CEN2-07. Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story

Ireland/UK, Feature Documentary, 2024, 99 min

F**k, the plot. That is for precocious schoolboys. What matters is the imaginative truth. Edna O'Brien

In 1960, a young Irish woman named Edna O’Brien wrote a racy debut novel, The Country Girls. She became a literary sensation, writing for The New Yorker and producing hugely successful books for fifty years. Her early success enraged her writer-husband, Ernest Gébler, who kept all her money and gave Edna a small allowance. What’s more, her success made her a pariah in her native Ireland, where her books were banned and burned. She would divorce, get her money back, and make her home in a mansion in London with her children. Free at last, she conducted scandalous love affairs, hosted star-studded parties, and made and lost fortunes. This film features interviews with renowned writers, and spicy testimony from Edna herself, aged 93, as she reflects upon her extraordinary life.

Directed by Sinéad O'Shea

Colorado Premiere