Float Like a Butterfly (2018)

Float Like a Butterfly: Directed by Carmel Winters. With Hazel Doupe, Dara Devaney, Johnny Collins, Hilda Fay. From the producers of Once and Sing Street, Float Like a Butterfly is a powerful and timely story of a girl’s fight for freedom and belonging. In a gender-reversal of classic film Billy Elliot, 15-year-old Frances has to fight for the right to fight back. Raised in roadside camps in rural Ireland, Frances wants to champion her people inside the boxing ring and out, like her idol Muhammad Ali. But society is determined to break her spirit and destroy her way of life. And her father, once her greatest ally, is too defeated himself to imagine any better for his daughter. But Frances was not born to be broken. In the mother of all fights, she must dig deep to find in herself the Champion her father once knew her to be.

“This film should be a lesson for little girls and boys. A family with a history of tragedy are reunited with the father. At a time when womyn were expected to be quiet, pregnant and in the kitchen, some womyn started to say no. This young lady is finding out who she truly is in beautiful rural Ireland. It is nice to see the strength of some womyn being portrayed in this way. The world I live in, most womyn are willing to knock a man who is out of line on his arse so any talk of being unrealistic is laughable. Only a very little man would have his insecurities rattled by this film.”