Shortly after his short film ‘The Sound of People’ premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, the Irish director Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, the debilitating disease for which the viral ice-bucket challenge raised awareness. Now completely paralysed, Fitzmaurice typed the script for My Name is Emily, as well as his best-selling book ‘It’s Not Yet Dark’ through the movement of his eyes and iris recognition software. This is also how he communicated to direct the film during its six week shoot.
It’s Emily’s 16th birthday and for the first time in her life, she doesn’t receive a birthday card from her dad. After meeting a fellow outsider at her new school, Emily and her handsome ally, Arden, decide to embark on a road trip adventure across Ireland to find her missing father. They are an odd couple, this pale girl and the boy in the velvet suit, and along the way, they find love as well as some hard and unexpected truths.
This life-enhancing film won eight IFTA nominations and stellar reviews.
Click here for The Irish Times review.
Click here for the official website.
Ireland, 2015 | Language: English |100 minutes | Cert: TBC
Starring: Evanna Lynch, Michael Smiley, Martin McCann
