true story?

I believe it's all based on truth...Of course, some things can't happen here exactly as they happened in Joyce's life, but it's a true story.

I heard the film was based on a biography on Nora which is why alot of it deals with her situation in the relationship.

It's loosely based on the biography "Nora" by Brenda Maddox (1988). Some of what's in the movie is not found in that book, but comes from other sources, such as Richard Ellmann's standard biography of James Joyce and letters between Joyce and Nora. Naturally, the dialogue is invented, but the general flow of events matches what is known to be fact.

This is from an interview in Film Ireland No.75:
"Pat Murphy: I had the right on Brenda Maddox's book but I ended up using only a small part of that. Part of it is knowing what happened and then building on that. I wanted it to be as accurate as possible but also not a biopic. I didn't want people to go to it and go 'I'm going to sit here and get all this information and it's going to be accurate or a hagiography'. Most of all I wanted it to be a really good film, that you would get a sense of what it was like."