| Some Mother's Son | |
| Director: | Terry George |
| Producer: | Jim Sheridan Arthur Lappin Edward Burke |
| Music: | Bill Whelan |
| Cinematography: | Geoffrey Simpson |
| Editing: | Craig McKay |
| Studio: | Castle Rock Entertainment |
| Distributor: | Columbia Pictures (Select territories) Rank-Castle Rock/Turner (United Kingdom)[1] |
| Runtime: | 112 minutes |
| Country: | Ireland United States |
| Language: | English |
| Gross: | $1.9 million |
Some Mother's Son is a 1996 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.[2]
The film grossed £778,960 ($1.2 million) in the United Kingdom and Ireland and $671,437 in the United States and Canada.[3]