Massacre at Ballymurphy tells the story of a small group of relatives and survivors fighting for the truth behind one of the British government’s most shameful cover-ups. This new feature documentary from director Callum Macrae is a
shocking expose of state-sponsored killing, political expediency, black operations – and the UK government’s ongoing attempts to hide those secrets.
Massacare at Ballymurphy will reveal how, six months before the notorious Bloody Sunday killings by the British Parachute Regiment in Derry, the same regiment was involved in the targeted shooting, over three days, of ten innocent Catholic civilians in the Ballymurphy housing estate in Belfast. Among the dead, a Catholic priest attending the wounded, a mother of eight who had been out looking for her lost child and an unarmed father of twelve shot fourteen times by Parachute regiment gunmen.
Using devastating new evidence, previously unheard eye-witness testimony, secret government documents and innovative CGI reconstruction techniques this film will demonstrate that the victims were entirely innocent– and that the official cover story is a complete fiction.
For the relatives of the victims, whose loved ones still stand officially accused of being gunmen and women, this is a terrible ongoing injustice. But it is also a block on the road to truth and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.
The producers worked closely with those families and survivors to tell this story. Among our key protagonists is first man to be shot and injured. He survived, but while he lay injured in the line of fire he was given the last rites by the priest who was then himself shot dead. They also worked with the relatives’ legal team which now includes leading Human Rights barrister Michael Mansfield QC. Mansfield has a long record of involvement in such cases,
including the successful appeal of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and of course the Bloody Sunday Inquiry. He also represented the McLibel Two.
Producers believe the film will have the same remarkable international impact as their last documentary feature, No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka, which was credited with playing a crucial role in convincing the UN to launch an international inquiry into the crimes it exposed. The Ballymurphy Precedent will be a powerful piece of cinema incorporating innovative forensic reconstruction with an approach to the cinematography, editing and colourising of the film which references classic seventies nouveau noir cinema.
At its heart the film suggests why the political and military authorities are so desperate to hide the truth. Because behind the Massacre at Ballymurphy, lies a truth even darker than those ten tragic deaths alone would suggest: A truth the relatives and survivors are determined to expose –a truth that will lead to a rewriting of that shameful period in British history. The uncomfortable truth is that neither the Ballymurphy nor the Bloody Sunday killings were isolated or unpredictable. They were part of a pattern – and possibly part of a plan.
This film will follow the story of the relative’s brave and determined campaign–and reveal in devastating, forensic detail the truth the British government is so anxious to keep secret.