Some Mother’s Son    

One of the most anticipated and controversial offerings at 1997’s Cannes Film Festival, “Some Mother’s Son” stars Helen Mirren (“The Madness Of King George,” BBC’s “Prime Suspect,” “The Cook The Thief”). The film was written and produced by Terry George and Jim Sheridan, who is best known for the exceptional “In The Name Of The Father” and “My Left Foot” films.

From soaring highs to tragic lows, Whelan’s emotive score – his first fully self-composed soundtrack – dramatically compliments the moving story of the 1981 IRA hunger-strikers and their families. “The main characters in ‘Some Mother’s Son’ are fictional, but the events are historically accurate,” says director Terry George. “During the hunger strike, 21 Irish mothers were faced with the dilemma portrayed in the film. This for me was and is the drama and tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.”  The film is told from the perspective of two hunger striker’s mothers, Kathleen Quigley (Mirren) and Annie Higgins (Fionnula Flanagan), ordinary Irish women from different backgrounds, who are forced to the centre of an epic struggle. The film is a universal drama that is played out every day in Belfast or Beirut, Soweto or South Central, LA.