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Jim Sheridan has made a career of telling other people’s stories, from Christy Brown in My Left Foot to Gerry Conlon in In the Name of the Father. Now it’s time to tell his own. His semi-autobiographical film recounts his escape from the poverty of early-’80s Ireland to the poverty of early-’80s New York, with a wife and two daughters in tow and a lingering psychic trauma never far behind. Through viscerally felt performances, his leads — Paddy Considine, Samantha Morton, and real-life sisters Emma and Sarah Bolger — make his story their own. With just this cast of five (Djimon Hounsou is an AIDS-afflicted artist living in the family’s decrepit Harlem tenement), Sheridan tells a tale of loss and love that’s affecting because it’s so honestly, disarmingly direct. Although at times pathos does veer close to bathos, the adult actors are so skilled and the girls so guileless that even would-be clichés are moving. And the Bolger sisters are a revelation: 12-year-old Sarah radiates a wisdom beyond her years, and Emma’s already a natural at 8, cute but never cloying. The family’s resiliency is echoed in Declan Quinn’s expressive camerawork, a kaleidoscope of city lights staving off a menacing New York City night. (103 minutes) At the Kendall Square.