A bloodied immigrant at your door... A mob accusing him of sexual assault: How the premise of this short film eerily predicted a spate of real-life attacks fuelled by far-right influencers' lies

Published: 17:16, 13 August 2026 | Updated: 17:16, 13 August 2026 The director of a prize-winning short about an immigrant facing mob justice says the film doesn’t feel outlandish in today’s Ireland – with several real-life events mirroring its plot since production finished. And the filmmaker now wants to bring it on a tour of Irish schools, where he hopes its message can cut through malign online influences. A Knock At Your Door, which won an award at the Galway Film Fleadh last month, follows a couple whose evening is interrupted when a bloodied immigrant teenager begs for help at their door. The couple argue over whether to trust the boy as it emerges – through vitriolic online posts – that he was attacked by a mob in response to an alleged, unproven sexual assault, with the gang quickly closing in on their Dublin home. Writer-director Alan Hopkins told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘It’s kind of shocking that it’s got to the point that it doesn’t feel that outlandish.’ The filmmaker named the June case of three immigrant men who were attacked in Dublin’s Poppintree Park. Their attacker videoed the assault, accusing them of loitering at a playground. It later emerged they were walking home from a park run organised by integration group Sanctuary Runners. Mr Hopkins said: ‘By the time the information came out that he was doing a park run, all these [anti-immigrant influencer] lads have clipped it and made that little bit of content and got views or made money off it.  'But they don’t come back and say, “Oh, it turns out actually I was wrong there.  The filmmaker now wants to bring it on a tour of Irish schools, where he hopes its message can cut through malign online influences. While there is no hate crime legislation on the statute books in Ireland, more racially motivated assaults have been reported in recent years. Social media videos in which foreign men are baselessly accused and sometimes attacked have also grown more common. Social media videos in which foreign men are baselessly accused and sometimes attacked have grown more common - as have sinister memes such as this in which a 'patriot' watches an accommodation centre burn - in the comments below them, which   The Dublin filmmaker continued: ‘The other thing is, people always say, “If things keep going this way, we’re going to see somebody getting really hurt,” but these things are already happening. ‘There was a gentleman killed in Clondalkin two years ago [Croatian man Josip Štrok], and that was a racist attack where they followed him home on the bus and attacked him and his friend and killed him.’ Mr Hopkins said he now wants to ‘roadshow’ his film to school pupils around the country. ‘I’d love to bring it around schools and show it to people and have those conversations with young people,’ he said. ‘A lot of times it’s older guys sending out young folks to commit acts of violence, and it’s the young guys who end up getting themselves caught up.’ The film went down well at a test screening to teenage filmmakers at St Andrew’s Resource Centre in Dublin, where the director gives classes.  ‘I knew even from the conversations that they were having afterwards and the debates that came from the screening, that we were onto something.’ He has been ‘blown away’ by the reaction overall. ‘I think everybody has somebody in their life that’s been affected by a personality change – we call it “brainworms,” cases of people who are being manipulated by online content or having their views changed to the point where they become a difficult person to be around.’ The accusations against the teenager in the film were written as ‘spurious’, Mr Hopkins said, though he ‘purposely’ left it open to the viewer’s interpretation. A scene from A Knock At Your Door, which won an award at the Galway Film Fleadh last month Anti-migrant feeling has been pushed by online 'influencers' who organise and promote protest marches such as this one in Dublin, often through fear and misinformation ‘You have to be very careful not to minimise sexual assault, or to say that these things don’t happen. ‘I think it kind of blunts the message if you make a film [with] these tropes of the virtuous immigrant, or that this guy couldn’t have done it. ‘It’s not to say that a woman couldn’t have been assaulted [by an immigrant]. ‘But for me, the film is about due process, and what happens when that gets lost and we have these kangaroo courts, or we have this mob violence.’ The Clondalkin native added: ‘In a selfish way, the film has become more and more prescient as the day goes on. ‘But unfortunately for society, this is a bad thing.  'It doesn’t give me any pleasure to see that these things are continuing and seem to be getting more frequent.’ A previous short film of his – the award-winning Jungle, available on the RTÉ Player – was set at the refugee camp at Calais in France. The writer-director has released all his shorts (and an upcoming feature) through Hal Pictures, which he co-founded with college friend Husni Hafid. 'He’s from Sligo of Libyan extraction, and he’s got a really great understanding of a lot of these things. ‘Difficult topics like the refugee stuff and the far-right things.  'He always has a great insight.’ Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.