For the first time, Aoife McArdle gives us a story about the Troubles. The director, who comes from Omagh in Northern Ireland, and grew up during the final years of the tumultous, devastating Ulster sectarian conflict, has never before directly addressed the subject in her work.

She's been getting closer. Last year's video for Wilkinson's Half Light was a contemporary story set in Belfast, and capturing the grit and vibrant humanity of the city. But perhaps it needed a band of the level of U2 to inspire a way to tell a story set in the time of the Troubles. The result is an epic.

With Every Breaking Wave as its bedrock - in two different versions – this is a love story across the religious divide. Set in the early 1980s, teenage energy and passion becomes increasingly overshadowed and suffocated by the machinations of an all-pervasive conflict. And all of the frenzy, fear and the horror of living through those times is conveyed in a series of stunning set-pieces.

From a director whose work always comes from the heart, this is her most ambitious, most emotional, most heartfelt work yet.

• Aoife talks about the making of the Every Breaking Wave film on The Creator's Project blog.