A story of forbidden love amidst the horrors of conflict, 1984's Cal is a gem of Irish cinema. Pavel Barter discusses the film's creation with producer David Puttnam, screenwriter Bernard MacLaverty, and actor John Lynch.

Once the audience started cheering they wouldn't stop. It was the Cannes Film Festival, 1984, five minutes after the end credits had rolled, and the notoriously fickle Riviera audience were still applauding as though their lives depended on it. 'Is this normal?' Cal's bemused writer Bernard MacLaverty asked producer David Puttnam. 'Definitely not!' responded Puttnam, who would later persuade Helen Mirren to hop aboard a plane and rejoin them (while keeping schtum about her impending award for Best Actress).

The sun-kissed shores of Cannes were a world away from Cal's birthplace. These were dark days for Northern Ireland: hunger strikes and roadside bombs, nightclub massacres and prison escapes. Sectarianism was rife; religious identity as sensitive as skin colour in 1950's Mississippi. 'What are ye?' lads with sticks would ask on street corners, necessitating fast responses in order to avoid painful consequences. For some, the violence was far more severe.

In this society of fear and intimidation, of human interaction stamped with the imprint of political division, Bernard MacLaverty's character exists. A former getaway driver for the IRA, Cal (John Lynch) works with his father Shamie (Donal McCann) at a slaughterhouse. A bedraggled, confused youth, tortured by his past crimes, Cal takes a new job as a farmhand and falls in love with Marcella (Helen Mirren), the widow of a policeman who he helped murder. They find respite in one another, but their illicit affair is clearly doomed.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 108.