Vicky Phelan film nominated for human rights award

The documentary film will premiere next week.

A documentary film about women's health advocate Vicky Phelan has been nominated for a Human Rights on Film Award at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) listed Sasha King's Vicky among its nominees for the upcoming award. The winner will be decided by a jury that includes LGBT+ activist Suzy Byrne, former journalist Vincent Browne, citizenship rights activist Emma de Souza, First Music Contact's Angela Doran and filmmakers Paul Rice and Liam Montgomery. The synopsis given for Vicky reads: "In 2018, on the steps of The High Court, Vicky Phelan gave a now-infamous address where she exposed one of the worst women’s health scandals in Irish history: the cervical cancer debacle. "Vicky is an exclusive and intimate journey into not only her fight to expose the truth of what happened for all women, but also her own personal fight to stay alive." Other films nominated for the award are Young Plato, which explores a teacher and his community in Belfast's Ardoyne area, Happening, which charts a young woman who finds out she is pregnant in France in 1963, Where Is Anne Frank, an animation film that offers a "fresh new perspective" on Anne Frank's story and Hive, which follows a woman after her husband disappears during the Kosavan War. https://www.instagram.com/p/CZ9sWFWs4lU/ The Virgin Media Film Festival kicks off on 23 February and lasts until 6 March. Vicky will premiere next Thursday 24 March at 6pm in the Light House Cinema in Smithfield. You can grab tickets for it right here. Earlier this week, Vicky Phelan said that she may take a break from social media as she begins a ten-session course of radiotherapy to alleviate the pain caused by a tumour on her spine. Taking to Instagram, she wrote: "I can't promise to keep you all posted on social media over the coming two weeks on how I'm doing. If I go quiet, you will know that I am probably just about coping with side effects from treatment."