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Sinead O’Shea’s debut documentary explains how and why it happened
A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot
Dir/scr. Sinead O’Shea. Northern Ireland. 2017. 86 mins.
In what sort of place, and why, would a mother voluntarily deliver her son to masked gunmen to be kneecapped, shot in the back of both legs? Such a woman is Majella O’Donnell, who lives in the Creggan estate in Derry, Northern Ireland; her son is troubled-teenager Philly. If she brings him in, she is told, and accepts the kneecapping, he won’t be murdered for low-level drug-dealing. So Majella brings her son to be shot, a mark of shame in her Republican community.
This speaks to how delicately peace is balanced in Northern Ireland - often by turning a blind eye to crimes past, passing and to come
Even a short time ago, Sinead O’Shea’s documentary about the brutal street justice dispensed by outlawed Republican gangs in Northern Ireland would have been viewed as a footnote to 30 years of war there - of added interest...