Oscar-Contending Documentary ‘Nothing Compares’ Reexamines Sinéad O’Connor, Singer Who “Booted The Door Down” And Paid The Price
deadline.comWhen filmmaker Kathryn Ferguson was growing up in Northern Ireland in the late 1980s, she says the whole of the island – the North and the Republic – desperately needed transformation.“The Troubles were still rumbling on, and the Catholic Church was still very much in power in the South,” she notes. “It was pretty gray and miserable and you just felt like you didn’t have many options and you didn’t have a voice, and abortion was banned everywhere.”An unexpected voice for those voiceless would emerge in the form of a Dublin singer with an uncompromising presence — Sinéad O’Connor.
She appeared on the scene not just to entertain but to challenge.“She then arrived as like this alien and booted the door down.
And we were all just like, ‘Whoa! Hello, who’s this?’” Ferguson recalls. “Just everything about her — the music was so phenomenal.
The way she looked was so brilliant and her boldness was just so exciting. And I just think as a country, we needed her. Like, the young ones really needed her.”Ferguson’s award-winning new film Nothing Compares documents O’Connor’s huge impact not only on Irish but on world culture, and the tremendous backlash she faced for defying norms in the record business and in society.
Read more on deadline.com
