Ronan O’Connor is a modern-day pilgrim. He loves walking long distances and has completed the 800km Camino de Santiago five times already. In Australia, he is a counsellor and works with people who have both drug and mental health issues and are some of the most damaged people in our society. Ronan invites some of his clients on a Camino pilgrimage.
For Dave, Chris and Amy, having just completed their rehabilitation, it’s an outrageous proposition. They variously battle bipolar disorder, OCD, crippling paranoia, depression, dependence and now face issues within themselves that years of addiction have masked.
Despite this, optimistic Ronan wants them to leave their comfort zones, to develop peace and perspective, and a calm that comes from self-knowledge. It is an opportunity for them to walk on their own two feet, to make the decision to walk each step. It is a challenge they in turn relish and despise. And Ronan, who each day becomes harder to keep up with, faces his own demons as the group fractures and his methods are questioned. Has he neglected his duty and abandoned the group, or has his conscious decision not to “save” his clients been a good one?
The Unlikely Pilgrims is an intensely intimate crisis-filled adventure film. An inner and outer journey where the physical challenge of walking across a foreign land is matched by the internal battle of its characters.