The Laughing Boy

The Irish song entitled “The Laughing Boy” was written by a teenage rebel called Brendan Behan in memory of another iconic rebel, Michael Collins – the centenary of whose death was commemorated in 2022. But this song also had an extraordinary and dramatic afterlife as “To Yelasto Paidi,” the powerful left-wing anthem of resistance against the dictatorship that ruled Greece in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Translated by the poet Vassilis Rotas, Behan’s words in Greek were set to music by the legendary Mikis Theodorakis. The song remains an enduring and potent cultural force in the heart of Greece today. The film takes poet Theo Dorgan on an odyssey of his own, as he attempts to uncover the truth of the story behind the song. It is a narrative that interweaves the tragic and bloody birth pangs of both modern Ireland and modern Greece. But these histories are also bound together by something more profound and transcendent: the power of a song.