In celebration of St. Patrick’s Day 2015, ATG is exploring “All Things Irish” for the next couple weeks. Below we review the Irish movie “Some Mother’s Son.” Stay tuned for more! 

It was with a faint memory of the 1981 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland that I recently watched Some Mother’s Son* (1996) – a movie based on the true story of the young IRA (Irish Republican Army) martyrs who began a hunger strike while being held in a British prison in Belfast for their involvement in IRA terrorist activities.

Refusing to be treated as criminals by wearing their assigned prisoner uniforms, the IRA members began their hunger strike in an attempt to be recognized by the British government as “political prisoners of war.”  Ten of the twenty-one men jailed ended up dying as martyrs for their cause, including Bobby Sands, their leader who was elected to parliament while in prison and whose funeral was attended by over 100,000 people. Read more