1. Keep It a Secret: The Story of the Dawn of Surfing in Ireland
In the early 1970s, the world-class waves of Ireland were uncharted waters for the international surfing community. Amidst the ongoing conflict of the Troubles, pioneers in both Dublin and Belfast transcended political hostilities to host the 1972 Eurosurf championship. This look into the unsung history of the Emerald Isle’s now world-renowned surf scene details the power of sport to bridge any divide.
2. The Bloody Border (Blutige Grenze – Die Geschichte Irlands)
The painful story of Ireland and the Irish people, who struggled for centuries to free themselves from the tyrannical clutches of the British Empire; an epic tale of poverty, hunger, despair, violence and unyielding courage.
It has an average vote of 6.3 on TMDB.
3. 14 Days
Over fourteen days in March 1988, a sequence of traumatic events shook Northern Ireland to its core and shocked the world. But it was also 14 days that compelled one man, Redemptorist priest Fr Alec Reid, to find a way out of the deadly cycle of violence.
4. Unquiet Graves
This feature-length documentary investigates the role the British government played in the murder of over 120 civilians in Counties Armagh and Tyrone from July 1972 to 1978.
It has an average vote of 8.3 on TMDB.
5. Daughters of the Troubles: Belfast Stories
The women of Belfast played a unique role in holding together their families and communities during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Filmed during the fragile 17-month paramilitary cease-fire, Daughters of the Troubles: Belfast Stories looks at the challenges facing women trying to put their direct experience of grassroots problems on the agenda of the established political parties. Their strength, first exhibited on the community level, started to reach a wider public.
6. Shooting the Darkness
The testimony of the men who unwittingly became war photographers on the streets of their own towns in Northern Ireland, when violence erupted around them. Instead of photographing weddings and celebrities, as they expected, they produced the images that crudely show the suffering of ordinary people between 1968 and 1998, the worst years of the conflict.
It has an average vote of 7.8 on TMDB.
7. Voices from the Grave
The story of the Northern Ireland Troubles through the unflinching testimony of two men who played key roles on opposite sides of that bloody conflict. Nearly ten years ago the two paramilitary leaders told their stories on condition that they could never be revealed while they were still alive. The stories told by the Irish Republican Army's Brendan Hughes and Ulster Volunteer Force's David Ervine tell us of the motivations of the participants, the planning of campaigns of violence, the misery of a hunger strike, the tracking and killing of informers and the duplicity that ended a conflict that had lasted too long. It is also a narrative of the fate of combatants when their wars are over.
8. Hard Border
Belfast-born actor Stephen Rea explores the impact of Brexit and the uncertainty of the future of the Irish border in a short film written by Clare Dwyer Hogg.
9. The Hunt for the Bomber
Brighton bomber Patrick Magee talks exclusively to Peter Taylor about how and why he planted a bomb in the Grand Hotel, while intelligence experts and bomb specialists speak for the first time about how they foiled a follow-up campaign on an even more devastating scale.
10. Lost Boys: Belfast's Missing Children
During the winter of 1969, young boys started to disappear off the streets of Belfast, never to be seen again.
11. Troubles: The Life After
A poetic, intimate account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, told through the stories of a handful of people who lost loved ones during the conflict. It’s not the story of the politicians or the terrorists. It’s the story of the mothers, sisters and daughters who kept life going when everything around them was crumbling.
12. The Secret Peacemaker
The story of Father Alec Reid’s complex and controversial peace plan to bring an end to violence in Northern Ireland, which eventually led to the historic Good Friday Agreement.
13. War and Peace in Ireland
Made on the cusp of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a film retracing the conflict in Northern Ireland from 1968 to the present day - notably the civil rights movement of the late '60s, the outbreak of war in 1969, the birth of a peace process in the early 1990s that ultimately led to the IRA cease-fires of 1994 and 1997, and the current all-party negotiations that today offer the best chance for peace to the people of Northern Ireland in over a generation. Explores the complexities of the conflict through archival footage and portraits of political leaders who lived these events and played an important role in the search for a peaceful resolution to the seemingly interminable Irish “troubles”.
14. The Patriot Game
Recounts Ireland's history from British colonization to the territory's division in 1922, then from 1968 details a decade of events through images and eyewitness accounts of killings and such massacres as the infamous "Bloody Sunday" as the IRA argues their cause.
It has an average vote of 6.8 on TMDB.
15. Whatever You Say, Say Nothing
Caroline does not remember living in a time of peace; she has been a young child when the "troubles" in Belfast started. During the 25 years during which the war lasted, she got married and raised three children; and only a few weeks before the ceasefire started she was killed. Since the ceasefire, the situation in Northern Ireland has not changed much: the fear to talk is as big as ever before.
16. The Brighton Bomb
It was the most notorious terrorist incident since the Gunpowder Plot - an attempt by the IRA to wipe out the entire UK government on 12 October 1984 as it convened on the south coast. Award-winning journalist Peter Taylor remembers the carnage as special effects and emotional testimony from survivors combine in a tense reconstruction. Followed by The Hunt for the Bomber.
17. Bloody Sunday
The dramatised story of the Irish civil rights protest march on January 30 1972 which ended in a massacre by British troops.
It has an average vote of 7.261 on TMDB.
18. The Party
Belfast 1972. Laurence welcomes his cousin and man-on-the-run Mickey to a party of drinking, dancing, and young love. By morning, reality catches up with them.
It has an average vote of 7 on TMDB.
19. Reavey Brothers
In a trouble-ridden Northern Ireland, football and writing prospect Anthony's relationship with his brothers comes under danger. Exploring religious divides and the importance of family, Anthony will come face-to-face with the one thing he is trying to fight.
20. Belfast
Buddy is a young boy on the cusp of adolescence, whose life is filled with familial love, childhood hijinks, and a blossoming romance. Yet, with his beloved hometown caught up in increasing turmoil, his family faces a momentous choice: hope the conflict will pass or leave everything they know behind for a new life.
It has an average vote of 7.093 on TMDB.
