MY NAME IS EMILY is a life-enhancing story starring Evanna Lynch (Harry Potter), Michael Smiley (The Lobster, Kill List, A Field in England) and newcomer George Webster (City of Dreamers, Blood Moon) and boasts an amazing soundtrack including James Vincent McMorrow who composed a song specially for the film, Lisa Hannigan, Cat Dowling, Liza Flume, Hudson Taylor, Lisa Mitchell, Printer Clips and Jake Bugg.

It’s Emily’s 16th birthday and for the first time in her life, doesn’t receive a birthday card from her Dad. After meeting a fellow outsider at her new school, Emily and her handsome ally, Arden, decide to embark on a road trip adventure across Ireland to find her missing father. They are an odd couple, this pale girl and the boy in the velvet suit, and along the way, they find love as well as some hard and unexpected truths.

Managing Director of Galway Miriam Allen says “we’re honoured to screen MNIE as the opening film for our 2015 Festival. After watching the film we were moved to tears, not only due to powerful film-making but also by Simon Fitzmaurice’s own inspirational story”

Shortly after his second short film The Sound of People premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2008, director Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with MND, the debilitating disease for which the viral ice-bucket challenge raised awareness last September. Now completely paralysed, Fitzmaurice typed the script for the film, as well as his best-selling book It’s Not Yet Dark through the movement of his eyes and iris recognition software. This is also how he communicated to direct the film during a six week shoot last year.

Simon says “I'm deeply honoured that The Galway Film Fleadh has invited My Name is Emily to open the festival. Everyone involved with the making of this film has worked so hard and I cannot think of a better reward and a better place for our film's world premiere”

On being offered the role of Emily, Lynch said, “After I read the script, it was all I could think about for weeks; it is so different to anything I've read and so real and dynamic.” Michael Smiley commented, “It’s one of the most beautiful scripts I’ve read in a long time” and the film also features Simon’s long-time collaborator Martin McCann (’71, Clash of the Titans).

Production funding for the film was completed via a crowd-sourcing campaign; vocal proponents of which included Jim Sheridan, Lenny Abrahamson, Colin Farrell, Sam Neill and Alan Rickman, who supported the film not just because of the adversity faced by Simon but due to the cinematic talent he displayed in his earlier work and quality of script.

My Name Is Emily will receive its World Premiere on Tuesday 7th July at 7:30pm in the Town Hall Theatre, with cast and crew in attendance.