Der unsichtbare Mann
completed
The Invisible Man
Mischief Films
The jailbreaker is Danny Donnelly, born into an Irish catholic family. At the age of 16 he joined Sin Féin, the politically wing of IRA. At the age of 17 he was arrested while handing out leaflets and was convicted to ten years imprisonment only based on his membership in a terroristic organization.
50 years later Danny is travelling together with his daughter Una on the marks of his flight through today’s Irland meeting his helpers and antagonists from back then.
A film about the conflict in Northern Ireland from a completely new perspective about faith, blame and forgiveness.
Director | Georg Misch, Úna Ní Dhonghaíle |
Script | Úna Ní Dhonghaíle, Georg Misch |
Camera | Joerg Burger |
Sound | Georg Misch |
Editor | Úna Ní Dhonghaíle |
Producer | Ralph Wieser |
Production management | Florian Brüning, David Bohun |
Music | Jim Howard |
Trailer
Synopsis
On St. Stephens Day in 1960, a young political prisoner escapes from Belfast’s Crumlin Road prison. Just like in a Hollywood movie, he cuts the bars, abseils on a rope made of torn up sheets, dodges the searchlights, eludes machine gun nests and finally disappears into the freezing night of sleet and snow - without a trace.
Three years earlier, 18-year-old Danny Donnelly had been sentenced to 10 years in prison, the longest sentence ever given solely for being a member of the IRA. His escape sparked the biggest manhunt in the history of Ireland. 12.000 police and B- Specials chased him for one week until on New Year’s Eve, he made his way to safety south of the border.
50 years later, Danny is trying to escape from cancer. Faced with an uncertain future, he decides to take a trip into the past: Retracing his escape on exactly the same days between Christmas and New Year, following the same route, finding his hideouts, and most importantly meeting again the people who helped, as well as those who chased him.
The Invisible Man is a documentary road-movie, retracing Danny’s “Great Escape” in contemporary Northern Ireland, simultaneously travelling through past and present. At the same time, the film will interweave his story with the history of the Anglo-Irish conflict in order to understand what social conditions drove a teenager to join the IRA, and what later made him turn his back on the violence of the Provisional IRA, choosing to promote Irish identity through language, songs and poetry instead of building bombs. Finally the film will investigate why Danny’s amazing story was airbrushed out of the history of Northern Ireland as well as the history of the IRA.
“Every time when “Escape from Alcatraz” with Clint Eastwood was on the telly I said to my children: I did that!” Danny Donnelly