Bobby Sands: 66 Days Bobby Sands: 66 Days Bobby Sands: 66 Days is a 2016 documentary film about Bobby Sands and the 1981 Irish hunger strike from Northern Ireland. The film mixes reenactment, animation, interviews and archive footage to relate the story of Bobby Sands and the 1981 Irish hunger strike, as well as covering the events leading up to the hunger strike and its complex legacy. Martin McCann reads several excerpts from Sands' own diary. "Bobby Sands: 66 Days" premiered at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto on 3 May 2016. It went on general release in Ireland on 5 August
1981 Irish hunger strike conditions there. In 1979, former MP Bernadette McAliskey stood in the election for the European Parliament on a platform of support for the protesting prisoners, and won 5.9% of the vote across Northern Ireland, even though Sinn Féin had called for a boycott of the election. Shortly after this, the broad-based National H-Block/Armagh Committee was formed, on a platform of support for the "Five Demands", with McAliskey as its main spokesperson. The period leading up to the hunger strike saw assassinations by both republicans and loyalists. The IRA shot and killed a number of prison officers; while loyalist paramilitaries shot