Inspiring for countless reasons, chief among them the tenacity, dedication and passion of its director, Simon Fitzmaurice, the crowd-funded film My Name Is Emily is a poetic coming-of-age story, which acknowledges loss and grief to underscore the importance of connection. As its titular teenage heroine asserts, “If you hide from death, you hide from life.”
It’s a message rendered all the more poignant by the journey of Fitzmaurice, who suffers from motor neuron disease and was told in 2008 that he had four years to live.
Communicating and directing via iris-recognition technology, the father of five and director of award-winning short films such as The Sound of People and Full Circle understands how a person’s determination, priorities and very self can become crystallised in the face of adversity.
This struggle is captured onscreen by Evanna Lynch (best known as Harry Potter’s Luna Lovegood), who plays a young woman left wary and distrustful when her mother is killed in a car accident.
In addition, her quietly philosophical father is institutionalised when his theories about the nature of existence become all-consuming. When Lynch’s character embarks upon a road trip with an enamoured classmate (George Webster), she realises that the lines between adulthood and adolescence, agency and dependence are finer than she believed – and that strength and vulnerability must be allowed to co-exist.
Suitably for a film about a philosopher’s daughter and the intangible, organic nature of maturity, My Name Is Emily blends elements of the poetic and ethereal with grounded emotions. Emily’s voiceover is wise and existential, while the script brims with a beautifully blunt honesty. “You’re all better now,” remarks one character, only to realise that life is rarely so straightforward. “I don’t know what I am,” comes the reply.
With a gorgeous soundtrack boasting Irish artists like James Vincent McMorrow and Liza Flume, Fitzmaurice’s uplifting film is an incredible feature debut.