In December 2000 singer Kirsty MacColl was killed in front of her two children by a speed boat belonging to one of Mexico's wealthiest businessmen.
Featuring explosive new evidence, Olivia Lichtenstein's film is the moving story of 80-year-old Jean MacColl's search for the truth about her daughter's untimely death and her attempts to bring those she believes are responsible to justice.
Jean MacColl Q&A: Kirsty's mother answers your questions
Director Interview: Olivia Lichtenstein
BBC Four: Why did you want to make a film about the case?
Olivia Lichtenstein: Kirsty's mother Jean wanted a film to be made to highlight the Justice for Kirsty campaign. I heard about it through a journalist called Alex Kirsta, who approached me thinking it would be just my kind of story. I then met Jean and we had a long chat. I was very moved by it and felt it was something I would like to do.
BBC Four: The film has a lot more soul than a straightforward investigative report. Why did you take that approach?
OL: What interested me was the emotional journey as much as the investigation. I empathised with Jean on so many levels - as a mother, how terrible it must be to lose your child and as a daughter and how terrible it must be for your mother to go through that and to leave your own children behind. I felt that it was one of those films that everyone would be able to relate to. The tragedy of a child dying before a parent is a universal, ghastly thing, which is a reversal of the natural order of things.
Rather than a dry dissection of the facts it was important to connect with people. That's why I spend the first half of the film really showing who Kirsty was, so that people engage with her and care about what happened next. And Jean is such a remarkable character. For someone of that age to have that spirit is admirable.
BBC Four: The interviews are very moving. What was your experience of talking to Kirsty's family?
ON: It's difficult for people to be interviewed about things like that and I think it's one's duty to make it as painless as possible. It was the first time that Louis, Kirsty's youngest son, had ever spoken about his mother's death. He was so fantastic and I was incredibly moved by that interview. I felt that if Kirsty was alive then she would have been so proud of him, he was so poised and articulate. He's only a year older than my own son and at the end of the interview I said, "Come here, I have to give you a hug".
I think it was difficult for Kirsty's partner James too. He initially didn't want to do it. I was really pleased that he changed his mind, because it was important to have him there. It was quite hard for me too because I had just lost my dad, so the whole thing is shrouded in terrible grief for me. It was quite an odd sort of experience, though maybe that made it easier for them to talk to me.
BBC Four: Can you briefly outline what the Justice for Kirsty campaign is trying to do?
OL: There are a number of issues. There's certainly a lot of confusion over who was actually driving the boat at the time of the accident. The boat was also travelling very fast and in waters that it shouldn't have been in. Although the boat owners said that they were travelling at one to two knots in an area that they were allowed in, there are so many witnesses that say it was travelling between 15-20 knots and directly on the reef. Also Kirsty's injuries make it quite clear that it was going very fast. Clearly it's a ghastly accident but the point is that Jean wants all those issues to be addressed and for it not to be swept under the carpet as it seems to have been.
The boat's owner Guillermo González Nova is a very big cheese in Mexico and his influence seems to carry him through all the time. Now the Federal Prosecutor has dropped the case without having been able to subpoena him, saying that they can't find him.
BBC Four: So what's next for the campaign?
ON: When Jean and the lawyers were in Mexico they had some quite high-level meetings with people in Mexico City, who assured them that they'd be keeping an eye on the case. What they plan to do now is lodge an appeal with the Attorney General in Mexico City, who is hierarchically superior to the Federal Prosecutor, and ask him to overturn the Federal Prosecutor's decision - essentially to close the case. If he refuses to do that and they can't get any further then they are going to take the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
