BOBBY SANDS: 66 DAYS (Brendan Byrne, Ireland/UK). 105 minutes. Rating: NNN
In 1981, Bobby Sands started a hunger strike to draw attention to deplorable conditions in the Maze prison and to get the British government to acknowledge IRA members as political prisoners. His demands were not met, and 66 days later Sands was dead, the first of 10 men to starve themselves to death as part of the protest.
Bobby Sands: 66 Days places the Maze hunger strike, and Sands himself, in the larger social and political context of the Troubles. Director Brendan Byrne lays out his case methodically and precisely, breaking up the standard talking heads and archival footage with passages from the diary Sands secretly kept for the first 17 days of the hunger strike.
It’s a solid work, though the pacing flags as Byrne struggles to frame the long stalemate in a dramatic manner. But when Sands’s protest reaches its awful, inevitable end, you’ll feel it.
May 3, 9 pm, TIFF 2 May 5, 6:30 pm, Bloor Hot Docs May 7, 7 pm, Hart House
