Projects matching: Trevor Birney

Synopsis

The story of George J. Mitchell, a working-class boy from Maine who would become the majority leader of the US Senate and one of the most respected political negotiators and leaders of his generation. From the basketball court of Bowdoin College to the streets of Berlin as a counterintelligence agent, Mitchell tells his incredible story in his own words.
Filmed in his home state of Maine across the summer of 2023, this documentary showcases a problem solver who has worked across the worlds of politics, baseball, and business with an unending passion for understanding through dialogue in his country and around the world, working to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Synopsis

The style, the glam, the music, the hats! Culture Club burst onto the UK new romantic scene in 1981 and became one of the most defining and influential bands of their generation. This impossibly fun documentary celebrates the band’s story in their own words, while also revealing the surprisingly tender love story at its centre.
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2025 - World premiere

Synopsis

When fate brings disillusioned music teacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed ‘low life scum’ Naoise and Liam Og, the sound of Irish music is changed forever.
Under the name Kneecap, their band begin moulding the language to fit their tough, anarchic and hedonistic lives. A language encumbered with forty words for stone now has one for stoned. But to get their voices heard the trio must overcome police, paramilitaries and politicians as the future status of the Irish language erupts into the public arena. Yet their worst enemies are often themselves, as their illegal exploits, families and relationship pressures threaten to pull the plug on their dreams.
Across the globe a language dies every two weeks. This is a darkly comic story about our intrinsic human urge for identity; whether personal, political or artistic.
Official Selection Sundance Film Festival 2024 - NEXT - World premiere
Official Selection SXSW Film Festival 2024
Official Selection Tribeca Film Festival 2024

Synopsis

In 2002 in Bojayá, Colombia 79 people died when The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) launched a homemade mortar onto a church where many were hiding from crossfire between the left-wing FARC and right-wing paramilitaries. Leyner Palacios survived, but 28 of his family members did not. The Bojayá massacre was one of the worst atrocities in Colombia’s 50 year-long conflict.
When peace between the government and the FARC was signed in 2016, after decades of conflict, Leyner made it his mission to ensure the peace deal was implemented to his people’s benefit, receiving a Nobel Peace Prize in the process. Capturing one victim’s incredible struggle for justice, this film follows the process of identifying the dead of Bojayá during the faltering implementation of the controversial peace accords.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2019 - World Showcase - World premiere

Synopsis

The pioneers enrolled in NASA's first female astronaut training program finally open up about their top-secret testing, which pitted them against the established boys' club of American astronauts of the 1950s.
Official Selection Hot Docs 2018 - International premeire

Synopsis

Alex Gibney reopens the mysterious unsolved case revolving the 1994 Loughinisland massacre. On 18 June, in the small village of Loughinisland, Northern Ireland, six men were brutally murdered and a few others were wounded in a pub while watching the World Cup soccer match. Despite a long investigation by the police and many confusing leads, no perpetrators of the attack were ever found.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - International premiere

Synopsis

George Best, Northern Ireland’s legendary star remains one of the most naturally gifted footballers there has ever been. Famously called the ‘best player in the world’ by Pelé, George Best galvanised Manchester United’s five-year recovery from the tragedy of the Munich air crash. His skill and exuberance inspired them to win league titles and the European Cup, even though he was little more than a teenager.
Tragically, his career in the upper echelons of sport was over before he turned 29, the result of his bruising battle with alcoholism and the crushing pressure of modern fame. (After all, this was Britain in the frenzy of Beatle-mania and 1960s youth culture, where Best was dubbed ‘El Beatle’ by the world’s media.) (LFF brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Journey Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

By the early 1980s, after two decades of violence and unrest, the situation in Northern Ireland took a sudden and profound turn inside the infamous Maze Prison. Seeking the right to be treated as political prisoners rather than common criminals, Irish Republicans led by Bobby Sands began a prison hunger strike that would draw international attention to the conflict. In the 66 days that he refused food, Sands would be elected to the British Parliament, put the Irish Republican struggle centre stage on the world news agenda, and pay the ultimate price for his political convictions.
The film combines a powerful mosaic of archival materials, reconstructions and the illuminating accounts of former prisoners, commentators and key players in the drama. With Sands' evocative prison diary at its core, the film brings fresh insight to an iconic figure who single-handedly created a transformative moment in Ireland's history that had global aftershocks. (Hot Docs brochure)
Hot Docs 2016 - World premiere