Say Nothing director Michael Lennox hopes the hard-hitting drama will help bring home the remaining Disappeared.
He directed four episodes of the Disney+ series about the lives of IRA bombers Dolours and Marian Price and the abduction and murder of Jean McConville in 1972.
The mother of ten, whose remains were found on a Co Louth beach in 2003, was the most high profile of 17 paramilitary victims who were killed and secretly buried.
The remains of Columba McVeigh, Captain Robert Nairac and Joe Lynskey have never been found, although Lynskey’s family are hopeful that a body exhumed from a Co Monaghan graveyard recently might end their torment.
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Writer Ronan Blaney (L) and director Michael Lennox attend the 87th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 22, 2015 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Lester Cohen/WireImage)
Michael, director of Derry Girls and the Oscar-nominated Boogaloo and Graham, told the Hollywood Reporter he hopes the drama will make a difference.
“I think it’s very, very important that there still remain victims who haven’t been found to this very day,” he said.
“There’s still countless people that are seeking justice and deserve justice. And I think if there’s one thing our series can do, it’s a big hope that it may bring some of this stuff up again as a discussion point.
“I thought that was one of the least things we could do in a story like this.”
The series, based on the book by American journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, could also shine a light on the untold stories of the Troubles, said the director.
And he hopes it will inform an international audience and people closer to home in the UK about the dark period of Northern Ireland’s history.
“One of the other things for me is that maybe not an awful lot of people know this story, specifically internationally, about the Disappeared and Jean McConville.
“And also for a new generation of people in the UK to look at this story again. And not just this story, but all the stories.
“This is one book and one TV series that isn’t the definitive story of the Troubles. So I hope it opens up and points to other books, to other documentaries and opens up the conversation.”
Michael, from Belfast, directed the early episodes of Say Nothing reflecting the idealism of the early days of Dolours and Marian joining the IRA as teenagers.
They were later convicted of the Old Bailey bombings in 1973 and served seven years in prison, during which they were force fed nearly 200 times when they went on hunger strike.
Maxine Peake plays the older Dolours, recording with the oral history Boston Tapes project, with Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe playing the sisters as younger women.
“Then we fast forward into a modern Belfast where people had to live – Dolours and the McConville kids, especially – with what happened and the unprocessed trauma of that.
“So it was really exploring for me the cost of that and diving in deep,” said Michael.
He was also at the helm for the final episode showing Jean McConville’s murder.
The scenes were filmed on a beach in England in a shoot which was distressing for the director and the cast.
“It was harrowing to film a scene like that, especially for me, being from Northern Ireland,” he said.
“And just by nature of the scene, it’s an extraordinarily emotional scene to be part of, and for the actors to do.
“It was important for me to take it as seriously as I could and everyone did that night we filmed it.
“The actors, everyone knew what we were doing, why we were doing it, and then wanted to put it out there in the best way we could,” said the director.