Some Mother's Son is a 1996 film written and directed by Irish filmmaker Terry George, co-written by Jim Sheridan, and based on the true story of the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze Prison, in Northern Ireland. Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) prisoner Bobby Sands (played by John Lynch) led a protest against the treatment of IRA prisoners, claiming that they should be treated as prisoners of war rather than criminals. The mothers of two of the strikers, played by Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan, fight to save their sons' lives. When the prisoners go on hunger strike and become incapacitated, the mothers must decide whether to abide by their sons' wishes, or to go against them and have them forcibly fed.
Helen Mirren and John Lynch had already acted together in the 1984 Troubles-related film Cal.
The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
She lays awake in a silent room
Holding his picture washed sliver by the moon
Oceans away he feels her sigh
So alone in the world tonight
Freedom needs a soldier
That nameless, faceless one
A young girl's lover, a baby's father
Some mother's son
Too young to know his daddy's gone
He hears him say, "His mother must be strong"
So he pretends like children do
He likes to stand in his daddy's shoes
Freedom needs a soldier
A nameless, faceless one
A young girl's lover, a baby's father
Some mother's son
Freedom needs a soldier
Until the battle's won
A young girl's lover, a baby's father
Some mother's son
She closes her eyes and sees him at three
In her mind that's the age he'll always be
And only God understands her love
Now she prays to the angels up above
Freedom needs a soldier
That nameless, faceless one
A young girl's lover, a baby's father
Some mother's son
Freedom needs a soldier
Until the battle's won
A young girl's lover, a baby's father