the 16th-century swashbuckler of the title.

In common with several recent metafictions, notably MS Slavic 7 and Kate Plays Christine, The Cry of Granuaile collapses the boundaries between history and mythology, fact and fiction, building towards a terrific scene that might, with lesser talents attached, have looked like cosplay.

The Atlantic backdrop adds a psychogeographic dimension and occasionally puzzled locals. Working on 16mm film, the Romanian cinematographer Diana Vidrascu picks out extraordinary images that simultaneously defy and appease the tourist’s view of Ireland. The score, by Olesya Zdorovetska and Nick Roth, is appropriately dreamy. Experimental film is seldom so playful.

Regular readers are advised to keep an eye out for a cameo from this newspaper’s Donald Clarke, playing a pompous film critic. It’s a role he was born to play.