Omagh

On August 15, 1998, an Irish separatist group known as the Real IRA detonated a car bomb in the small market town of Omagh, Northern Ireland, claiming the lives of 31 people and injuring hundreds of others. Screenwriter Paul Greengrass dramatizes the tragic event in the Irish film OMAGH, centering the action on the real-life story of one grieving father's search for justice. After losing his 21-year-old son in the blast, mild-mannered auto mechanic Michael Gallagher (Irish actor Gerald McSorley, himself an Omagh native) becomes an outspoken advocate for the victims' families as they find themselves increasingly sidelined by an indifferent bureaucracy. Like Paul Greengrass's BLOODY SUNDAY, OMAGH employs a cinema-verite style marked by handheld video and gritty photography for documentary-like realism and heightened emotional impact.