The day after the Brexit referendum, I knew we needed to make a film about the Irish border. The decision to leave the European Union made the border overnight something of a catchphrase on the nightly news alongside words like hard, soft and backstop.
Along with producer Rachel Hooper and Northern Irish director, Guy King – who had grown up in the border town of Derry – we set out to find a way of making the film. We weren’t interested in making a current affairs film about the border (after all the news bulletins were doing that) or indeed about Brexit. We wanted to convey the experience of living on the border. We quickly found some remarkable characters and stories, from the 102 year-old who is older than the border to the people who smuggled wedding dresses across the border to the woman whose husband was used as a human bomb at the border…..
Border Country: When Ireland was Divided will be available on BBC iPlayer later tonight after the BBC NI broadcast at 22.35pm.
