The Funeral Murders
Nominated 2018 Grierson Award for Best Historical Documentary
Dir: Vanessa Engle BBC
This documentary marks the 30th anniversary of a deadly series of events that took place at two funerals in Belfast in March 1988. The story is told from all perspectives – by republicans, loyalists and the security forces, as well as by family members of those who died, who tell their moving and shocking stories for the very first time.
“An unflinching, expertly assembled film that features previously unheard testimony.
A grim masterpiece.””
“One of British television’s most versatile and incisive documentary-makers, Vanessa Engle returns with this terrifying and wholly admirable survey of a particularly bleak fortnight in the chequered history of Northern Ireland. As a portrait of an apparently intractable mess, Engle’s film could hardly be bettered. She talks to people on both sides of the conflict, probing without provoking and extracting, if not the whole truth, then some startling revelations and bracing honesty.”
“Every interview is essential and astonishing in its own way, but some have such an impact that it will be hard to shake the memory of them. Finding balance in a documentary about the Troubles must have been a desperate task; I am sure people on both sides who know far more about it than I do will find points to argue with. To me, though, this is a masterful and careful handling of an ever-combustible narrative.”
“Immaculately put together, this documentary articulated how violence begets more violence, like a flicked wall of dominoes. What it did, sensitively and unsensationally, is show what barbarity human beings are capable of. And the miserable senselessness of it all.”
“The film concluded by saying there could be no single truth, only the different versions of everyone involved. It had certainly gathered a great deal of them with courage and sensitivity and - as all documentaries should – added something to history”