Documentary on Lyra McKee to open in cinemas next month

Olivia Kelleher

The award-winning Irish documentary 'Lyra', about the life and death of the internationally renowned Northern Irish investigative journalist Lyra McKee, will open in Irish and UK cinemas next month.

The documentary is directed by BAFTA winner Alison Millar, while Hillary Rodham Clinton’s HiddenLight Productions is the project's executive producer.

Raised in working-class, war-torn Belfast, McKee went on to highlight the consequences of the Troubles, seeking justice for crimes that had been forgotten since the Good Friday Agreement.

Her murder by dissident Republicans the day before Good Friday in 2019 sent shockwaves across Ireland and Britain.

Using hours of voice recordings from Lyra’s own mobile, computer and Dictaphone, the documentary seeks answers to her senseless killing through Lyra’s own work and words.

The result is a complex picture of Northern Ireland’s political history, bringing into sharp focus the ways in which the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – with its promised end to violence for future generations – has struggled to be fully realised.

The documentary has already been warmly received, winning the audience award at the Cork Film Festival.

In addition to projecting McKee as a fearless investigative journalist, determined and tenacious, honest in her approach, Millar said she also wanted the film to capture the great warmth and infectious humour of the person she had known for so many years.

"Through the use of her voice recordings - enabling us to have her narrate her own story - home footage and her remarkable writing, I hope Lyra will inspire and introduce a new generation to her work and the story of her homeland, the turbulently beautiful Northern Ireland, of which she wrote so much about.

"I've made many films about Northern Ireland - its people and its past - but with this film, with Lyra, it's different - with her, this time, it's personal."