Some Mother's Son is a 1996 Irish-American film written and directed by Irish filmmaker Terry George, co-written by Jim Sheridan, and based on the true story of the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze Prison, in Northern Ireland. Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoner Bobby Sands (played by John Lynch) led a protest against the treatment of IRA prisoners, claiming that they should be treated as prisoners of war rather than criminals. The mothers of two of the strikers, played by Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan, fight to save their sons' lives. When the prisoners go on hunger strike and become incapacitated, the mothers must decide whether to abide by their sons' wishes, or to go against them and have them forcibly fed.
Helen Mirren and John Lynch had already acted together in the 1984 Troubles-related film Cal.
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
Contents
Cast
Helen Mirren as Kathleen Quigley
Fionnula Flanagan as Annie Higgins
Aidan Gillen as Gerard Quigley
David O'Hara as Frank Higgins
John Lynch as Bobby Sands
Tom Hollander as Farnsworth
Tim Woodward as Harrington
Ciarán Hinds as Danny Boyle
Geraldine O'Rawe as Alice Quigley
Gerard McSorley as Father Daly
Dan Gordon as Inspector McPeake
Grainne Delany as Theresa Higgins
Ciarán Fitzgerald as Liam Quigley
Robert Lang as Government Minister
Oliver Maguire as Frank Maguire
Stephen Hogan as Young Turk
Anthony Brophy as Prisoner's Leader
Myles Walsh as Man at Church door
Reception
The film grossed £778,960 ($1.2 million) in the United Kingdom and Ireland and $671,437 in the United States and Canada.