Filmmaker Vinny Murphy was resident in studio 468 where he developed ‘FATIMA WAS ME CITY’ a documentary film in collaboration with Rialto Community Drug Team and produced by Common Ground.

Over a two year period Vinny Murphy documented personal and group testimonies and worked with the men’s group on exploring different stages in their lives.  The men’s group were introduced to the collection of Tom McLoughlin’s photographs that began a wide range of discussions around growing up in the local area. Their personal testimonies and analysis of those times in their lives bravely examines themes of inequality, loss, stigma, power and hope.

Film maker Vinny Murphy, alongside local community facilitator Joanie Whyte, worked with the men’s group on documenting different stages in their lives as they revealed their experience of trauma and violence living with drugs, crime, incarceration, brutality, and death. As one of the men reminds us, “we buried a generation”.

The film reveals searingly honest testimonies from a group of 6 men who grew up in Fatima Mansions, Rialto, Dublin during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. The mark of those decades are revealed, from the brutality of growing up with violence, drug addiction and the devastation caused to a community to the realities of being stigmatised and left to tether on the edge of a society that treated them as outcasts.

Fatima Was Me City was selected for the Dublin International Film Festival in 2022 and shown in IMMA as part of its IMMA Nights programme in July 2022. 

Rialto Community Drug Team marked its 30^th year in 2022.