Overview: Narrated by Colin Farrell, 'It's Not Yet Dark' tells the groundbreaking story of Simon Fitzmaurice, a talented young Irish filmmaker with ALS (MND), as he embarks on directing his first feature film ('My Name Is Emily') through the use of his eyes and eye gaze technology.

DVD Verdict: For those not in the know, Simon Fitzmaurice was an Irish filmmaker, who sadly passed away in 2017. A resident of Greystones, County Wicklow, Fitzmaurice published a memoir titled 'It's Not Yet Dark' in 2014 about his experience with motor neurone disease.

Here in 'It's Not Yet Dark,' narrated by a soothing, calm, Colin Farrell, Fitzmaurice's trials and tribulations in directed 'My Name Is Emily' - while living with the condition in 2015 - are brought loving to the fore.

Starring Evanna Lynch, Michael Smiley, and George Webster, it tells the story of a teenager who leaves her foster home to free her father from a mental hospital.

Indeed, 'My Name Is Emily' was nominated for eight Irish Film & Television Academy Awards and Fitzmaurice received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2016 London Screenwriters' Festival for the work.

'It's Not Yet Dark' not only showcases what the brave man went through to get is thoughts from his head onto the big screen, but chronicles his experience living in a motorized wheelchair and communicating using an eye-tracking computer.

In fact, this documentary, directed by Frankie Fenton, is honestly one of the most, and no pun intended, eye-opening documentaries that I've come across in the past decade.

Sure we learn how he made the film, but we also learn more about ALS and how it affected his body - for an eventual effect of ALS is respiratory failure.

Some time after diagnosis SF was in a local hospital in Ireland being treated for pneumonia (a common problem with ALS) and fainted after complaining of breathing difficulty. He was connected to a ventilator on an emergency basis to revive him, and has been on one ever since. It kept him alive.

Soon after he was hooked up he was told by doctors that ventilation isn't recommended for ALS in Ireland and was pressured, as he describes it, to be disconnected. He refused. He believed if it hadn't been an emergency at a small hospital, he might not have had the option of a ventilator because of his ALS. And he would be dead.

Movies were, as constantly noted here, a big part of his life. Indeed, 'Dead Poets Society' is the film that changed his life when he was young. 'Bladerunner' is also mentioned more than any other film, once as his favorite also. Oh, and 'Wings of Desire' is also singled out.

As for what he terms here as wanted to make "a beautiful Irish film," and one not about ALS at all, the story of a 16-year-old girl is, in fact, all about redemption more than anything else. And so too is this beautiful documentary, which actor Colin Farrell should also be very proud of having chosen to narrate. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1:85.1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.

www.FilmRise.com