List of films featuring the Irish Republican Army
This is a list of films in which the Irish Republican Army, a faction thereof or a break away organisation is portrayed either through its plot or by a main character.
Title | Director | Notable cast | Summary | Released | Notes |
Juno and the Paycock | Alfred Hitchcock | 1930 | |||
The Informer | John Ford | Victor McLaglen | 1935 | ||
Beloved Enemy | H.C. Potter | 1936 | |||
My Life for Ireland | Max W. Kimmich | 1941 | |||
I See a Dark Stranger | Frank Launder | Deborah Kerr, Trevor Howard | A young Irish woman becomes a Nazi spy. | 1946 | |
Odd Man Out | Carol Reed | James Mason | A wounded Irish nationalist leader in Belfast attempts to evade police following a failed robbery. | 1947 | |
The Quiet Man | John Ford | John Wayne | 1952 | ||
The Gentle Gunman | Basil Dearden | John Mills, Dirk Bogarde | IRA Volunteer Terry Sullivan become disillusioned with a bombing campaign of London during the Second World War. | 1952 | |
Shake Hands with the Devil | Michael Anderson | 1959 | |||
A Terrible Beauty | Tay Garnett | Robert Mitchum | 1960 | ||
Ryan's Daughter | David Lean | Sarah Miles, Robert Mitchum, John Mills, Leo McKern, Trevor Howard | IRA men arrive in a village to prepare to receive a delivery of German rifles from a ship offshore. Although the villagers help them recover the weapons during a storm, they are captured by the local British Army detachment on leaving the beach. | 1970 | |
Duck, You Sucker! | Sergio Leone | James Coburn, Rod Steiger | An Irish explosives expert on the run and a Mexican bandit unintentionally get involved in the Mexican Revolution. | 1971 | |
A Sense of Loss | Marcel Ophüls | Documentary shot over six weeks in December 1971, and January 1972, the film consisted of interviews with Protestants, Catholics, politicians, and some soldiers, combined with TV news clips of bombings and violence. | 1972 | ||
NO GO! | Richard Chase | Docudrama about IRA in Derry's Bogside. | 1973 | ||
Hennessy | Don Sharp | Rod Steiger, Lee Remick | After his family is killed, a once peaceful Irishman plots revenge, setting out to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II | 1975 | |
The Eagle Has Landed | John Sturges | Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland | A former IRA man sheltering in Nazi Germany, where he works as a lecturer, is parachuted into England to make preparations for a Luftwaffe parachute unit, disguised as Polish soldiers, tasked with capturing or killing Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. | 1976 | |
The Patriot Game | Arthur MacCaig | A history of the Northern Irish conflict from 1922 until the 1970s. | 1978 | documentary | |
The Outsider | Tony Luraschi | 1980 | |||
The Long Good Friday | John Mackenzie | Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren | A London crime boss is beset by problems which prove to be caused by the IRA, targeting his organisation as a result of the misdealings of one of his lackeys with them. | 1980 | |
Guests of the Nation | John J. Desmond | 1981 | Television film | ||
Harry's Game | Lawrence Gordon Clark | Ray Lonnen, Derek Thompson | An IRA rifleman who assassinated a British minister in front of his family in London is tracked down by an undercover British Army officer. | 1982 | Television serial |
Giro City | Karl Francis | 1982 | |||
Cal | Pat O'Connor | 1984 | |||
The Glory Boys | Michael Ferguson | Anthony Perkins | The IRA assigns one of its members to aid a Palestinian assassin in his attempt to kill an Israeli scientist in London, while British Intelligence officers attempt to prevent and capture them | 1984 | Television serial |
Contact | Alan Clarke | Sean Chapman | Film based on A.F.N. Clarke's experiences as a Parachute Regiment officer in 1970s Northern Ireland | 1984 | Television film |
In This Corner | Atom Egoyan | 1985 | Television film | ||
A Prayer for the Dying | Mike Hodges | 1987 | |||
Naming the Names | Sylvestra Le Touzel | Stuart Burge | Young Belfast woman committed to republican cause caught in web of conflicting loyalties and violence. | 1987 | TV Movie |
The Dawning | Robert Knights | 1987 | |||
Act of Betrayal | Lawrence Gordon Clark | Elliott Gould, Patrick Bergin | An IRA informer and his family are given new identities and new lives in Australia but the IRA are still determined to track them down. | 1988 | TV Movie |
The Dawning | Robert Knights | 1988 | |||
The Grasscutter | Ian Mune | Terence Cooper, Ian McElhinney | An Ulster Volunteer Force informer living under an assumed identity in New Zealand is revealed, with both loyalist and republican groups eager to track him down. | 1988 | |
A Casualty of War | Tom Clegg | 1989 | Television film | ||
Elephant | Alan Clarke | 1989 | Television film | ||
Who Bombed Birmingham? | Mike Beckham | John Hurt, Martin Shaw | 1991 | Documentary film | |
Behind the Mask | Frank Martin | Dramadoc about the Birmingham Six. | 1991 | Documentary film | |
The Treaty | Jonathan Lewis | 1991 | Television film | ||
Force of Duty | Pat O'Connor | 1992 | Television film | ||
Patriot Games | Phillip Noyce | Harrison Ford | 1992 | ||
The Crying Game | Neil Jordan | 1992 | |||
Circles of Deceit | Geoffrey Sax | 1993 | Television film | ||
In the Name of the Father | Jim Sheridan | Daniel Day Lewis Pete Postlethwaite | Based on the Guildford Four, father and son are falsely imprisoned as IRA members accused of committing the Guildford pub bombing. | 1993 | |
Blown Away | Stephen Hopkins | Jeff Bridges, Tommy Lee Jones | 1994 | ||
Patriots | Frank Kerr | 1994 | |||
More Than a Sacrifice | Tom Collins | 1995 | Documentary film | ||
The Boys of Barr na Sráide | Conor O'Carroll | 1996 | Short film | ||
Michael Collins | Neil Jordan | Liam Neeson | 1996 | ||
Some Mother's Son | Terry George | Helen Mirren | 1996 | ||
The Eliminator | Enda Hughes | 1996 | |||
The Devil's Own | Alan J. Pakula | Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford | 1997 | ||
Midnight Man | Lawrence Gordon Clark | 1995 | Television film | ||
A Further Gesture | Robert Dornhelm | 1997 | |||
The Informant | Jim McBride | 1997 | |||
The Jackal | Michael Caton-Jones | Bruce Willis, Richard Gere | An ex-IRA gunman is recruited to assist the CIA in tracking down a suspected presidential assassin. | 1997 | |
The Boxer | Jim Sheridan | Daniel Day-Lewis, Emily Watson | 1997 | ||
The General | John Boorman | Brendan Gleeson | Details the life of Dublin underworld figure Martin Cahill. | 1998 | |
Titanic Town | Roger Michell | 1998 | |||
Divorcing Jack | David Caffrey | 1998 | |||
Ronin | John Frankenheimer | Robert De Niro | IRA operatives hire mercenaries to retrieve a mysterious briefcase. | 1998 | |
The Craic | Ted Emery | 1999 | |||
Exiled | Bill Muir | 1999 | |||
Brits | 2000 | Documentary television series | |||
Borstal Boy | Peter Sheridan | 2000 | |||
An Everlasting Piece | Barry Levinson | 2000 | |||
The Bombmaker | Graham Theakston | 2001 | Television film | ||
Shamrock and Swastika | Brendan Culleton, Irina Maldea | Examination of the Irish Republican Army's collaboration with the Abwehr during World War II. | 2001 | Television documentary | |
H3 | Les Blair | Depiction of the 1981 Irish hunger strike. | 2001 | ||
Bloody Sunday | Paul Greengrass | James Nesbit | Depiction of the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre. | 2002 | Television film |
Sunday | Charles McDougall | Ciarán McMenamin, Christopher Eccleston | Depiction of the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre. | 2002 | Television film |
The Rising of the Moon | Deborah Baxtrom | 2002 | |||
Boxed | Marion Comer | Tom Murphy | A priest is called upon to provide last rites to an IRA prisoner. | 2002 | Drama |
The Maze | 2002 | Television documentary | |||
Omagh | Pete Travis | 2004 | Television film | ||
Breakfast on Pluto | Neil Jordan | 2005 | |||
The Year London Blew Up | Edmund Coulthard | Dramadoc about the 1974-75 Provisional IRA campaign in London, which culminated in the Balcombe Street siege. | 2005 | Television film | |
Johnny Was | Mark Hammond | 2006 | |||
The Wind That Shakes the Barley | Ken Loach | Cillian Murphy | 2006 | ||
I.R.A. King of Nothing | Damian Chapa | 2006 | |||
Fifty Dead Men Walking | Kari Skogland | Ben Kingsley, Rose McGowan, Jim Sturgess | A loose adaptation of Martin McGartland's 1997 autobiography of the same name. | 2008 | |
Hunger | Steve McQueen | Depiction of the Bobby Sands during the 1981 Irish hunger strike. | 2008 | ||
Five Minutes of Heaven | Oliver Hirschbiegel | Liam Neeson | A reconciliation is attempted after 33 years | 2009 | |
Voices From The Grave | Kate O'Callaghan | The story of the Northern Ireland Troubles through the Irish Republican Army's Brendan Hughes and Ulster Volunteer Force's David Ervine, two men who played key roles on opposite sides of the ongoing conflict. | 2010 | Documentary | |
Shadow Dancer | James Marsh | An IRA member is turned into an informer for the British, to protect her son | 2012 | ||
'71 | Yann Demange | A young British soldier is accidentally abandoned, following a riot in Belfast, in 1971. | 2014 | ||
The Journey | Nick Hamm | Timothy Spall, Colm Meaney, Freddie Highmore | A fictional account of the true story of how political enemies Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness formed an unlikely political alliance. | 2016 | |
Rebellion | Colin Teevan | Rebellion is a five part serial drama about the birth of modern Ireland. The story is told from the perspectives of a group of fictional characters who live through the political events of the 1916 Easter Rising. | 2016 | ||
The Foreigner | Martin Campbell | Jackie Chan, Pierce Brosnan | A man seeks revenge for the death of his daughter, killed by a bombing committed by a rogue faction of the IRA. | 2017 | |
Resistance | Colin Teevan | Set in late 1920, Resistance is a sequel series to the 2016 miniseries Rebellion | 2019 |