Lisa O’Connor from Clare told David Hennessy about her personal short film Fleeting inspired by the Repeal the 8th referendum.
London- based Clare writer and actress Lisa O’Connor’s short film Fleeting has screened at many film festivals around Ireland and the UK and earned awards for both Lisa and the film’s director.
Originally titled Spitting Image, it started its life as a short stage piece at Southwark Playhouse inspired by Lisa’s experience of the Repeal the 8th referendum in 2018.
It was when Lisa’s friend Louisa Connolly- Burnham, who has been featured in The Irish World for her film Sister Wives which has just been long listed for a BAFTA, suggested making a film out of it that it took on a new life.
Lisa, from Corofin in Co. Clare, has acting credits that include Call the Midwife and featuring in Sister Wives. The Irish World caught her onstage in Julia Pascal’s 12:37 at the Finborough Theatre back in 2022.
Fleeting is her first short film as a writer and she also takes the lead role.
The story centres around Saoirse, who flies home to Ireland to vote yes. While home, she meets her dad for a pint.
He is firmly against the bill, and over the course of the film they discuss the topic and their opinions on it – until a secret is revealed that could change their relationship forever.
Lisa was herself one of the thousands of people who returned home to Ireland to vote in 2018.
Saoirse’s father is played by Brendan Dunlea who The Irish World has seen in the award-winning play Paddy Goes to Petra.
What moved you to write Fleeting?
“It was the year after the referendum and I found myself in a position where I had to have a termination and it made me reflect massively.
“No woman can prepare herself for what’s going to come up when you’re in a position to make that choice.
“It’s not easy.
“So that’s why to have the choice is such a human need.
“It’s ironic that that choice is questioned as if it’s almost like a liberty for us, it’s not.
“It’s still a really difficult choice.
“So I found myself in that position reflecting on the referendum and the fact that my dad is a staunch Catholic.
“I grew up very religious and he was a big no to the referendum even though I tried talking to him on the phone, sending him certain interviews and articles and trying to get him to see that just having the choice could save lives.
“It’s just health care at the end of the day.
“I really tried to get him to understand but he couldn’t and he didn’t.
“So I was left with this secret that I had to go through alone in 2019 and it just made me imagine if it was the day of the referendum and I was in this vulnerable position and the stakes were higher.
“I just imagined being in a pub with my dad.
“We both love the GAA, we love hurling and football.
“It was like, ‘Let’s set up an environment where they’re going to share such common interests and love for each other.
“Originally the play was called Spitting Image because they’re the spitting image of each other but the irony is that they’re voting opposite ways.
“It’s the jovial relationship between a father and a daughter where a man of a certain generation doesn’t even mean to comment the way he does but it’s actually quite surreal that actually it holds certain weight because of the subject matter and the day that’s in it.”
That father/daughter relationship that we see in the film was very real for you.
The father in the film says something about ‘baby killing’ at one stage having no idea what she’s going through or the call that she gets on her phone that he even thinks of answering..
“I did kind of play around with the ending being different where he did answer.
“How would that father deal with answering that phone call and her coming back from the toilet? It would be a whole different ending.
“But I think with the way Irish people deal with things, it still would have been danced around and I think it still would have been not confronted.
“Some families just can’t speak about the elephant in the room.
“That’s also what I was trying to reveal.
“Brendan did a great job.”
How have the reactions been to both the film and the prior play?
“It’s been really incredible.
“When we did the premiere in London, a few women in the audience felt seen and heard and felt less alone after watching Fleeting.
“Whether they had conversations like that in their household or whether they had to go through a termination themselves they just felt, ‘Oh my God, somebody’s talking about it’, or ‘Somebody’s talking about the weight you have to carry, or the guilt you have to bear’.
“And that really struck me.
“That was really special to hear that.
“And then across the board with the reaction in audiences and film festivals it’s been nothing but positive.
“But then in my own household, I’m obviously bringing up tension that we would have had almost six years ago.
“That’s been quite a personal challenge, showing that to my dad when it’s based on my dad but then he took to it really well.
“My dad was really happy with it, which was really good, such a relief.
“He felt it was really an unbiased depiction, it’s the reality.
“It’s such realism, I think heightened realism.
“And even at one of the film festivals I went to a documentarian was like, ‘I felt it was really documentary style, I felt we were flies on the wall and it was almost so ordinary that you had to lean in and realise the subject matter that was being covered or the conversations were actually about bigger things’.
“I found that really amazing because when I wrote it, I imagined a fly on the wall overhearing a conversation in a pub, so the fact that that came through as the final product is great.”
How do you look back on that time when you were one of those who flew back to vote?
“I think a large reason we did pass the referendum was because of those who flew back.
“I’m not saying I’m the hero at all, that’s to really highlight how young people have left the island because of mass immigration and the housing crisis.
“Realistically young people had to return home to fight for young people’s rights.
“I think it’s almost a reflection on the general election that happened a few weeks ago where the same parties were being voted into position because the youth aren’t there to even vote for the likes of the parties that might be more aligned.
“I think the soldiers that did fly home was very important.
“I did a GoFundMe.
“I actually couldn’t afford it at the time.
“I had just buried my granny and you know how it is with Irish funerals: You find out so last minute, you have to get home.
“I remember just having to spend a fortune to get home and then the referendum was in a few weeks so I was really stuck.
“It was my first year in London as well so I was not exactly raking in the pounds, but I put it up on GoFundMe and a woman from New Zealand with two daughters replied within 20 minutes and sent me the money.
“She said, ‘Please go home and vote on behalf of me and my daughters because we can’t make the journey and I want them to return to an Ireland that has better health care for women’.
“So there was this network of women supporting other women who were geographically closer to Ireland.
“It really did have such an impact on women worldwide.
“Irish people are just everywhere so I think the word just spread that this was a female mission.
“That was really special to have that support.”
What do you remember feeling when the referendum was passed? I doubt it was celebratory but more relief..
“With these kind of things, it is just relief.
“It’s like, ‘Oh god, there’s humanity’.
“I think that’s why when it goes the opposite way- like in America where we just see more and more laws change- it’s terrifying.
“You feel genuinely fearful that there’s not going to be the right facilities in place for your daughters or yourself.
“It was definitely a relief.
“It was like, finally we have arrived.
“It felt like Irish women had arrived in the modern day.
“But then I think of the Polish women.
“It’s still illegal in Poland.
“It also highlights all the injustice.
“When you get to a certain place of relief and ‘we have arrived’, it still highlights the injustice in other places.
“The fight’s not over.
“Being a feminist seems almost pointless because it feels like we live in such a fair society but when you talk about feminism, you’re actually thinking of the women globally so you’re thinking of the bigger picture, you’re thinking of the fights in other places.
“I’m thinking of the women in Iraq and Syria and in Poland, it’s not just about me.”
You mention changes in America which seems to have taken great steps backwards so is it a case of while Ireland had a victory in recent years, victories that we thought were won decades ago have been-
“Are still in threat.
“Yeah, that’s so true.
“That’s why it is just a constant conversation, I think.
“What are the reasons that you really do want to control women’s bodies?
“I think that’s the question.
“Why is that such a necessity for our government to control women’s bodies, it’s mind boggling.
“I just think it’s a way to put women in their place again.”
Lisa has always enjoyed writing verses or scenes and has won competitions for her writing, but Fleeting became her first self written project.
“It definitely felt like a calling.
“It felt like I needed to get something off my chest and I, to be totally honest, needed to find empathy and understanding for Dad’s choice to vote no.
“I just was finding it probably a bit alienating and lonely going through all this by myself, and if it was a different household, I could have confided and relied on them a bit more but because of opposing views, I had to learn how to understand where he was coming from which then opens up a whole different generation of Ireland.
“I had to go back to that place and back to understanding how much Ireland has changed.
“That’s what I mean by we’ve arrived.
“We’ve arrived because for so long, we were censored and living in this indoctrinated Church State and that’s what I mean by we’ve arrived to modern day.
“I think we’ve put in some hard graft in the last two decades of modernising ourselves.”
It mirrors Saoirse’s own journey, doesn’t it? The first place we see her is in a church but in the final scene she is not being dictated to by church or anyone..
“And Saoirse means freedom, it’s her fight.
“I wanted to name her that for a reason.
“And also, it was Louisa’s direction: She lifts her head and opens her eyes in the church and at the end, it mirrors that.
“It’s about her making her own choice.
“It’s a liberating moment, for sure.
“Also, we keep things from Catholicism close to us.
“Going into a church and saying a prayer, lighting a candle is still something I love to do.
“It doesn’t mean I’m suddenly anti-church.
“There’s still so much that I gained growing up Catholic because I think having faith is so important whatever that faith might be.
“I liked the idea of lighting a candle at the beginning because everyone still does that as a ritual.”
I noticed the singer- songwriter Cian Ducrot’s name in the credits, how did he come to be involved?
“He’s a good friend.
“My partner is a drummer, Fionn Hennessy-Hayes, and he drums for Cian.
“I raised money for 30 days asking people for a fiver or a tenor, your auntie, whatever, anything you can give.
“Cian saw I was so close to getting across the mark and he sent in a really generous donation to get me across the line to make sure that I could make it.
“He’s so good. He’s so kind and he just really believes everyone should be out there making their art if they want and can, and money shouldn’t be an issue.
“I think he just wanted to see it made and I’ve sent it to him and he loves it, and he’s delighted to be a part of it.”
You also dedicate the film to Sinéad O’Connor as it is very much in her spirit…
“I have always grown up with a grá for Sinéad and I’m very lucky that my mam always handed me important books about Irish women, whether it’s Nuala O Faolain or Nell McCafferty or Sinéad O’Connor, or like Edna O’Brien.
“I just grew up with these figures and these loud women.
“And when Sinéad passed, I was just devastated.
“I knew her fight for Repeal.
“She had been fighting since the 80s for women’s rights in Ireland, so it felt right. We’d lost her that year so she was on our mind.
“Very sad to lose her.”
Lisa also wanted to use the short film as a way to remember Savita Halappanavar, who died after being denied a termination of her pregnancy by doctors at University Hospital Galway back in 2012.
“I also wanted to dedicate it to Savita.
“She was the catalyst for Repeal.
“That was good to bring up her memory.”
The awards show that the film resonates..
“Yeah, Louisa won Best Director in Brighton Rocks which was our first BIFA qualifying one, which was amazing.
“Then I won Best Actor at Disappear Here Film Festival in Donegal which was really cool.
“They’re really on the ground speaking about big issues so I think that’s why Fleeting stuck out to them.”
Something that Saoirse brings up with her father is how British people are obsessed with class.
“Another part of Fleeting that really sticks out to people is the class question.
“It was a big thing I realised when I did move to the UK, was this talk about how well off people were.
“It was like a known piece of knowledge and information that the English seemed to share and I seemed totally naive until I heard about private schools and how they’re so different and your upbringing will be different.
“I just found that really interesting.
“I went to secondary school in Ennis.
“The nearest boarding school was in Tipperary and all the bold boys were just sent there.
“It wasn’t for this kind of status.
“I really wanted to put that in to just say that.”
The film deals with another serious issue and it’s one that something has to be done about as it affects a lot of people, and that’s badly poured Guinness. Saoirse says she has to tell barmen about it in London..
“Sometimes they don’t even let it sit. You have to call them out on it.”
Fleeting is screening at short film festivals around the UK and Ireland.
For more information, go to fleeting_film on Instagram.
