Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story
Tuesday, 6 May 2025
8pm
Tickets:
Full €7
Concession €5
Linenhall Film Club Season Ticket available - €20
(5 Films as listed in the Summer Programme)
Contact Box Office for bookings: 094 9023733
Filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea (Pray for our Sinners) brings us author, playwright and socialite Edna O’Brien, as she reflects upon her life and career with astounding candidacy. Defying Ireland’s patriarchal, religious constraints with her sexually frank 1960 debut novel, The Country Girls, she became a literary sensation. Vilified in Ireland and escaping an abusive husband, O’Brien was empowered and prolific, controversial and sexually open, a taboo-breaking powerhouse who made a fortune and lost one.
Completed shortly before her death last year, Blue Road features extracts from O’Brien’s journals (read by Jessie Buckley); contributions from, among others, Gabriel Byrne and Anne Enright; and a remarkable final interview with Edna, aged 93, as she reflects with dignity and candour on her extraordinary life.
Ireland, 2024
98 minutes
Cert: 12A
Director: Sinéad O'Shea
Featuring: Jessie Buckley, Declan Conlon, Gabriel Byrne
Festivals:
Cork International Film Festival 2024
Toronto International Film Festival 2024
Awards:
Winner – Best New Irish Feature, Cork International Film Festival 2024
All in all, this portrayal of one woman’s life, both public and private but all from a literary standpoint, is intimate, heartfelt, insightful and rewarding.
★★★★ The film speaks to Walter Mosley, Anne Enright and Andrew O’Hagan who talk insightfully about her work, and perhaps most touchingly of all with her sons Carlo and Sasha Gébler. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging study.
Blending evocative archival footage, audio and new talking-head interviews, director O’Shea collages together an accessible look at a life seemingly lived to the full.
