2017 EIDF Screenplay 'Before the Darkness' by Simon Fitzmorris Autobiography In

2008, a promising filmmaker, Simon Fitzmorris, is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) and is sentenced to three to four years of life. When the lungs began to break in 2010, Simon realizes that it is not time to leave. Instead of removing the breath holding device, he chooses to live for life, and he lives without giving up his life as a husband, father, and film director. His inner story, which lives without regret every moment, reminds us of the meaning of being alive through work, person relations, and family stories. It is a memoir that has been written using a computer for detecting eye movements even when the muscles of the whole body can not be used.

"A fiercely eloquent testament to making the most out of every moment we're given."
- People, Book of the Week

A luminous memoir in the tradition of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly , a young filmmaker gives us "a story of courage, of heart, of coming back for more, of love and struggle and the power of both" (Joseph O'Connor).

In 2008, Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. He was given four years to live. In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose to ventilate in order to stay alive.

In It's Not Yet Dark, the young filmmaker, a husband and father of five small children, draws us deeply into his inner world. Told in simply expressed and beautifully stark prose, it is an astonishing journey into a life that, though brutally compromised, is lived more fully than most, revealing at its core.

Written by an eye-gaze computer, It's Not Yet Dark is an unforgettable book about relationships and family, about what connects and separates us as people, and, ultimately, about what it means to be alive.