The Image You Missed

Just didn't work for me

I had a line that used to end the film but I ended up cutting it out. It said: "film is the art of conjuring ghosts, not getting rid of them." I used to think filming could act like a kind of catharsis and exorcism: you film to try to get something off your chest so that you can get rid of it. But I never found it to play out that way, because by making a film you're essentially creating a ghost that you're going to live and travel around the world with, and talk to people about. Essentially, you're making something that will live on - you're not getting rid of anything. So, it wasn't really cathartic at all. That said, I already felt a certain peace in my relationship with my father before I started making the film. I wasn't in a turmoil trying to work it out, so to speak. But I did feel like there was some unfinished business to attend to, and I wanted to know more about him and his world, and looking back I feel as though I did build something which now has its own existence in the world, and there's something really satisfying about that. But it’s always an unfinished process. I was thinking a lot about the idea of reconciliation when I was making the film. Reconciliation between me and my father, between North and South, between his time and mine. I thought a lot about what it is like to place one image next to another. There's always something missing in between, a weirdly primal desire of wanting to make a whole out of what is not. It's almost like the idea of going back to the womb - a certain desire that can never truly be fulfilled.

• Donal Foreman; "The Personal and the Political: An Interview with Donal Foreman" (Leonardo Goi); Mubi (May 14, 2018)

For me, if a documentary gets a theatrical release, there must be a tangible reason as to why. By that I mean, why was it released in the cinema, as opposed to on television, which, in terms of how audiences engage with the mediums, is a more natural home for the d...