Hunger (2008 film) for eight awards at the 2009 IFTAs, winning six at the event. The film stars Fassbender as Bobby Sands, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer and MP who led the second IRA hunger strike and participated in the no wash protest (led by Brendan "The Dark" Hughes) in which Irish republican prisoners tried to regain political status after it had been revoked by the British government in 1976. It outlines events in the Maze Prison in the period leading up to the hunger strike and its aftermath. Prison officer Raymond Lohan prepares to leave work; he cleans his bloodied
Hunger strike in the death of Thomas Ashe in Mountjoy Prison. During the Anglo-Irish war, in October 1920, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, died on hunger strike in Brixton prison. Two other Cork IRA men, Joe Murphy and Michael Fitzgerald, died in this protest. Over a period of 94 days, from August 11 to November 12, 1920 John and Peter Crowley, Thomas Donovan, Michael Burke, Michael O'Reilly, Christopher Upton, John Power, Joseph Kenny and Seán Hennessy, demanding reinstatement of political status and release from prison, undertook a hunger strike at the Cork County Gaol. Arthur Griffith called off the strikes