SOME of the most enduring images of Ireland in the popular imagination of Americans have come from films. While some of these films are not very accurate or good, many are excellent and effectively recreate the environment and compelling issues that Irishmen and women faced at different periods in their history. And since films are the media through which many Americans gain their impressions of Irish history, politics, and culture, they are worthy of consideration by historians for that reason alone.

In the last twenty years, the Irish film industry has experienced something of a renaissance. Apart from bringing their rich literary heritage to the screen, the Irish have used film and television to explore the most controversial aspects of their history and culture, from exposing the deepest wounds of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland to challenging the social power and morality of traditional Irish Catholicism. Yet the Irish film industry has not been without its critics. Some have complained that Irish filmmakers who seek financial backing from Hollywood production companies for their medium-to-big budget films often cater to the conceits and tastes of American audiences—especially with regard to political topics. The profits of American distribution then offset the costs of production. The result, these critics say, is the presentation of a distorted and overly "Americanized" sense of Irishness combined with a one-sided and ill-informed view of Irish history (particulatly of Northern Ireland's political troubles).

Yet in spite of such concerns, most would not question the rising levels of talent and sophistication both in front of and behind the camera. In recent years, many Irish films have received worldwide recognition for their quality and innovation while some Irish directors and actors have become international celebrities. The Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA) and Northern Ireland Screen support and award superior achievement in the industry.

Below is a selection of films useful for complementing our study of politics and society in Modern Ireland. Most of the films listed below can be obtained at Watzek Library or through the Summit Library Consortium. You can also find most of them at Blockbuster, Hollywood, or other video chains. In addition to the list below you might consult the Irish in Film and Irish Film and Television Network (ITFN) web databases.

Some information courtesy of Internet Movie Database. Used with permission

MAN OF ARAN

Director: Robert Flaherty, 1934

Flaherty's famous documentary dramatizing and heroizing the Aran Islanders is the first film attempt at an anthropological study of local Irish culture. The way of life he was attempting to document, however, had already disappeared in 1934, hence the "cast of characters" at the end of the film. Many of the cast had to be taught the "traditional ways" they depict in the film.

BARRY LYNDON

Director: Stanley Kubrick, 1975

In a small village in 18th-century Ireland, Redmond Barry is a young farm boy in love with his cousin Nora. When she becomes engaged to a British captain, Barry challenges him to a duel and wins. He then flees to Dublin and, with no other alternative, assumes a false name and joins the army to fight in the Seven Years War. An excellent period film that brings to life the privileged world of the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy. Based loosely on the 1844 picaresque romance by William Thackeray.

OUT OF IRELAND: THE STORY OF IRISH IMMIGATION TO AMERICA

Director: Paul Wagner, 1995

The talents of numerous Irish and American historians, ethnologists, musicians, and actors are combined in this excellent documentary that tells the stories of Irish immigrants who settled in North America. The film mixes an adept historical overview and deeply touching personal stories with well-chosen archival material and gorgeously filmed modern footage. Narrators include Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, Brenda Flicker, Aidan Quinn, Kelly McGillis and playwright John B. Keane.

ONE MAN'S HERO

Director: Lance Hool, 1998

This film is a highly romanticized portrayal of the true story of Irish immigrant soldiers in the US Army who deserted and fought for Mexico in the Mexican-American War. The plot centers on Sgt. John Riley who accepts a commission in the Mexican Army and commands his fellow Irishmen in the Batallón San Patricio fighting under their own banner. A typical Hollywood epic, the film offers a melodramatic and often simplistic view of this little-known chapter in Irish, American, and Mexican history.

GANGS OF NEW YORK

Director: Martin Scorsese, 2002

This stylized and visually stunning film recreates the experiences of Irish immigrants in the "Five Points" of Lower Manhattan during the mid 19th century. It highlights the poverty and machine politics of immigrant New York, as well as the violent conflict between gangs of Irish and "Nativist" Americans from the famine immigration of the 1840s through the Draft Riots of 1863.

THE MOLLY MAGUIRES

Director: Michael Ritt, 1970

This film is set in 1876 in the coal country of Western Pennsylvania. Angered at the cruelty and exploitation by the mining company, the Irish immigrant miners form a secret society to carry out acts of sabotage and violence against their employers. They name their organization "The Molly Maguires" after the legendary agrarian anti-landlord vigilantes of the same name back in Ireland. The company responds by hiring Irish informants to infiltrate the group. Based on true events.

NED KELLY

Director: Gregor Jordan, 2004

Based on the true story of Edward "Ned" Kelly, at one time the most wanted man in the British Empire. In 1870s Australia, young Ned is a bushranger living in poverty with his family of first-generation descendants of transported Irish convicts. His frequent trouble with the law and his resentment of colonial class prejudice lead him to form a gang of outlaws who redistribute their loot among the poor farming communities. Kelly has become an Irish-Australian icon and is the subject of many other films.

LONG JOURNEY HOME: THE IRISH IN AMERICA

Directors: Thomas Lennon & Mark Zwonitzer, 1996

This documentary series surveys the history of Ireland and its impact on the United States of America. It chronicles the centuries of hardship endured by the Irish and the waves of immigration and settlement in America from the first colonization efforts by the Scotch-Irish through the postwar immigration of the 20th century. The music is outstanding.

THE DEAD

Director: John Huston, 1987

This film is an adaptation of one of the great short stories of James Joyce. The plot revolves around a Christmas dinner at the house of two spinster musician sisters and their niece in turn-of-the-century Ireland, attended by friends and family. Among the visiting attendees are the sisters' nephew Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. The evening's reminiscences bring up melancholy memories for Gretta concerning her first, long-lost love when she was a girl in rural Galway.

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

Director: Joseph Strick, 1977

From James Joyce's novel. Stephen Dedalus is a young man growing up in Ireland in the early part of the 20th century. His search for knowledge and understanding, and the decline of his family's circumstances, lead him to revelations on the nature of art and politics. His self-discovery makes him feel unwelcome in his own nation, and forces him to decide whether to leave and accept exile, or to stay and fight.

NORA

Director: Pat Murphy, 2000

This period drama is based on the relationship between the novelist James Joyce and his longtime lover, Nora Barnacle. In 1904, James, an aspiring young writer in Dublin, meets Nora, a hotel chambermaid recently arrived from Galway. Together they travel to Trieste, have two children, and then return to Dublin. During their stormy relationship she tolerates his drinking, pulls him through his phobias, and helps him confront the stifling social and moral constraints of life in Ireland.

MICHAEL COLLINS

Director: Neil Jordan, 1996

A biographical account of the IRA fighter and Irish statesman from the 1916 Easter Rising to his assassination in 1922. A vivid recreation of the Irish republican movement, the guerrilla campaign against British forces, and the Irish Civil War. The film is historically accurate, but the characterization of Collins, Harry Boland, and Eamon De Valera remains controversial.

THE FIGHTING 69TH

Director: William Keighley, 1940

The 69th Infantry Regiment originated during the US Civil War as a Union Army regiment from New York City that recruited mostly Irish immigrants. This films centers on the heroism and leadership of the regiment's Chaplain, Father Francis Duffy, during some of the most brutal campaigns of the First World War. Fr. Duffy was one of three men of the 69th awarded the Medal of Honor and the regiment became the inspiration for the Notre Dame University nickname "The Fighting Irish."

THE LAST SEPTEMBER

Director: Deborah Warner, 1999

Set in Co. Cork in 1920, this film revolves around the lives and romantic complications of an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family living on their estate in the midst of the Irish war for independence. An interesting look at the last days of the Protestant Ascendancy and of their own sense of Irishness being tested through the changing national climate of their country and an uncertain future. Based on the 1929 novel by Elizabeth Bowen.

SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL

Director: Michael Anderson, 1959

This film is set in 1921 Dublin amid the IRA guerrilla campaign against the British security forces. Irish-American medical student Kerry O'Shea hopes to remain uninvolved, but saving a wounded friend gets him outlawed, and inexorably drawn into the rebel organization under his former professor Sean Lenihan, who has "shaken hands with the devil" and begun to think of violence as an end in itself. Complications arise when the British offer a peace treaty that is not enough to satisfy Lenihan.

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

Director: Ken Loach, 2006

This award-winning film begins in 1919 when Irish volunteers wage a guerrilla campaign against the ruthless "Black and Tan" paramilitary squads arriving from Britain to block Ireland's bid for independence. Driven by a deep sense of duty and love of country, Damien abandons a promising career as a doctor and joins his brother, Teddy, in this dangerous and violent struggle. Their victory is followed in 1922 by the Irish Civil War that pits these same comrades against each other.

THE DAWNING

Director: Robert Knights, 1988

Set in 1920, the plot of this film revolves around the unlikely friendship between Nancy, an orphaned teenager raised by a loving aunt, and Cassius, a middle-aged tramp who is the same age that her unknown father would have been. When Nancy discovers that Cassius is actually an IRA gunman on the run and that the authorities are closing in, their relationship and her innocence are shattered. The acting is excellent.

FOOLS OF FORTUNE

Director: Pat O'Connor, 1990

This story centers on the lives of a prosperous Irish Protestant family living through the Anglo-Irish war and caught between IRA guerilla violence and the brutality of the "Black & Tan" auxiliary police. An interesting portrayal of this important chapter in Irish history and its impact on everyday life. However the movie itself, though beautiful filmed, tends toward melodrama and after a while the plot become a bit tedious. Based on the novel by William Trevor.

BITTER HARVEST

Director: Goran Paskaljevic, 2001

Set in the small village of Skillet in 1924, this film is a tale of envy, hatred and revenge. The plot revolves around Harry, a bitter, mean-spirited, and domineering widower who lives with his shy son Gus. Harry tells Gus "a man is measured by his enemies"—and in Harry's case, his sworn enemy is George, the popular local pub owner. A comic yet disturbing look at village politics in Ireland and of the terrible consequences of a local feud gone out of control.

THE IRISH EMPIRE

Directors: Alan Gilsenan & Dearbhla Walsh, 1999

This five-part series, first broadcast on BBC Ireland in 1999, offers a compelling, contemporary historical perspective on the events, people, and influences that shaped the identity of Irish culture as it expanded throughout the world. The focus is not on Ireland as a country but the Irish as a global community—an "empire" formed by the emigration of millions of Irish natives, with pockets of culture all over the world and majority populations concentrated in England, America, and Australia.

ANGELA'S ASHES

Director: Alan Parker, 1999

Based upon the Pulitzer prize-winning memoir by Frank McCourt, this film traces the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The story opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie's siblings, they return to Ireland only to find the situation there even worse.

BORSTAL BOY

Director: Peter Sheridan, 2000

In 1942, Brendan Behan, the acclaimed Irish dramatist, is sixteen years old and headed to Liverpool on an IRA bombing mission. The mission is thwarted and he is convicted and imprisoned in Borstal, a reformatory for young offenders in East Anglia. There Brendan is forced to live and work side-by-side with those he perceives as the enemy—a confrontation that reveals a deep inner conflict in the young man and forces a difficult self-examination. Based on Behan's 1958 autobiographical novel.

SONG FOR A RAGGY BOY

Director: Aisling Walsh, 2003

The true story of William Franklin, an Irish veteran of the Spanish Civil War who returns home in 1939 and is employed as the only lay teacher in St. Jude's Reformatory, an oppressive and predatory school run by the Christian Brothers. Despite the brutal environment, William manages to kindle intellectual enthusiasm among his initially illiterate students by introducing them to poetry. His resistance to the school's regime sparks an even harsher crackdown in response. Based on the book by Patrick Galvin.

DANCING AT LUGHNASA

Director: Pat O'Connor, 1998

A young boy narrates the story of growing up in the 1930s in a fatherless home with his unmarried mother and four spinster aunts on a modest farm in Co. Donegal. The sisters are reunited with their brother Jack, a missionary priest returning after 25 years in Africa to live out his final days at home. The plot follows the daily lives and interaction among the women as the town prepares to celebrate the pre-Christian Celtic harvest festival of Lughnasa. Based on Brian Friel's award-winning play.

THE QUIET MAN

Director: John Ford, 1952

This John Wayne classic tells the story of an American boxer who returns to his native Ireland where he finds a fiery prospective spouse (Maureen O'Hara) and a country greener and more beautiful than he remembered. The Quiet Man was one of the first films to introduce American audiences to the beauty of the Irish landscape. It won Academy Awards for cinematography and direction.

ODD MAN OUT

Director: Carol Reed, 1947

Johnny McQueen has been hiding in the Belfast home of his lover Kathleen and her mother, planning a hold-up that will provide his clandestine political group with the funds needed to continue its activities. A morally complex study of conscience and the bitter aftermath of terrorism, this noir-ish thriller was one of the first films to address the political violence of Northern Ireland on intimately human terms.

BROKEN HARVEST

Director: Maurice O'Callaghan, 1994

This film, set in village Ireland in the 1950s, revolves around two neighbors who in their youth had fought for independence from Britain but were then pitted against each other in the ensuing civil war. Years later, the politics of their past continue to affect their daily life and that of their families. A vivid portrayal of how leftover emotions and unfinished business from the Irish Civil War haunted many citizens of the Republic in the decades that followed.

DECEMBER BRIDE

Director: Thaddeus O'Sullivan, 1990

Sarah Gomartin, a servant girl on an Ulster farm, bears a child to one of the owner's sons. Her steadfast refusal over many years to "bend and contrive things" by naming one of the brothers as the father reverberates through the puritanical Ulster community, alienating clergy and neighbors, hastening her mother's death, and casting a cold shadow on the life of her children. Based on the 1951 novel by Sam Hanna Bell.

THIS IS MY FATHER

Director: Paul Quinn, 1998

A middle-aged American teacher discovers photos from his mother's past that convince him that she never told him the truth about his real father. When he travels to the Galway village where he believes his father might still live, the details are slowly revealed about a Romeo & Juliet love affair that was blighted by class, religion, human meanness, and Irish angst.

CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

Director: Pat O'Connor, 1995

Set in Ireland in the 1950s, this is the story about the lives, loves, and betrayals of three Irish girls—Bennie, Eve, and Nan—as they begin their studies at University College, Dublin. Bennie soon seems to have found her ideal man in Jack, but events conspire to ruin their happiness. Based on the novel by Maeve Binchy.

MIDDLETOWN

Director: Brian Kirk, 2006

Set in the 1950s, this gothic thriller tells the story of newly-ordained Rev. Gabriel Hunter who returns home to his small Ulster border village as its new Protestant minister. The town is full of drinking, gambling, and irreligion—and Gabriel's own family is no exception. As a messenger of God, Gabriel believes he must save the townspeople from their sinfulness, but the battle for their souls brings surprising revelations. Filmed in Belfast and Co. Antrim.

A LOVE DIVIDED

Director: Sydney Macartney, 1999

A moving and dramatic love story of a marriage between Sean and Sheila, a Catholic and Protestant living in Co. Wexford in the 1950s. Sheila’s refusal to allow the local priest to force her to enroll her children in Catholic school quickly divides the town along sectarian lines. When Sheila flees to Belfast with her children, the crisis makes international headlines and severely tests her marriage to Sean. Based on a true story.

THE FIELD

Director: Jim Sheridan, 1990

"Bull" McCabe's family has farmed a field for generations, sacrificing endlessly for the sake of the land. And when the widow who owns the field decides to sell the field in a public auction, McCabe knows that he must own it. But while no one in the village would dare bid against him, an American with deep pockets decides that he needs the field to build a highway. The Bull and his son decide to convince the American to give up bidding on the field, but things go horribly wrong.

THE BUTCHER BOY

Director: Neil Jordan, 1998

This film plots the progressive deterioration of a young boy "from the lanes," son of an alcoholic father and suicidally depressed mother, whose fantasies increasingly revolve around the totemic Irish figure of the pig. He is visited increasingly by the Blessed Virgin, played by Sinéad O'Connor, for long colloquies on the various and essentially tragic events of his life.

THE LAST HURRAH

Director: John Ford, 1958

Based on the 1956 novel by Edwin O'Connor, this film tells the story of Frank Skeffington, last of the great big-city Irish-American political bosses, running for re-election as mayor for the last time. The novel and film were based loosely on the life and career of Boston mayor James Michael Curley and provide an interesting glimpse into the world of the Boston Irish and urban American machine politics.

THE PLAYBOYS

Director: Gillies MacKinnon, 1992

Set in 1957 in a rural village near the border with Northern Ireland, a young woman scandalizes her neighbors by having a baby out of wedlock and refusing to name the father. She is a rare beauty and every man in town desires her, especially the local police sergeant. The arrival of a dramatic troupe, "The Playboys", stirs things up even more when she falls in love with one of the players. An interesting look at romance and rebellion against village provincialism and traditional Irish morality.

THE LONELY PASSION OF JUDITH HEARNE

Director: Jack Clayton, 1987

Judith Hearne is a middle-aged, piously Catholic spinster earning a living by giving piano lessons in 1950s Dublin. She falls in love with a shady hotel owner who, in turn, decides to exploit her affections. The film offers an unsparing portrait of a lonely individual with nothing holding her together but her own ever-weakening faith and an increasing dependence on alcohol. It also gives an interesting glimpse into the peculiarities of Irish Catholicism. Based on the novel by Brian Moore.

THE MAGDALENE SISTERS

Director: Peter Mullan, 2003

An unflinching and compelling emotional drama tracing the young lives of four "fallen women" rejected by their families and abandoned to the care of the Catholic Church in 1960s Ireland. The film graphically portrays the ordeal of these women forced to work in the Magdalene laundries for indefinite periods of servitude in order to atone for their sins.

THE MATCHMAKER

Director: Mark Joffe, 1997

Marcy is an assistant to Massachusetts Senator John McGlory, who is having problems with a re-election campaign. Desperate for Irish votes, McGlory's chief of staff sends Marcy to Ireland to trace McGlory's relatives or ancestors. Marcy arrives at the village of Ballinagra when it is preparing for its annual "matchmaking festival." Intended as a romantic comedy, this film provides comic insight into the attachment of Irish-Americans to their "homeland" and the reaction of the native Irish.

BLOODY SUNDAY

Director: Paul Greengrass, 2002

This film tells the story of Bloody Sunday—January 30, 1972—as it unfolded over one day, chronicling the arrival of thousands of British troops in the tense and crowded streets of Derry in Northern Ireland and the simultaneous preparations by civil rights leaders for a nonviolent but forceful march that was to make the case for Irish self-determination. The day tragically ended with British troops killing thirteen unarmed civilians.

CAL

Director: Pat O'Connor, 1984

19 year-old Cal McCluskie, a Catholic, lives with his father in a Protestant neighborhood in a town in Northern Ireland. Cal is a reluctant IRA recruit trying to undo his past, but soon discovers that the IRA is a close-knit and fearful fraternity where membership is for life—like it or not. As Cal's relationship with Marcella, a policeman's widow, grows emotionally deeper, it becomes increasingly more complicated politically and morally.

FOUR DAYS IN JULY

Director: Mike Leigh, 1985

Two Belfast couples are each expecting their first child around the same day as the July 12th Orange marches. Collette and Eugene are Catholic—he was crippled from abuse by British soldiers. Lorraine and Billy are Protestant—he is a soldier in the Ulster Defence Regiment. Both women have their babies on the same day and share a hospital room while earlier their husbands sit together in the waiting area. A quietly moving film about normal human interaction among people in a divided society.

THE INFORMANT

Director: Jim McBride, 1997

The film revolves around the relationship between an Irish informant in the IRA and his British "handlers." It conveys powerfully the oppressiveness and weight of history that sustains hatred and the impossible dilemmas faced by ordinary people trying to navigate between the opposing forces.

SOME MOTHER'S SON

Director: Terry George, 1996

Based on the true story of the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze, a British prison in Northern Ireland, in which republican prisoner Bobby Sands led a protest against the treatment of him and other inmates as criminals rather than as prisoners of war. The film focuses on the mothers of two of the strikers, and their struggle to save the lives of their sons.

HUNGER

Director: Steve McQueen, 2008

This film dramatizes the six weeks prior to the death of Bobby Sands during the 1981 hunger strikes in Northern Ireland. Sands was the first of several Irish republicans in the Maze Prison to use the hunger strike to gain status as political prisoners. His example increased worldwide attention to Northern Ireland's troubles, galvanized the republican and loyalist communities, and ignited debate about the morality of this extreme form of protest.

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER

Director: Jim Sheridan, 1993

One of the most controversial court cases in modern British history is the subject of this award winning film. Gerry Conlon, a Belfast youth living in England, and three friends are convicted of the 1974 IRA pub bombing in Guildford. Even Conlon's father is jailed. An appeal to the British judiciary reveals forced confessions and wrongful prosecution. The appeal ultimately wins the release of the "Guildford Four" after years in prison and calls into question the integrity of Britain's criminal justice system.

THE GENERAL

Director: John Boorman, 1998

This film centers on the life and death of Martin Cahill, the celebrated Dublin gangster who stole millions during the 1980s, but attracted unwanted attention from the IRA, the UVF, and members of his own gang. Cahill’s thievery and violence are undeniably reprehensible, but his charm, humor, and folk hero status stand in deliberate contrast to the institutionalized hypocrisy and corruption of the Catholic Church, the Irish government, and the paramilitaries alike.

HIDDEN AGENDA

Director: Ken Loach, 1990

After an American human rights lawyer is assassinated in Belfast his girlfriend comes to Northern Ireland to learn the truth about his death. She is joined by a respected and fair-minded police detective from England assigned to the case. Their inquiry leads to backroom meetings with IRA gunmen and officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and exposes political manipulation and betrayal of trust at the highest levels of government.

THE BOXER

Director: Jim Sheridan, 1998

When former IRA member Danny Flynn returns to Belfast after fourteen years in prison, he wants only to find peace, resume his boxing career, and search out his long lost love. This film portrays with stark honesty the lives of ordinary people caught up in the sectarian violence of Northern Ireland - one of Britain's longest and most troublsome political problems.

MY LEFT FOOT

Director: Jim Sheridan, 1989

In this true story told through flashbacks, Christy Brown is born with cerebral palsy into a poor, working-class Irish family. Able only to control movement in his left foot and to speak in guttural sounds, he is mistakenly believed to be retarded for the first ten years of his life. Eventually he develops into a brilliant painter, poet and author.

THE RAILWAY STATION MAN

Director: Michael Whyte, 1992

This film revolves around a Belfast woman whose husband has been murdered as a mistaken target in an IRA shooting. She moves to a small coastal town in the Republic to raise her teenage son away from the violence of Northern Ireland. There she meets and falls in love with a disfigured American veteran who has relocated to Ireland and is attempting to get the local railway station back in working order after years of disuse. Based on the novel by Jennifer Johnston.

THE COMMITMENTS

Director: Alan Parker, 1991

This film, based on the novel by Roddy Doyle, tells the story of a group of unknown musicians from the working class slums of North Dublin who join together to perform American soul music. Rousing musical numbers are combined with gritty and unsentimental images of the unemployment and depressed economic conditions that until very recently were so endemic to Ireland.

ONLY THE LONELY

Director: Chris Columbus, 1991

A sentimental drama about Danny Muldoon, an Irish-American cop in Chicago who lives with his mother, a real battleaxe from the old country. As Danny, an aging and lonely bachelor, pursues Teresa, a reclusive undertaker's daughter, he faces his overbearing mother's protests and must choose between his search for love and his duty to his mother as a good Irish son. This underrated film stars John Candy, Anthony Quinn, and the legendary Irish actress Maureen O'Hara in one of her last film roles.

EVELYN

Director: Bruce Beresford, 2002

Desmond Doyle is devastated when his wife abandons their family the day after Christmas. His unemployment and the fact that there is no woman in the house to care for the three children, Evelyn, Noel and Brendan, make it clear to the authorities that he is in an untenable situation. The Catholic Church and the Irish courts intervene to put the Doyle children into Church-run orphanages and Desmond must fight to get them back.

WAKING NED DEVINE

Director: Kirk Jones, 1998

Jackie O'Shea, a resident of the Irish coastal village of Tulaigh Mohr, learns that one of his neighbors has won £6.9 million in the national lottery. When Jackie discovers that the winning ticket holder has died of shock, he enlists the entire village in a plot for him to impersonate the winner and share the spoils. A comical look at village politics in present-day Ireland.

BOXED

Director: Marion Comer, 2002

The IRA, before executing an informer, often calls on certain "tame" priests to secretly provide last rites. This film is the story of what happens when they get a young priest who refuses to cooperate. Based on published reports—never denied by the Catholic Church in Northern Ireland—this suspenseful hostage drama explores issues of personal ethics, responsibility, terrorism, and absolution. A thoughtful film, but a bit overwrought at times.

IN AMERICA

Director: Jim Sheridan, 2003

Two young Irish parents who have lost their only son, trying to escape their grief, move (illegally) with their two daughters to a junkie-infested apartment building in Hell's Kitchen in New York City . They struggle with meager jobs and suffocatingly hot weather and build a friendship with an African artist in the apartment below them. This film is based loosely on the life experiences of director Jim Sheridan.

VERONICA GUERIN

Director: Joel Schumacher, 2003

This film recounts the tragic story of an investigative journalist from Dublin who was murdered for exposing the activities of the Irish mafia in the mid 1990s. Guerin's reporting centered mainly on the nefarious enterprises of drug kingpin John Gilligan and his various associates and how they aquired inexplicable wealth despite their limited financial positions. Guerin's murder led to a reform of Ireland's criminal justice system.

THIS IS THE SEA

Director: Mary McGuckian, 1997

This film is set in Northern Ireland shortly after 1994 ceasefire. Hazel is a Protestant teenager who lives with her family in the countryside and is largely isolated from sectarian politics and violence. Malachy is a Catholic youth who lives in a neighborhood in West Belfast in the midst of the "Troubles" and controlled by republican paramilitaries. The two meet and fall in love, but in the midst of a new hope for peace their romance cannot steer clear of the realities of their environment.

KINGS

Director: Tom Collins, 2007

This film focuses on the lives of four hard-drinking expatriate Irishmen who left Ireland in the 1970s. The men reunite in Kilburn, a traditionally Irish section of London, for the wake of their friend Jackie who was found dead on the tracks of the Underground. The story of their lives is told through flashbacks and the dialogue is mostly in the Irish language. Adapted from Jimmy Murphy's critically-acclaimed play "The Kings of the Kilburn High Road."

DIVORCING JACK

Director: David Caffrey, 1998

This black comedy centers on Dan Starkey, a cynical Belfast hack reporter whose tempestuous love-life suddenly intersects with the nascent Northern Ireland peace process. The plot follows the formula of a political thriller, but the film is really a wicked satire offering a mix of raw inside humor, an outlandish storyline, and a surprisingly realistic and sensitive portrayal of Northern Irish society from the point of view of those who live there. Based on the novel by Colin Bateman.

MAPMAKER

Director: Johnny Gogan, 2001

Richie Markey is a cartographer who uncovers the remains of an alleged police informer while under contract to map a border region in Northern Ireland during the early stages of the peace process. As local tensions are stirred by the discovery, Richie realizes that the completion of his map holds the key to the mystery of the man's death. In continuing his work, he gets drawn into local hostilities and a dangerous political endgame. A bit simplistic, but an interesting thriller nevertheless.

OMAGH

Director: Pete Travis, 2004

On August 15, 1998, a car bomb exploded in Omagh, Northern Ireland killing 29 people and injuring some 220 others. It was the single worst act of terrorism in Northern Ireland in over thirty years. This film, produced for British television, revolves around the atrocity, the subsequent investigation, and the lives of the affected families.

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

Director: John Deery, 2003

A scandal erupts within the Catholic Church in Ireland following the suicide of Frank Sweeney, a parish priest, and the expulsion of Daniel McLaughlin, a young seminarian accused of having been open to the sexual advances of a male classmate. A local journalist is convinced that the two incidents are linked and pursues the story. The film offers a scathing indictment of priestly celibacy and gives a glimpse into the divisions within the Catholic Church in present-day Irish society.

ONCE

Director: John Carney, 2006

A modern-day musical set the streets of Dublin, this film tells the story of an Irish street musician and a young Czech immigrant working as a housemaid. During an eventful week they write, rehearse, and record songs that reveal their unique love story. An interesting glimpse into the increasing cultural diversity of Ireland and the role of immigrants in reshaping Irish society during the economic boom of recent years.