HHome, by Dubliner Alan Cooke and Brooklynite Dawn Scibilia, was shot in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 with just one digital camera, no script, no sets and no storyline.

Instead Cooke, an actor and writer, and Scibilia, a film maker, took to the streets and tried to capture the sense of a city in flux, while Cooke, who was living without a visa or green card, awaited his fate.

The duo also managed to track down and interview a motley crew of New Yorkdwelling stars to discuss what the city meant to them, including Woody Allen, Mike Myers, Susan Sarandon, Liam Neeson and Frank McCourt. "I met Liam Neeson in Central Park and he said he'd do the interview, then we met Woody Allen in a jazz club he plays in and it just started snowballing, " explains Cooke.

Now the film, which they directed, produced, scored and edited between them without a crew, is packing screenings in Brooklyn and the Lincoln Centre in New York and won the Best Documentary Award at the Boston Irish Film Festival. "I started to write down and capture the feelings I was having at that time, " Cooke said of his limbo situation. "We watched the city moving, and talked to a lot of people about their experiences? it was kind of incredible because we would just go out with the camera with no idea about what we were looking for. We were just trying to find something to represent New York in a different way."

Cooke eventually got his green card a year-and-a-half ago - "the most intense period of time was when I was waiting.

You're just one of millions of people there who are wondering what they're doing there [in New York] in the first place."

The film will be screened at the Irish Film Institute in Dublin on 24 March.