Dear Daughter: 30th Anniversary Screening

Thirty years ago Louis Lentin's documentary Dear Daughter exposed the cruelty and abuse happening in Goldenbridge Industrial School. In this film, Christine Buckley bravely recounts the extent of the atrocities she experienced as a child in Dublin’s Goldenbridge orphanage in this drama-documentary. Born in Dublin, she was the daughter of a married Irish woman and a Nigerian medical student. At the age of three weeks old she was given up to be fostered. Dear Daughter delves into her traumatic childhood at the orphanage and her persistent determination to find her parents.

Dear Daughter was one of several television documentaries (including Lentin’s Stolen Lives (1999) and Mary Raftery’s States of Fear (1999)) which led to the official Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (2000-2009). The film was awarded the Creative Excellence Award at the US International Film and TV Festival 1996 and was nominated for Best Social and Political Documentary, Banff Television Festival, 1996. It was also included in the final short-list for recognition in UNESCO Memory of the World (Prog, since 2025).

The screening will be followed by an opportunity to talk about the issues the film raises.

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Host or Publisher Emilie Pine