Will Winnie Maughan's acting debut in a film about Travellers change her life? Róisín Ingle visits her at home on a bleak caravan site

The stars of the latest critically acclaimed Irish movie live in a trailer. It's not the kind of trailer usually associated with film stars, in fact there can be few more desolate places to live in Dublin than the road in Ringsend where the Maughan family has been living for the past 12 years.

Lined with metal containers, it stretches down from the roundabout at the East Link Bridge towards a busy industrial plant. On a bright Saturday morning trucks speed past noisily within a few feet of the caravan. With no proper amenities, Rosie Maughan, her children and small grandchild, go to the toilet when they need to on the other side of a grass bank, keeping a watchful eye out for rats. They wash using just a basin of water. They have no electricity. "It's no life, really," Rosie says.

Having just watched Pavee Lackeen, Perry Ogden's movie about the everyday life of this family, it's hard not to feel as though you have wandered on to a film set when you take a seat in their dilapidated caravan. Rosie is talking wearily about the council, who she says over the years has done nothing to improve their situation or get them housed. Her husband left her six years ago. Since then she's had to raise their 10 children alone.

Then there is Winnie, the Pavee Lackeen (Traveller Girl) at the centre of the story. "Sail away with me," she sings in her lovely voice while trying on a new belt. In many respects she is an ordinary 12-year-old girl, albeit one who seems far older than her years.

Winnie was only 10 when director Perry Ogden came knocking on the caravan door. Following the success of his book Pony Kids, a series of portraits of Traveller children around Smithfield, film executives in Hollywood had expressed interest in buying the film rights.

"I decided to try and do something myself," says the prolific English fashion photographer who has been based in Ireland for several years. "I wanted to make a film about children who were at risk to show a different side of life in Ireland post-Celtic Tiger."

The film was scripted around real-life events, with the Maughans working closely with Ogden and improvising many of the scenes. The result is a portrait of a Traveller family that's as unsentimental as Ogden could have wished. "I wasn't interested in triumph over adversity - that kind of approach is just entertainment," he says. "I was trying to show how it is for a 10-year-old girl growing up in a Travelling family. I preferred to look at how life really was and is for them without intruding on their life - that was always important".

A scene where Winnie and her older sister, Rosie, go searching for clothes at the local recycling centre is one of the rare moments of levity in what is a bleak film. Winnie is inside the recycling bin throwing clothes out to an unimpressed Rosie and gets stuck inside the yellow container.

Then there is the scene where Winnie sniffs petrol. This part particularly has caused the young star of the movie some discomfort, although, to be fair, she and the rest of her family say they "died with the shame" watching much of the film.

Initially, Winnie told Ogden she was 16 because she didn't think a 10-year-old would be allowed to act in a film. "It was hard doing the film at first because I was always messing, but then after a while I did it properly," she says. A natural actor, Winnie has an edgy charm, unending curiosity and an imagination so vivid one can't be completely sure if she means it when she says she didn't know at the time that Ogden was making a feature film about her life.

"I was concerned about him over there," she says motioning to where Ogden sits wearing a black Tralee Golf Club cap. "Because I didn't know it was going to end up being in the cinema. I thought it was just a video that he'd give us, not a movie. I only realised it when I saw it and then I nearly cracked up."

After working closely together for almost one year, it seems as though Winnie has accepted Ogden - he has "a good heart", she says when he pops out for a minute.

At one point, Ogden attempts to explain to me how Winnie was worried that certain scenes in the movie might be misinterpreted within the Travelling community, which causes Winnie to complain that he is betraying her confidence. It's a an interesting exchange:

Winnie: "Can you keep anything as a secret?"

Ogden: "I can."

Winnie: "Yeah, you should do."

Ogden: "But sometimes when you watch films, Winnie, you're not sure if it's real or if it's not real, are you?"

Winnie: "How do you know, have you got my mind?"

Ogden: "Sometimes, yeah."

Winnie: "Oh, do you?"

Ogden: "Sometimes."

Winnie: "Well, if you have my mind, what am I thinking now?"

Ogden: "You are thinking, 'that Perry, he is really annoying me'."

Winnie: "Yeah, exactly."

And they laugh.

It's obvious that Ogden's bond with the Maughans will continue long after the film goes on release in Dublin next month. "What we ultimately hope is that the film creates a bit of a stir and that they get housed," he says. (Dublin City Council told The Irish Times it could not comment on individual cases.)

Ogden also hopes that the film "challenges the perceptions of the many people who don't understand or know anything about Traveller life".

The film has already been shown in Toronto, and Winnie has been to film festivals in Galway and Venice, which she says is a beautiful place. "Too much water" is the verdict of her mother, Rosie. "And nine pounds for a cup of tea."

Rosie says meeting Ogden has been good for the family: "He understands the way we live. Wherever we go people seem to like the film and what they all want to know is do I really live like that and I tell them: 'Yes, with the rats and the dirt and the trucks going past.' "

She says the experience has been beneficial for Winnie, too. "She is good with people now, she used to be wild and angry but she has calmed down a lot," she says.

The student at Ringsend Tech is still getting used to her burgeoning celebrity and groans in relation to a newspaper interview where she was quoted as saying she didn't want to get married but wanted to go to college instead. "I didn't know it was going to be in the paper, I thought it was just messing," she says. But does she want to go to college? "Yes, to maybe be a teacher," she says.

When I ask whether the film has changed her life, her dark eyes grow thoughtful. "Sometimes I think the film will change my life, but then I think to myself, 'how can just being in a film change your life?'." Time will tell.

Pavee Lackeen opens in Dublin on November 11th