Mary McGuckian

Born and brought up in Northern Ireland during the "troubles", McGuckian completed her formal education in the Republic of Ireland at Trinity College Dublin, where she took a degree in engineering. During this time that she became involved with Trinity Players, appearing in over 30 productions as well as producing, designing, directing and lighting various others.

Her interest in theatre and politics led her to follow an autodidactic post graduate education in literature, theatre, acting and directing on various courses in London, Paris and Italy. During which time she wrote a number of avant-garde plays and movement pieces that were variously produced in England and Ireland. Most acclaimed was probably her long-running stage adaptation of Brian Merriman's poem "The Midnight Court".

Returning to Ireland, she continued to work as an actor and playwright until invited to write screenplays by various producers in the emergent Irish film industry of the early 1990s. At this point, she set up her own company, Pembridge Productions, to develop and produce feature film projects. The company was active as a co-producer on many Irish feature films and produced three pictures which she wrote and directed: Words Upon the Window Pane, (adapted from the play by W.B. Yeats), This Is the Sea (an adaptation of her own play Hazel), and Best (the life story of Northern Irish footballer George Best).

In 2001, she established Pembridge Pictures in the UK to develop and finance a slate of pictures for a long-term international production strategy by accessing UK tax-incentive based funding in co-production with treaty partners of the UK such as the EU treaty countries and Canada. The first of these was her adaptation of the Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, shot in Spain and released in May 2004.

Using a combination of modern script styles and extended character development work with collaborating actors who then improvise their own dialogue directly on set, Rag Tale, the first film of her "amorality trilogy", was conceived.

The company of cast and crew involved in the making of the trilogy spent the last year making The Making of Plus One. It was completed in May 2009.

The Price of Desire (2013/2014) is the story of the inception of 20th-century architecture told in the context of how Le Corbusier completely effaced Eileen Gray. The cast included Irish actress Orla Brady as Eileen Gray, Swiss actor Vincent Perez as her nemesis Le Corbusier and Francesco Scianna as well as Alanis Morissette. The film premiered at the 2015 Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

A Girl from Mogadishu (2020) stars Aja Naomi King, Barkhad Abdi and Maryam Mursals in the story of Irish Somali activist, Ifrah Ahmed's journey from war-torn Somalia to global activist. It premiered at the 2019 Dublin International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival, and it won the Audience Award at the 42nd edition of the Mill Valley Film Festival. Other awards included the Audience and Jury awards at the Semaine de Cinima Britannique in France and the Cinema For Peace Foundation award for its contribution to Women's Empowerment at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival.

• Mary McGuckian at IMDb
• http://pembridge.pictures