Film director Alison Millar and Lyra McKee’s partner Sara Canning at documentary launch i 2022
The 2024 Broadcast Awards were held in London on Friday evening with Lyra, by director Co Antrim-born Alison Millar, winning the award for Best Documentary.
Released in cinemas in 2022, the film was broadcast last year on Channel 4 and focussed on the life, career and death of 29-year-old writer and aspiring investigative journalist Lyra McKee, who was shot dead while observing a riot in Derry in 2019.
The New IRA group later claimed responsibility for the shooting.
Mini series Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland was named winner of the Best Documentary Series category.
A Broadcast Awards judge said of the film: “The director’s intimate knowledge of Lyra’s life underscored the story and we all fell a little bit in love with her.”
Another said it was “not only a stunning tribute to a remarkable young woman, whose story had only just begun, but a seamlessly interwoven tale of Lyra’s life and life in Northern Ireland”.
Once Upon A Time in Northern Ireland, which was created by director James Bluemel, it was screened on BBC One last year, and was a follow up to the London film-maker’s Bafta award-winning Once Upon A Time In Iraq 2020 miniseries.
The critically acclaimed five-part series charts the history of the Troubles, from the outbreak of conflict during the Civil Rights movement to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
Created by director James Bluemel, it was screened on BBC One last year, and was a follow up to the London film-maker’s Bafta award-winning Once Upon A Time In Iraq 2020 miniseries.
Lyra McKee and partner Sara Canning. Lyra had plans to propose to Sara and marry her in Donegal
Ahead of its release, Bluemel said the show was “made for an English audience that might have fatigue and a wilful apathy about the Troubles, which is shameful”.
A Broadcast Awards judge said it was an “extraordinarily descriptive and emotive first-person testimony, bringing the horrors of recent history to life more than any other documentary series I can remember”.
Both Lyra and Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland also won gongs at the last year’s British Documentary Awards.
