Derry Born and based, the formidable documentary filmmaker tells the Talking Derry Girls about her latest film. Currently showing at selected cinemas across the UK and Ireland, "Stolen" captures the anguish, anger and the horrors surrounding Ireland’s Mother and Baby Institutions. 

A true Derry Girl Margo has a back catalogue of work which carries social injustice, particularly the rights of women, at its core. The scandal that surrounded these "homes'' which has only come to light in recent years has sent ripples and shockwaves around the world. Babies separated from their mothers and sent for adoption, trafficked and sold into servitude. The unimaginable cruelty has been the subject of a Government enquiry with much of the horror still left untold or recognised. 

In one mother's words "She took him off me, turned her back and walked away" is just one of the babies taken for adoption without his mother's consent. Just one of thousands of stories which may never be told. "Stolen" gives a voice to some of those lost children and their mothers.

Pregnancy in Catholic Ireland was the theme of Margo's 1990 film "Hush a Bye Baby". Set in 1980's Derry it showed the harsh realities of teenage pregnancy. How a baby conceived in the innocence of young love was feared more than a cancer diagnosis. The film itself has glimpses of what we all grew to know and love in "Derry Girls", though as she readily admits herself "not as many laughs". Margo's priest is very reminiscent of Father Peter…but then Father Peter is very like a lot of priests…

Margo has a tale or two to tell about how Sinead O'Connor came to appear in the film - "there wasn't a lot of call for bald headed schoolgirls in Derry at the time". There is also the secret to the perfect sausage roll and did they dare ask about clitoris allsorts…

Margo Harkin 

Besom Productions 

Aosdana

Hush a bye Baby (1990) 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102080/

Stolen (2023) review in Guardian 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/01/stolen-review-chilling-account-of-irelands-mother-and-baby-homes-horror

Derry Film and Video workshop

Field Day Theatre Company 

Brian Friel 

Fear of Gods - Derry band, Jim Curran who worked with Margo Harkin suggested a young up and coming singer/songwriter to do the music for Margo’s film Hush a bye Baby. (1989) https://fanningsessions.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/fear-of-gods/

Bronagh Gallagher - The Commitment from the Finale of Derry Girls.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronagh_Gallagher

We also had a chat about Bronagh who turned up at Marie-Louise’s Mother’s doorstep as a child wanting to learn how to be an actor! 

Ep 1 Talking Derry Girls 

Ann Lovett's death came just four months after the outcome of a divisive abortion referendum in which a two-thirds majority voted to enshrine the right to life of the unborn in the constitution, creating confusion over where that left the rights of the mother. Jan 31 1984 co Longford https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/ann-lovett-death-of-a-strong-kick-ass-girl-1.3429792

Abortion referendum in Ireland 1983 https://theconversation.com/abortion-the-story-of-suffering-and-death-behind-irelands-ban-and-subsequent-legalization-182812

The Mother and Baby Institution in Tuam 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/25/a-stain-on-irelands-conscience-tuam-home-for-unmarried-mothers-gives-up-grimmest-of-buried-secrets

The Letter Mural picture from Derry of the past photos - 

https://www.facebook.com/Derryofthepast/photos/a.1092753894109334/5386390808078933/?paipv=0&eav=Afbe0HaamyxHIv1xDEx5JNoU6dnOs8AsfsU8YN1DflmReU8wUC_EEqRsSMzlFXPMyus&_rdr

Poems referred to for both Stolen and Hush a Bye Baby

https://www.doirepress.com/writers/annemarie-ni-churreain

https://allpoetry.com/poem/11030643-Limbo-by-Seamus-Heaney

https://www.brinkerhoffpoetry.org/poems/cherishing-for-beginners