LYRA

Talented writer, investigative journalist and LGBTQ activist Lyra McKee was gunned down at the age of 29 while covering a riot in Derry. Moving and uplifting; her story, in her words.
Saturday 25 March Picture House Doors 7:45 PM | Session 8:15 PM | End 10:30 PM
Director: Alison Millar | 2022 | Northern Ireland | 92 mins | 15 | Documentary | TRIPLE F-RATED
Q&A with Alison Millar (director), Jackie Doyle (producer) and Sara Canning (Lyra's partner)

                                                            Co-sponsored by:
                        The Centre for Investigative Journalism
The Centre for Investigative Journalism has set up a the Lyra McKee Training Bursary to for people from underpriviliged backgrounds who want to become journalists or who are at the very early stages of their career  

This extraordinary, moving and uplifting film has been made by McKee’s close friend and Bafta award-winning documentarian Alison Millar who repurposes salvaged voice recordings and interviews from McKee’s own dictaphone so she can narrate her own story. Through these text messages, home movie footage and archives from the past and present, the viewer goes beyond the news headlines of McKee’s tragic death and obtains intimate access to McKee’s mum, sister Nichola and partner Sara, who capture the raw pain and quest for justice throughout the days and months that followed McKee’s death. Standing ovations at screenings around the world.

'...blazes with its subject’s life force...McKee is funny, eloquent, driven, idiosyncratic, forever chasing stories and enlisting friends, priests, politicians, police officers and others in her quest for truth about Troubles-era crimes and Northern Ireland’s social problems.' - Rory Carroll, The Guardian

FILMMAKER: ALISON MILLAR


'It took me a long time to agree to make a film about Lyra. Truth be told, I was frightened. How could I do her and her work justice? But then, with her sister Nichola and Sara's persuasion, I decided to make this film. I would do it for Lyra, and for them, and incorporate the story of Northern Ireland through her work and life growing up, as she called it, as a "Ceasefire baby' - a term she created, but never particularly liked.

In life, Lyra made things happen, finding a way around everything - in death, it seems, she does the same. We all kept saying to ourselves all along one of Lyra's favorite phrases "brick walls aren't there to keep you out - they're there to see how badly you want it".

This film was made for Lyra, and for the better future she hoped for, by people who loved, admired and believed in her and her immortal legacy.'
WINNER:

AUDIENCE AWARD
Cork International Film Festival 2021

TIM HETHERINGTON AWARD
Sheffield DocFest 2022

GEXDOC BEST DOCUMENTARY
Giffoni Festival 2022

BEST DOCUMENTARY
Solidarity Festival Tel Aviv 2022