Having made an acclaimed film of
Samuel Beckett's TV drama,
Eh Joe, Gilsenan came to note with his controversial, award-winning documentary for the U.K.'s Channel 4
The Road to God Knows Where in 1990. With producer Martin Mahon, he formed Yellow Asylum Films and made a number of documentaries on challenging aspects of Irish life. These include
The Asylum (a four-hour portrait of Portrane Psychiatric Hospital),
The Hospice (inside St Francis Hospice),
The Home (about old age),
I See A Darkness (about suicide in Ireland), and
A Time to Die (on euthanasia). Gilsenan's Other major documentary work includes •
Eliza Lynch: Queen of Paraguay, a drama-documentary with
Maria Doyle Kennedy in the title role which premiered at the
London Film Festival; •
God Bless America, a series for
ITV in the United Kingdom, six portraits of U.S. cities through the eyes of American authors, including
Gore Vidal,
Neil Simon,
Patricia Cornwell and
Garrison Keillor; •
The Irish Empire, the opening and closing episodes of a five-hour history of
Irish emigration; •
The Green Fields of France, a poetic meditation on the Irish who died fighting in
World War I; •
Maura’s Story, the story of a young Irish-American woman who became a
Buddhist saint in Japan; •
Ó Pheann an Phiarsaigh, a film-poem inspired by the creative writings of
Patrick Pearse; •
The Ghost of Roger Casement, a feature documentary on
Roger Casement, the international humanitarian and Irish rebel; •
The Irish Mind, a four-part look at the defining qualities of the Irish across the globe (in association with the IDA for RTE and CNBC in the USA). •
Four Days in November, a one-hour documentary about the
Ireland national rugby union team successes during the autumn of 2016. Gilsenan's earlier film career includes the short thriller
Zulu 9 as well as two experimental feature films
All Souls’ Day and
Timbuktu. In 2016, Gilsenan wrote and directed the feature film
Unless, starring
Catherine Keener, based upon the novel of
Carol Shields. It received its world premiere at the
Toronto Film Festival. Gilsenan's last feature,
The Meeting, premiered at the 2018
Dublin International Film Festival. A controversial film where the victim of an unforgivable crime, confronts her attacker. Gilsenan's works also include a documentary on the folk singer
Liam Clancy entitled
The Yellow Bittern; as well as portraits of the poet
Paul Durcan in
The Dark School, the visual artist
Sean Scully in
The Bloody Canvas and the playwright
Tom Murphy in
Sing On Forever. He also made the experimental cinema documentary
A Vision: A Life of WB Yeats. Gilsenan has received four Irish Film & Television Awards (IFTAs), most recently for
The Days of Trees, winner of the 2024 IFTA George Morrison Feature Documentary Award, and six IFTA nominations as both director and production designer. == Career in Theatre ==