Creeslough woman Sheila Friel's film Wins Audience Award at Greek Festival

An Buachaill Gealgháireach / The Laughing Boy / Το Γελαστό Παιδί – a trilingual film which was produced by Creeslough woman Sheila Friel and Kathryn Baird from Belfast has been presented with the much-coveted Audience Award at Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival in Greece.

The film was written and presented by Corkman Theo Dorgan and Dubliner Alan Gilsenan was the director. 

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An Buachaill Gealgháireach is the remarkable untold story of a song. An Irish song called The Laughing Boy written by a teenage rebel called Brendan Behan in memory of another iconic rebel, Michael Collins. The song also had an extraordinary and dramatic afterlife as To Yelasto Paidi, the powerful left-wing anthem of resistance against the dictatorship that ruled Greece in the late sixties and early seventies. 

Translated by the poet Vassilis Rotas, Behan's words in Greek were set to music by the legendary Mikis Theodorakis, the most famous Greek composer of all time. The song remains an enduring and potent cultural force in the heart of Greece today.

The film,  which is An Imagine Media Production, takes poet Theo Dorgan on an odyssey of his own, as he attempts to uncover the truth of the story behind the song. It is a narrative that interweaves the tragic and bloody birth-pangs of both modern Ireland and modern Greece. These histories are also bound together by something more profound and transcendent - the power of a song.  

As Theo says in the film, both the Irish and Greek versions of the song capture something unique: “…Some idea, perhaps, of the eternal rebel, some embodiment of revolt against small destiny, tyranny, the forces that tend always and everywhere to diminish if not actually crush our sense of the necessary largeness of life and the imagination...”

Producer Sheila Friel, from Imagine Media, said: "It is immensely gratifying to win an award always, but this is special since it comes from the audience. We were anxious, of course, bringing such a quintessential Greek film to Thessaloniki, given the sensitive political and cultural issues we are dealing with, but we got an amazing response there, a sense that we had, somehow, bridged the gap between two peoples, two cultures."

Producer Kathryn Baird, said: "We could not have hoped for a better response. A standing ovation is always heartening, but when the audience at the end began to sing To Yelasto Paidi, The Laughing Boy, I knew we had really hit the mark.

"This is the most important documentary festival in Europe, one of the key world festivals, and I am proud of all who worked to make this film possible. We are immensely grateful, also, to those who backed our film and made it possible -TG4, NI Screen, BAI, Culture Ireland and the Irish Embassy in Greece".

An Buachaill Gealgháireach is available on the TG4 Player here 

Filmed in Ireland, the UK, France and Greece, the film also features performances from a number of Irish musicians - including Andy Irvine, Donal Lunny, MayKay, Liam Ó Maonlaí and David Power and well-known musicians and singers from Greece, foremost among them Maria Farantouri, honoured throughout the world as the pre-eminent interpreter of the songs of Theodorakis.

President Michael D. Higgins and Sabina Higgins also hosted a special screening of the film, An Buachaill Gealgháireach, in Áras an Uachtaráin last month. The Greek and Cypriot Ambassadors to Ireland, and guests from the Greek community joined the production team at the screening where they celebrated Behan’s extraordinary achievement.