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(led by Brendan "The Dark" Hughes) in which Irish republican prisoners tried to regain political status after it had been revoked by the British government in 1976.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 of over 12,000 republicans had been interned by May 1923). Two men, Denny Barry and Andrew O'Sullivan, died on the strike. The strike, however, was called off before any more deaths occurred. The Free State subsequently released the women republican prisoners. Most of the male Republicans were not released until the following year. Under de Valera's first Fianna Fianna Fáil government in 1932, military pensions were awarded to dependants of republicans who died in 1920s hunger strikes on the same basis as those who were killed in action. During the state of emergency of World War II another De Valera