A documentary on the Ballymanus explosion which killed 19 people in west Donegal will have a national screening on RTE One this week.
‘Ballymanus’, airing at 10.15pm this Thursday (12th September), looks back on the explosion of a World War 2 sea mine in the Gaeltacht village in 1943.
The near hour-long documentary revisits 10th of May, 1943, when a mysterious object came ashore on Ballymanus strand.
The next day, nineteen people, mostly children, were dead. Nearly an entire generation of young men of the small townland was lost.
Calls for answers were silenced by the authorities and the disaster was barely spoken of.
The words of the victims’ descendants and the memories of the few remaining survivors tells the story of one of the worst tragedies in modern Irish history.
Written and directed by Patrick Sharkey and Seán Doupe, the historical insight positions this WWII tragedy within the context of Irish neutrality with insight from local and professional historians.
The documentary has already picked up awards at the Vienna Independent Film Festival at the Central Scotland Documentary Festival.
