Synopsis

This is a feature documentary set in Dublin, Ireland in the early years of the twentieth century, a time of political ferment and the forging of a new Irish cultural identity. It tells the story of Hugh Lane's hard fought project to establish a public modern art gallery, showing the work of living artists, his untimely death on the Lusitania and his contested will. It's a story that continues in the here and now, as Citizen Lane plays its part in the long-running, still charged, campaign to recover Lane's Bequest of 39 "Continental" paintings, including masterpieces by Monet, Renoir, Manet, and Pissarro, for Ireland. In a narrative intercut with scripted drama, acted by a distinguished cast including Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and Sir Michael Gambon, a series of "character interviews" with Lane's friends and family develops a story richly illustrated with the paintings now hanging in the gallery founded by Lane, one of the greatest benefactors of the arts in Ireland, and the paintings lost for now to the National Gallery in London.