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On May 25, 2018, Irish society changed forever. In a move every bit as significant as the Marriage Equality referendum of 2015, 66% of the Irish population voted to the remove the Eighth Amendment, and pave the way to legalise abortion
For many who voted Yes that day, it was a seminal moment in history. Ireland was shedding the clothes of generations of Church control and taking a bold step into the modern world.
But that view was not shared by all. For many of those who voted No, the Repeal Referendum represented the death of the Ireland that they knew, and the ushering in of an altogether more scary and dangerous world.
These complex and contrary feelings are at the heart of the debut short film by Dysert O’Dea writer and actor, Lisa O’Connor.
Like many Irish artists, Lisa was based in the UK in 2018 when the Repeal Referendum took place. Without the financial means to travel home to vote, she sought the help of the Irish female diaspora to make sure that her voice was heard.
“I think all Irish women remember 2018 and the Repeal Movement. It was a very emotional time, I couldn’t afford to fly home to vote, I was struggling to fund it because I had just been home for my granny’s funeral,” she said.
“I put my story up on GoFundMe and a woman from New Zealand got in touch and gave me the money to fly home. She said in her message that she was in New Zealand, and couldn’t fly home to Ireland.
“But she wanted to do whatever she could do to make sure that the vote passed. She said that she had two young girls and she wanted them to know an Ireland that was free for them. It was an incredibly emotional time.
“To go home and then have chats around the table with women of my mother’s age and my dad and uncles, there were so many different conversations. What I wanted to do was to be a fly on the wall during these conversations and write them as honestly and fairly as I could.
“Most of the neighbours were No voters as well as members of my family, but you still love them to pieces. You still want everyone to live alongside each other and love each other.
“So I wanted to show an empathy and an understanding to the older generation. They said No because they were part of a different Ireland. I wanted to show that we were pulling away from that different Ireland but also that we were not ignoring that past.”
Lisa’s film Fleeting is a fictional exploration of these conversations. It tells the story of daughter and father, Saoirse and Liam, and the conversation that they have in a pub on the day of the Repeal Referendum.
Saoirse, a Yes voter, gets picked up by her father, a No voter, from the airport and before they vote they take a trip to the local pub to watch a match.
“They both know what they are there for and they both know how this is going to go at the end of the day. They are aware of each other’s beliefs but they are also watching a GAA match together which they love, they bond over that and love watching that together,” said Lisa.
“They keep showing love and appreciation but then they return to the heat of the conversation. But then they also get distracted by humour, they get distracted by another pint, get distracted by a score on the match.
“So, it is a very light chat. But in the lightness, it is almost tragic that she almost feels alone in her decision to vote that day.
“She is also keeping a secret in the story. So I made all the stakes in the story as high as I could and then I tried to make it light.”
At the heart of this film is a respect for both sides of an argument and the value of showing empathy and understanding to those that we do not agree with.
“I really wanted to showcase the love that is there for the older generations. I wanted to strike a balance,” she said.
“The Ireland that the older generations grew up in was so different than the place that we live in. Education was different, my Dad was part of a generation where Latin was still taught in school, there was such a more institutionalised strictness to life. It must be quite scary for the older generation for life to me moving so quickly and to have this feeling that they are being left behind.
“I think I wanted to show a softness towards that, not putting them down, not portraying then like they were somehow evil, none of that is true. This happens in every generation but I think that the polarisation is where it starts to get dangerous.”
While the story is entirely fictional, it explores many real conversations that were taking place in pubs and homes all over Ireland in 2018.
“I think the conversations on the topic do represent how I felt at the time and how my friends felt at the time. I had similar conversations [to those in the film] with people in my own area, but the story itself is entirely fictional,” said Lisa.
“Myself and my dad didn’t go for a pint on the day. But I remembered the types of conversations that we all had at that time and that flowed into it.
“It actually started as a stage play and I got it into a new writers’ night in London and performed it on that night. It landed really well on the night, even to an English audience who really didn’t know what was going on in Ireland at the time.
“A lot of them don’t know about Ireland in general, when it comes to our history and culture. So when many people were moved by the story, that is when I thought that I needed to something more with the story.”
Even though the film is only four months old, it has already been accepted to a number of film festivals and hopes are high for a screening in glór later this year.
“It was finished in January and then we started sending it off to film festivals. We have got into three film festivals already, which we are delighted about,” said Lisa.
“A lot of incredible people in the industry were out of work for some time so we were able to get some great people involved. A lot of Irish people who live in London were really supportive of the project because of what it represented.
“Even Brendan, who plays the dad Liam, He had two young daughters and he really understood what it felt like back in 2018. He was amazing.
Fleeting has been selected for Catalyst film festival in Limerick on April 19 and 20. It will also be shown at the FASTNET film festival in Schull in West Cork and Achill Island film festival, both in May.
Andrew Hamilton
Andrew Hamilton is a journalist, writer and podcaster based in the west of Ireland.
