John Hewitt
'H3' is a universal story of endurance and courage set inside Europe's most secure prison, the Maze prison in Northern Ireland. Here, in H3 - the bleakest of all the H-blocks - a group of young republican prisoners hold out for what they believe in, refusing to be labeled as criminals or co-operate with prison authorities. However, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is determined that these Republican prisoners will be treated like all the other common criminals in British jails, ending a special regime which allowed the inmates political status to organise life inside the jail along POW lines. The republican prisoners immediately start a 'no-wash' protest, refusing to wear prison-issue clothes or perform work duties, a protest which results in their being locked in their cells for hours on end without exercise, recreation, reading materials and with only blankets to wear for heat...
Leo Doyle, a convicted IRA murderer, is released into the community after 14 years in prison on a scheme to rehabilitate former terrorists. He soon finds that the ceasefire has robbed him of both purpose and identity. Relationships with his family are difficult and reach boiling point when they find that he has rekindled his affair with a former fiancee Roisin, now married with three children.
The murders of two MI6 agents in Northern Ireland add up to an explosive political situation.
Roisin and Septa are two young nurses from Dublin who go to work at a hospital in Belfast. Roisin meets and falls in love with Tom, a young Protestant car mechanic. This causes a series of problems for the young couple, their families and friends.
Two couples, one Catholic, one Protestant, exist on two sides of the chasm that is everyday life in Northern Ireland. Both women are expecting babies, both couples tell offbeat stories, both couples get by with what little they have. Yet Mike Leigh allows his actors to show not how much but how little these two couple have in common. "Four Days in July" is wonderful yet scathing look at the turmoil that has engulfed Northern Ireland for generations.
Professor Broderick, a famous professor of Psychology, returns to his house by Belfast Lough to discover a woman waiting for him.
Belfast, 1980: July, the marching season ... Norman Martin, away for two years, returns with his 'English woman', Mavis. How will the family - particularly Billy - react? And has she achieved the impossible in mellowing the man?
Belfast 1978: the Martin family, a year on. Norman is away in England, and his eldest son, Billy, and daughter, Lorna, are in charge of their younger sisters, Ann and Maureen.
Relationships are strained in a Belfast family, particularly between a father and his son.
