Curator Watchlist
A fierce, unsentimental anti-colonial war drama that treats revolution as morally costly rather than heroic. It’s strongest as a political tragedy about comradeship, betrayal, and the impossible compromises of liberation.
Where to watch: Buy
Fri · 2h 7m
Director: Ken Loach
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Pádraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham
In 1920s Ireland young doctor Damien O'Donovan prepares to depart for a new job in a London hospital. As he says his goodbyes at a friend's farm, British Black and Tans arrive, and a young man is killed. Damien joins his brother Teddy in the Irish Republican Army, but political events are soon set in motion that tear the brothers apart.
Ken Loach
Cillian Murphy, Pádraic Delaney, Liam Cunningham
A fierce, unsentimental anti-colonial war drama that treats revolution as morally costly rather than heroic. It’s strongest as a political tragedy about comradeship, betrayal, and the impossible compromises of liberation.
Ken Loach turns the Irish War of Independence and Civil War into a painful study of principle under pressure. The film is less interested in battlefield spectacle than in how occupation, retaliation, and factionalism deform ordinary lives and friendships. That restraint makes the violence hit harder when it arrives.
Cillian Murphy gives the story its emotional center, but the film’s real force comes from its refusal to simplify either side into clean righteousness. It understands revolution as a movement that can be both necessary and ruinous, and it keeps asking what freedom means once the fighting starts turning inward.
The result is austere, angry, and deeply human. If you respond to historical dramas that argue as much as they dramatize, this is one of the essential modern political war films.
Darren Carver-Balsiger (4★) · 1811 likes
Revolutions are not clean. The British occupation of Ireland was barbaric and brutal. Whilst The Wind That Shakes the Barley may be exaggerated according to some, it is hard to deny the oppression Ireland faced during centuries of occupation. Irish independence is still a prickly topic, but British actions in the 1920s were wrong and Ken Loach is brave for unequivocally showing that in his film, although it's sad that it does require bravery to highlight anti-imperialist sentiments. As a… more
maggie (4.5★) · 1671 likes
cillian murphy: yells in irish me: nods understandingly
han (4★) · 1330 likes
cillian murphy is the wind that shakes my ovaries
Jeremy Corbyn (5★) · 1208 likes
It’s about the horrors and contradictions of the Irish Civil War in 1922. I remember showing this in a community centre in our constituency, and Ken came to talk to us about how he made the film. Thank you Ken! Superb performance by Cillian Murphy.
Steven (4.5★) · 1043 likes
irish mfs will be named Caoilfhionn and it's pronounced Craig
A sweeping companion piece on Irish independence politics, balancing insurgency, statecraft, and the cost of compromise.
Another forceful Irish political drama about injustice, state power, and the human damage of conflict.
Loach’s own documentary-style approach to political violence and state brutality makes this an especially close tonal match.
A landmark anti-colonial war film that shares the same urgency, realism, and interest in revolution’s moral price.
A restrained Northern Irish drama about the aftershocks of conflict, loyalty, and the difficulty of moving forward.
A stark, uncompromising political prison drama about sacrifice, ideology, and bodily endurance.
A very different Ireland on the surface, but useful as a cultural counterpoint for viewers interested in Irish identity on screen.
A tense political drama that explores identity, loyalty, and violence in the shadow of the Troubles.
A revenge-driven Irish period film with strong atmosphere and a grim view of colonial power.
For viewers drawn to Irish landscape and mood, this offers lyrical atmosphere rather than political conflict.
A stylish Irish crime drama with a similar interest in local politics, charisma, and social pressure.
A broad revolutionary-era war drama that, while more conventional, overlaps in themes of resistance and family conflict.
Irish War of Independence, Irish Civil War, anti-colonial struggle, revolution and betrayal, brotherhood and division, political idealism, occupation and resistance, moral ambiguity
historical drama, war, political drama, anti-colonial, revolution, civil conflict, bleak, naturalistic, period piece, tragic