Lyra review: Killing of a brilliant young woman

A lot of news has intervened since Lyra McKee was shot dead while covering disturbances in Derry towards the beginning of 2019. It is stirring to be here reminded quite what an effect the journalist’s death had on those she left behind. Her funeral had to be delayed as Theresa May, then the British prime minister, was running late. Michael D Higgins, Leo Varadkar, Michael D Higgins and all the main Northern Irish party leaders were also in attendance.

[ Una Mullally: Derry’s youth struggle to escape dark past ]

Alison Millar’s excellent documentary, winner of the audience award at last year’s Cork Film Festival, places McKee’s death in historical context, but it is most valuable for fleshing out the extraordinary human being herself. Born and raised in Belfast, McKee took to journalism from a young age and – as friends and colleagues agree – managed the tricky task of blending unremitting doggedness with an endless amiability. Millar is lucky in that, reporting on someone who grew up in the digital age, she has a wealth of audio and video to draw upon. We see McKee receiving awards. We see her processing leads even on holiday. We see her trying to eat her lunch while Marie the cat presses for a share. Humour is woven in with the grief. “‘Thank God you’re not pregnant,” she imagines her mother saying when eventually told her daughter was gay.

Along the way, Millar fits in thumbnail sketches of stories that McKee uncovered on her way to what should have been international fame. She looked into the 1971 Ballymurphy massacre. She investigated an epidemic of missing children. Her study of the increasing rate of suicide in the years after the ceasefire bring out some of her most astute social commentary – the “peace” was, she explains, one that “doesn’t disrupt the middle class”.

[ Una Mullally: Derry’s youth struggle to escape dark past ]

There must surely have been enough material to fashion a film twice as long, but Millar is to be praised for organising her material in a taut montage that adroitly balances the public with the private. It is hard to think of a time when the film would not be (to use a popular critical cliche) strangely relevant, but, given what’s going on now in Stormont, one cannot but raise an ironical eyebrow as, at her funeral, Father Martin Magill – equally impressive in new interviews – wonders why it then took “the death of a 29-year-old woman” to bring the politicians together.