Richard York

Derry, 1972; As the civil rights movement across the North of Ireland begins to secure unprecedented wins, the British state responds with lethal force, murdering 14 people and sparking a 60 year fight for justice and accountability by a community for whom everything had changed. From the acclaimed directors of ‘To Kill a War Machine’ and the community who took on the British state and won, ‘The Day Innocence Died’ tells the story of the Bloody Sunday massacre and its legacy, weaving unheard testimonies and indelible archive footage into an epic cinematic documentary.

Through real-time bodycam and phone footage, frontline activists take audiences along on their audacious raids to tear down arms factories around the UK. Since 2020, direct action group Palestine Action have documented their operations to dismantle the companies and infrastructure supplying weapons to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

This film, by the Young Historians Project, documents the history of British Black Power Group; the Black Liberation Front (BLF). The BLF was active from 1971-1993, and the organisation's story is told through the narrations of nine former members of the BLF and its sister organisation, the Fasimbas.