Village Voice by Craig D. Lindsey
It’s Not Yet Dark is an uplifting portrait of a debilitated man driven to excel by a relentless desire to live life and love those who surround him.
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Ireland · 2016
1h 18m
Director Frankie Fenton
Starring Simon Fitzmaurice, Colin Farrell
Genre Documentary
Please login to add films to your watchlist.
Irish filmmaker Simon Fitzmaurice is diagnosed with motor neuron disease, a degenerative disorder. He refuses to let his illness interfere with his goal: to direct a feature film. He can only communicate using his eyes, but through the use of a computer, he soldiers on.
Village Voice by Craig D. Lindsey
It’s Not Yet Dark is an uplifting portrait of a debilitated man driven to excel by a relentless desire to live life and love those who surround him.
It’s the questions that Fenton can’t answer — maybe even the questions he doesn’t mean to ask — that make It’s Not Yet Dark such an illuminating experience.
Not a film for cynics, It’s Not Yet Dark at times risks overplaying its heart-on-sleeve emotions, as Fitzmaurice also hazards in his writing. But both subject and execution here summon the skill, as well as sincerity, required to overcome skepticism.
The Hollywood Reporter by Duane Byrge
It's Not Yet Dark is a heartfelt and stirring documentary
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
Although “Dark” eschews overly graphic depiction of the more horrific physiological aspects of MND and barely touches upon the financial toll the illness clearly takes, this is as real a human story as it gets.
This movie shows how Fitzmaurice was able to direct the picture — scheduling the shot so that he could efficiently marshal his energy was a big part of the process, as of course was the “eye gaze” computer.
The New York Times by Helen T. Verongos
Painful to watch and uncomfortably intimate at times, perhaps by design, It’s Not Yet Dark could have been very dark indeed.
Screen International by Wendy Ide
The third act of this film is a celebration of Simon’s determination and of supporting team which surround him.
A documentary exploration of Irish Republican Bobby Sands and the 1981 hunger strike while imprisoned in Northern Ireland.