Ransom 79

Dublin, 1979: Ireland’s Department of Agriculture received a demand for £5 million from blackmailers suggesting that they have the ways and means to introduce foot-and-mouth disease to Irish livestock. With farming the lifeblood of a stuttering economy, and in a country with its fair share of determined ideological and religious splinter groups, the government has no choice but to take the threat seriously. Yet the unlikely story remained underreported and forgotten until the celebrated RTÉ news correspondent Charlie Bird became fascinated. While suffering from motor neuron disease, Bird recruited writer Colin Murphy to play Watson to his Sherlock and set out on a mission to find the truth. Filmmaker Colm Quinn captured their interrogations, and this resulting documentary plays like the most gripping of thrillers while serving as a tribute to Bird and the nobility of investigative journalism.