Dear friends, families and dear people of Ireland, I was eight years old the first time

I came here and 15 years old when my mother was brutally killed.

My mother Sophie is not a ghost.

She is the victim of human cruelty and violence of a man who lives among you.

In few days' time, the trial will begin at last.

A lot has happened since the French charged Ian Bailey with the murder of Sophie Toscon

Diplanteet back in 2016.

The French tried to extradite Ian but they were blocked by Ireland.

Ian contested the charge but France denied his appeals.

And so a date was set for an unusual trial.

An Englishman on trial in a French court for a murder committed in Ireland.

We went to Paris for the trial in May of 2019 and lots was different about it.

Evidence that you wouldn't have heard in Ireland arguments that weren't made in France.

But it was strange in one respect most of all.

At every other point in this 25-year saga, Ian Bailey has loomed large.

But this trial wasn't like that because Ian Bailey wasn't there.

And so while Ian's fate hung in the balance, the focus shifted to Sophie.

This woman so often in the shadow of her own story.

To us, that week was about her.

Sophie Toscon Diplanteet came late to her career as a documentary maker.

But she was full of ideas for films about art and philosophy.

Her final project was a film called Hissie's Fold Everywhere.

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