‘Lyra’ Doc About Slain Northern Irish Reporter Sheds Light on Young Talent Lost to Terrorism: ‘The Whole of Ireland Came To a Standstill When She Was Killed’

Manori Ravindran
·10 min read
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We all have that friend you share good news with first. Their reaction is jubilant, fizzing, maybe even a little OTT. They’re happier for you than you are for yourself. That was Lyra McKee for director Alison Millar.

McKee, an investigative journalist from Belfast, was just 29 years old when she was shot in the head by a stray bullet and killed during New IRA riots in the city of Derry, Northern Ireland. She had been reporting on the violence that had erupted on the Creggan estate, and was posting up-to-the-minute updates to her Twitter account. She’d been expected at a dinner at Millar’s the very next day, where the BAFTA-winning documentary maker had agreed to make her favorite: Lasagne. McKee never made it.

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“We were going to have dinner at my house on Good Friday. It was going to be Anna Burns, who’d won the Booker Prize [for the novel ‘Milkman’], who was really close with Lyra, Darragh McIntyre, an investigative journalist, and myself,” explains Millar.

“The last message I have on my phone [from Lyra] was ‘You’re the best!’ because I’d agreed to make lasagne. Then at midnight, [McKee’s partner] Sara rang me and said, ‘I’m at the hospital, the police are here, Lyra’s been shot. She’s dead. Could I give the media your mobile number, will you manage them?’”

Millar was approached by the family about making a documentary, which they felt could be useful in their campaigning work. It took time to convince the director — “I didn’t know if I could do it well enough because I loved her and I didn’t want to let her down,” says Millar — she eventually agreed.

The resulting film, “Lyra,” is a 90-minute portrait of the exuberant young reporter who took a shine to journalism at a young age and never stopped asking “Why?” The film conveys the heartrending irony that McKee would eventually become one of the victims of the post-conflict violence she often wrote about, and die on the eve of Good Friday — 21 years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed, ending the Troubles that devastated Northern Ireland since the 1960s.

“The whole of Ireland came to a standstill when she was killed,” says Millar. “There was a big outpouring of grief here; north and south Dublin was packed; and there was a parade through the streets of people carrying candles.”

Funded and commissioned by Channel 4, and supported by Northern Ireland Screen, Irish-language broadcaster TG4 and private funders, “Lyra” was boarded by Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton’s production company HiddenLight Productions earlier this year. It was a fitting collaboration given former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s role in helping to close the Good Friday peace deal.

“Lyra,” which was edited by Chloe Lambourne, editor of the Oscar-nominated “For Sama,” won the Tim Hetherington Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest earlier this year. The film is being sold internationally by Cinephil and was recently picked up for the U.K. and Ireland by Wildcard Distribution.

Speaking to Variety, Millar detailed her initial hesitation to take on the project, the challenges of creating an archive-heavy film with scarce material of McKee on camera, and why the reporter’s story — which drew international attention upon her death — is so universal.

A huge congratulations on the film. I was in pieces, as I think most people probably are after watching it.

I’ve made a lot of films about various things. I made a film about ‘the Disappeared’ years ago, people that were murdered, and secretly disappeared, buried in bogs. I’ve made lots of films. But, you know, it’s different whenever you’re connected to it, because it’s someone you’re about to have dinner with the next day at your house; it’s somebody who had messaged you that afternoon saying, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, love you loads!’ because I’m making her favorite supper. And then you get the call at midnight saying she’s been shot. I thought she was just ringing to say they’ll be a bit late tomorrow. It was kind of a blur at the beginning, but then I started thinking, ‘Well, she was so inspiring.’ I guess what we all wanted to do is tell the world who she really was and why she was on the cusp of [something huge]. Patti Smith had tweeted when she died that this beautiful flame had been extinguished. People had started picking up her work and reading her books and articles, and then it was like, one night, four shots, one bullet, and that’s it. It’s all over.

How long had you known Lyra?

About 12 years or so. I was making a documentary about a rape crisis centre in Belfast that was threatened with closure, and there was this young woman rattling around the office. I remember stopping her and saying, ‘Excuse me, are you on a school placement?’ Because she never looked her age, ever. And she said, ‘No! I’m Lyra McKee. I’ve just won Sky Journalist of the Year.’ She was a bit like, ‘Excuse me? I’m 16.’ I talked to her like she was 12. It was my fault. I was being bossy and she put me in my place, and after that we literally became best friends. I have so many drafts on my computer of the different stories she wrote, and we swapped contacts. When I made a film, if it was a tough story, I always sent Lyra because I knew she’d be amazing. We had this Dropbox on our desk where we shared ideas and the last idea she’d put in was the day before [she died] — a lead she got on a story and she was going to talk to me about it. I just lost this incredible inspiration. I was determined that other people would know how magical and inspiring she was. That’s what drove me to make the film, as well as her work on Northern Ireland and the north of Ireland. It’s accessible, and brings a new generation of people to examine it since the ceasefires, and see what she was seeing and what’s really going on, as she says, beneath the surface.

How did you prepare for that? I imagine that must have been very traumatic. How soon after her death were you approached about the film?

About three weeks passed and her sister said to me, ‘I’m going to London to collect this award for Lyra with Mummy. Do you want to come?’ And I said ‘yeah.’ And she says, ‘Well, why don’t you film it? Because maybe we could use it for our campaign.’ So I filmed that. And then all these other TV companies and people from America started emailing. And at that time, I didn’t know if I could do it well enough because I loved her and I didn’t want to let her down. It was her sister and her partner who said Lyra wouldn’t want anyone else to tell her story. So we all mucked in together, and that’s when Channel 4 and [former C4 commissioner] Siobhan Sinnerton said, ‘Let’s start making this film.’ Strangely enough, once we started cutting with [Lyra’s] voice, and we found her voice, it was really comforting, because we were spending every day with Lyra. Once we decided to use her voice to narrate her own story, and try to bring the audience closer, too, we really enjoyed it. Going through old [tape recorder] tapes was hysterical because she hadn’t labeled them very well. Some of it was hilarious and then some of it was labeled with code numbers, because they were obviously dangerous. [Editor Chloe Lambourne] and I would go through the tapes trying to work out who they were, and then go and get their permission and go and see them. There was quite a lot of investigative work with what she left behind.

It must be difficult for you as a filmmaker because you’re trying to convey a regional, local message with the film, while also keeping the story engaging and universal for international audiences. How did you strike that balance?

I thought, well, there’s so many universal themes in what Lyra was writing, like the persecution and hate crimes against the LGBTQ community. We picked those stories so that we weren’t just nailing the problems down here, but really opening up a world where people go, ‘Yeah, yeah, we know what it’s like here.’ We also approached it thinking that, outside the north of Ireland, not that many people know that much about [the Troubles and post-conflict issues]. That sounds ridiculous because it’s really overwritten and over-documented in some ways, but in other ways, [it’s still obscure].

What might Lyra make of the Clintons boarding the documentary as co-producers?

I think with everyone who came aboard, she’d have been blown away. She’s such a humble, beautiful human being. She’d be like, ‘You wouldn’t believe this! Oh, so Bono’s helped you, that’s amazing!’ But it was an easy one for me because Siobhan, my commissioner at Channel 4, left to join HiddenLight, and she was my champion and was going to keep across this film. She’s a Belfast girl. She moved there and showed it to Hillary and Chelsea, and Bill.

How did you manage to piece together the archive? Because it’s rare for journalists to be on camera, and to have Lyra narrating the film feels really unique.

That was really hard work. But once we discovered that she could tell her story, it was such a great moment for all of us. Because we started it and we thought, ‘Oh my God, can we keep this up.’ Actually, we were so lucky finding more [of Lyra’s tape recorders]. And then some guy who’d done a podcast with her contacted us and said, ‘Hey, is this any use to you?’ So we had enough of her talking about her childhood and everything that just about made it. [Editor Chloe Lambourne] had made ‘For Sama’ and had already been on a journey with [that film’s protagonist and narrator] Waad Al-Kateab. She’d really worked on that first person narrative, so it meant that when we started on ‘Lyra,’ Chloe had a great experience cutting and working in that way. I’ll always be grateful to her for the patience and artistry she put in.

There’s a scene that’s especially powerful, at Lyra’s funeral, when politicians are awkwardly stood and clapping after the priest calls attention to their presence despite the parliament being dissolved. There are still issues in Northern Ireland as it waits for elections in the new year to help work out elements of the Brexit deal that have caused the Democratic Unionist party’s boycott of Stormont (Northern Ireland’s parliament).

I think that’s the thing. We’re now in a political vacuum again over here. Where are they? Someone said to me, ‘How do you feel watching the funeral footage?’ and I think I do feel angry — angry that they came, clapped and stood awkwardly, and they’re still not together. So what lessons have been learned from that one death? There’s so many deaths in this country, but it’s like, that one death was a young woman with her life in front of her, so why are they not back to work? They’re still fighting, they’re still not in there. It’s incredibly frustrating for so many people that just want to have a better life.

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