No Stone Unturned (2017)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title No Stone Unturned
Country of production United States , United Kingdom
original language English , Irish
Publishing year 2017
length 111 minutes
Rod
Director Alex Gibney
script Alex Gibney
production Trevor Birney
music Ivor Guest ,
Robert Logan
camera Stan Harlow ,
Ross McDonnell
cut Andy Grieve

No Stone Unturned is a documentary directed by Alex Gibney , which premiered on September 30, 2017 at the New York Film Festival . The film tries to explain the circumstances under which the 1994 massacre occurred in Loughinisland, Northern Ireland, how it was covered up and looks at the families of the victims who have been searching for answers for more than 20 years.

action

1994 in the small village of Loughlinisland in County Down 21 miles south of Belfast in Northern Ireland. On the night of June 18, two shooters with assault rifles stormed into a bar during their national soccer team's world championship match against Italy and caused a massacre there. They open fire and kill six men, all of them Catholics.

Twenty years after the incident, victims' families are looking for answers. Although it was quickly established that the shooters were members of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a paramilitary group that can be described as the loyalist equivalent of the IRA, despite long investigations by the police and many confusing leads, none of the perpetrators could be found.

Historical background

The pub in Loughlinisland in 2009, which was massacred 15 years earlier

The news went around the world in 1994 when a massacre broke out in Loughlinisland, Ireland. Ireland had for the World Cup qualifying and the play of their team against Italy was in full swing, the local Heights Bar stormed than men with machine guns, where they had met to the game to see together, killed six people and five others wounded. Six Catholics were killed, including 87-year-old Barney Green and his nephew.

The Ulster Volunteer Force claimed in its letter of assurance that the men had attended an Irish Republican Army (IRA) meeting in the pub. O'Toole's Bar was frequented by both denominational groups. It should have been pure coincidence that the six victims were Catholics. The act caused paralyzing horror in Northern Ireland, as Loughinisland had been spared the war until then and there had never been any problems between the 200 villagers, the majority of whom are Catholic. Northern Ireland Deputy Police Chief Blair Wallace said the UVF struck the remote village after heightened alertness to the police and army in Belfast and other hotspots of violence.

The following investigations by the Northern Irish police looked like a series of breakdowns. The bereaved therefore gathered clues together with the Belfast human rights organization Relatives for Justice (RFJ, "Relatives for Justice"). They called on the Police Ombudsman, a post set up under the 1998 peace agreement to investigate citizens' complaints against the police. In 2011 they successfully went to court against the ombudsman at the time, when he defused the report of his employees and spoke only of "failures" by lower departments. The acting police ombudsman Dr. Michael Maguire publishes a new 157-page report intended to expose that by the late 1980s, high-level police informants in loyalist paramilitary organizations were involved in the import of weapons and ammunition into Northern Ireland, going well beyond the case of the massacre out into Loughinisland. To this day, the question of whether the massacre was deliberately not cleared up because British and Northern Irish government agencies cooperated with the murderers remains politically explosive, an allegation that the report affirms. Northern Irish human rights organizations estimate that a total of at least 800 murders by pro-British paramilitary groups have been directed, supported or at least covered by British government agencies. The relatives of those killed in Loughinisland demand an apology from the Minister. To date, no one has been held accountable for the crime known as the "World Cup Massacre". The film names Ronnie Hawthorne , Gorman McMullan and Alan Taylor , who worked for the UVF at night and worked as police officers and soldiers in the British Army during the day, as the perpetrators . In a draft of the ombudsman's report, Hawthorne is identified as the real killer, the vz. 58 machine gun fired.

production

Directed by Alex Gibney

It was directed by documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney , who won an Oscar in 2008 for his film Taxi to Hell . He constructed his film like a detective story that examined the truth about what happened: who exactly were the shooters? And why has the crime been unsolved for years? In his film, Gibney, like many other observers, assumes a cover-up that extends to the highest levels of the British government, for which he provides a number of convincing evidence.

Originally, the first screening of the film was planned at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2017 , and it finally celebrated its premiere on September 30, 2017 as part of the New York Film Festival .

reception

Reviews

Screen International's Fionnuala Halligan said Alex Gibney's documentary about the 1994 massacre was long and detailed, and often terrifying. The film is investigative journalism at its best, according to Halligan.

Awards

The Irish Film & Television Academy Awards 2018

  • Nomination for the George Morrison Feature Documentary Award

Writers Guild of America Awards 2018

  • Nomination for Best Screenplay for a Documentary ( Alex Gibney )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Owen Gleiberman: New York Film Review: Alex Gibney's 'No Stone Unturned' In: Variety, September 30, 2017.
  2. ↑ a b c d Uschi Grandel: The state murdered with In: derFreitag. Retrieved October 3, 2017.
  3. ↑ Christian Bunke: Great Britain: How far can informants go? , Telepolis, December 27, 2018
  4. ↑ Loughinisland massacre: journalists arrested, killers remain free , The Meteor, October 11, 2018
  5. ↑ http://www.moviepilot.de/movies/no-stone-unturned
  6. ↑ Greg Evans: Alex Gibney Doc 'No Stone Unturned' Withdrawn From Tribeca Film Festival In: deadline.com, April 14, 2017.
  7. ↑ https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2017/1001/908905-loughinisland-documentary-opens-new-york-film-festival/
  8. ↑ https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/no-stone-unturned-london-review/5122972.article
  9. ↑ Hannah Moran: The nominations for the IFTA Film Awards 2018 have been announced In: evoke.ie, January 11, 2018.
  10. ↑ 2018 Writers Guild Awards Nominees In: wga.org. Retrieved January 5, 2018.