The story of a young girl chasing her dream of becoming a boxer is nothing new to Irish people or indeed anyone who has followed the career of Katie Taylor.
While Taylor’s rise to Olympic glory could easily have been taken from any Hollywood script, it’s another famous boxer who inspires the lead character in new Irish movie Float Like A Butterfly.
The recently-released drama is set in 1960s Ireland and follows a young Traveller girl called Frances (Hazel Doupe) who idolises Mohamed Ali. Having already suffered the death of her mother, she begins to reconnect with her father Michael who has just been released after eight years in prison.
The pair embark on a road trip which reveals a complex dynamic between father and daughter, exacerbated by Michael’s perception of a gender role reversal between tough cookie Frances and her gentler younger brother Patrick.
Written and directed by Carmel Winters, with a ‘remarkable’ performance by Doupe, the film has been called ‘as triumphant as an air punch’ by Screen Daily and a ‘film with a strong pulse’ by Hollywood Reporter. If you needed further proof of its merits, it took home the International Federation Of Film Critics Discovery Prize at the Toronto Film Festival last year.
Float Like A Butterfly is in cinemas now and the trailer for it can be seen below.
