DOCS ON SCREENS https://docsonscreens.com/tag/my-mother-the-secret-baby/
STORYVILLE Q&A https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05psdvz
RTE https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2015/0329/690635-bbc-storyville-explores-west-of-ireland-adoption/
GUARDIAN: Tiny acts have huge reverberations. In 1940, in Co Clare, one such happenstance – the “shameful” conception of film-maker Daisy Asquith’s mum in a hay barn between two unmarried Catholics – caused “trouble… that would reverberate through three generations”. In this frank, funny and poignant film, Asquith and her mother journey to Ireland and New York in search of, respectively, a grandfather and a dad. It’s a voyage marked by kindness, acceptance and understanding. AJC
EXPRESS: Filmmaker Daisy Asquith has documented Holocaust survivors, clowns,displaced children and One Direction fans with tremendous sensitivity, but this time turned the camera on her own family.Daisy’s mother Pat was the product of a one-night stand in County Clare in the 1940s; she had met her mother once, unhappily, and wanted to find her father. So far, so Long Lost Family. Daisy and Pat discovered her father Tom had gone to live in New York after fathering her, returned to Clare many years later, and died there three days before Daisy was born. However, she discovered Tom’s nephew Johnny and his wife Mary, and the film showed the two families gradually becoming closer, particularly during a trip to New York.Johnny and Mary had barely left their home counties, never mind the country, and it was a joy to see them posing for their first passport photos, and to hear Mary say,“I’ve never been under a tunnel before,” as she rode in a Yellow Cab.This was the sort of understated, warm, human, caring story that we do not see enough of. We gradually got to know Johnny and Mary as they travelled with Daisy and Pat, first seeing them as a couple of very rural farmers with not much to say, then watching them blossom and become ever-so-slightly more worldly, visiting Tom’s old haunts with a gay relative who had just married his boyfriend, was a complete joy.