Bloody Sunday TV film storm

Lottery money has helped to fund a major feature film which pillories the British Army for the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in Londonderry, in which 14 civilians died.

The £3million Granada Films production has been aided by a total of £287,500 from the National Lottery. The film, which comes amid the continuing Saville inquiry into the events of 30 January 1972, receives its international launch at Robert Redford's prestigious Sundance film festival in America later this month, before it is screened on ITV1 in time for the 30th anniversary of the tragedy.

Meanwhile, relatives of the dead will this Sunday attend a special screening of the film, called Bloody Sunday, in Derry, the city where the civil rights marchers were shot by members of the Parachute Regiment.

The Film Council last January put £250,000 of Lottery money towards its production and last November its board voted to invest an extra £37,500 in "additional post-production work".

Bloody Sunday's director Paul Greengrass previously made The Murder Of Stephen Lawrence, which presented a heavily-critical view of the Metropolitan Police's investigation into the case.

Among its producers are Jim Sheridan and Arthur Lappin, whose company Hell's Kitchen made the 1993 film In The Name Of The Father, the sympathetic biopic of Gerry Conlon and the other wrongfully-imprisoned Guildford Four, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Emma Thompson.

News of the film - and the Lottery money spent making it - provoked anger today among politicians with close links to Ulster and the Parachute Regiment.

Gerald Howarth, Tory MP for Aldershot, where the Parachute Regiment is based, said the film "is likely to fan the passions felt on either side as we come up to the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, and it will be used as a stick with which to beat the Saville tribunal. It's an insult that money contributed by the British public should be used to undermine confidence in our armed forces."

However John Kelly, of The Bloody Sunday Trust, whose brother was one of those killed in 1972, said he believed the film would provide an accurate portrayal of one of the most controversial episodes in Northern Ireland's history.

Mr Kelly, who, like many other relatives, was consulted by the film-makers before production began, said: "The film tells the story based on accounts of civilian witnesses, but at the same time I believe that paras have been interviewed for the film as well.

"This film is about educating the world about what actually happened here in 1972. The truth has been clouded over the years but now we have the opportunity to see the truth."

Mr Kelly said the Lottery money invested in the production "will help the world see the truth as it actually happened". He added that the screening on Sunday is likely to be "a very emotional and traumatic event".