Marian Finucane will attend the screening.
Nuala O’Faoláin came of age when Ireland was an insular, church-dominated society where women’s views and concerns mattered hardly at all. Despite that she lived a rich, intellectual life, working variously
as a documentary film-maker, literature professor, novelist, columnist and memoirist.
In Nuala O’Faoláin – A Life and Death her story is told by her friend Marian Finucane, the RTÉ radio presenter to whom Nuala turned when she was dying of cancer. That interview transfixed the Irish public with its frank and unorthodox approach to facing death.
In this feature documentary Finucane goes behind the dramatic episodes of O’Faoláin’s life to paint a personal picture of a woman struggling without a roadmap and with only her own fierce intelligence to guide her. She was a woman of many contradictions: the enthusiastic heterosexual whose most lasting relationship was with another woman; the feminist who adored a father who abandoned his family and publicly betrayed his wife.
This raw and honest film is a return to Finucane’s documentary roots – she won the prestigious Prix Italia for documentary in the late 70s. This is a story that she is uniquely equipped to tell and one that illustrates the enduring power of friendship. - Patrick Farrelly, Director