Bloody Sunday is a film directed by Paul Greengrass that recounts the painful events of January 30, 1972, when 14 pacifist demonstrators were killed during a peace march. Here, Paul Greengrass recounts, in documentary style, the events leading up to the tragedy when the British army opened fire on the unarmed crowd…
Ivan Cooper, a Northern Irishman, organizes a pacifist march through the streets of Derry to protest and raise public and international awareness of the inequalities between Catholics and Protestants.
A few hours before the march was due to start, the London government declared it illegal, and ordered the army present on site to monitor the demonstrators’ march with the utmost vigilance.
A few hours later, just as the demonstration had begun, gunfire broke out and demonstrators were shot dead by the British army… And so begins the panic, the screams from the crowd, and the loss of control of an event that was initially intended to be totally pacifist.
With camera in hand, Paul Greengrass presents his vision of Bloody Sunday, the terrible day that plunged the whole of Northern Ireland into fear and violence. But the film doesn’t stop there, and tries to lift the veil on a truth that is still unclear today, on the origins of this escalation to violence.
Paul Greengrass’ desire for truth plunges us into the heart of a real drama: that of Ireland’s biggest-ever military blunder. In order to retrace every event of that bloody Sunday step by step, the director takes care not to omit any detail, presenting the facts as factually as possible, meticulously researching all the facts in the manner of a true historical testimony. Its aim is simple: to bring to light a vision as close as possible to reality. And you can’t help but be impressed by his attention to detail, the way he presents the facts and interprets them…
What’s more, to make his film even more credible, Paul Greengrass asked some of the demonstrators who actually experienced the Bloody Sunday tragedy to take part as actors. The entire population of Derry was also invited to join the crowd of protesters for the purposes of the film. An interesting way to reconstruct a day as realistically as possible…
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