Phil Lynott: Songs For While I'm Away cinema release date announced

Directed by Emer Reynolds, Phil Lynott: Songs For While I'm Away tells the story of how a young black boy from working class 1950s Dublin became Ireland's greatest rock star.

As lead singer of Thin Lizzy, Phil Lynott was a songwriter, a poet, a dreamer, a wildman. Told extensively through the words of Phil himself and focusing on some of his iconic songs, the film gets to the heart of Philip, the father, the husband, the friend, the son, the rock icon, the poet and the dreamer.

The project features vintage clips and interviews from Phil Lynott himself as well as Scott Gorham, Adam Clayton, John Kelly, Huey Lewis, James Hetfield, Jim Fitzpatrick, Cathleen Howard-Lynott, Sarah Lynott, and Caroline Taraskevics.

Writing about the documentary in 'The Message' for our Phil Lynott special last year, Niall Stokes wrote:

"Emer Reynolds hadn’t the remotest interest in painting a graphic, sensationalist picture of what went wrong in the life of Philip Lynott. She wanted to take a far more measured approach.

"Bring your own natural empathy to the table. Build trust. Focus on the songs and, in part at least, allow them to tell the story. Find the best possible interviewees to give a rounded portrait of the man and his work. Dig out the kind of historical archives and footage that long-standing fans would love and new ones might swoon over," Stokes continues.

"And above all, respect the unique character of the man: his charisma, his drive, his charm, his ambition, and his desire to find the words that would express the complexity of the experiences he himself had been through."

The feature documentary is a Globe Production in association with Fís Éireann/Screen Ireland; produced by Alan Maher and John Wallace for Cowtown Pictures and Peter Worsley for Eagle Rock Films.

Director Reynolds is is known for her work on award-winning documentary The Farthest, an impressive offering about the Voyager space craft’s endless flight. Asia Kasadia, the director of Amy, initially was mooted to take on the Lynott project back in 2015.

Phil Lynott: Songs For While I'm Away was initially supposed to be released in Irish cinemas on December 26th, 2020, but COVID had other plans. Luckily for us, it'll arrive on June 11th instead.

Check out the official trailer below: