John Connors’ heartrending documentary traces the true story of Jade McCann who recounted her
cancer diagnosis online
This feature from actor-director John Connors won the audience award at this year’s
Dublin film festival, and it’s a generous, big-hearted, honest tribute to the McCann family from Greystones, County Wicklow, who endured a public heartbreak. In 2018, daughter Jade had become a beauty influencer on Instagram; her profile assumed a new dimension when she started documenting the way her dad, Anthony, a former boxer, was dealing with his prostate cancer.
Things became even more complex when Jade was diagnosed with sarcoma, and she began talking in the same artless way about that. Connors intersperses his own black-and-white footage of Jade and Anthony (and her mum, Kim, and brother, Eoin) with Jade’s own
Instagram videos, which are shot portrait-style, often in her car, with text and wacky emojis.