10 Awesome War Movies About Obscure Conflicts

Ken Loach’s portrait of the Anglo-Irish war is one of his finest pieces of work. Structured around the relationship between two Irish brothers who fight the occupying British forces, it’s as much a story about family, compromise, and sacrifice as it is about warfare.

The first half of The Wind That Shakes The Barley shows the Irish Republican Army, an anticolonial resistance force, using guerrilla tactics to force the British Empire to grant Ireland independence. In 1922, the Brits retreat: Ireland is partitioned into the independent Irish Free State on the one hand, and six of the nine counties of Ulster, or Northern Ireland, which remains British, on the other.

This is where the film gets really interesting, because it is where loyalties shift and allegiances fracture. One of the brothers agrees to work for the Irish Free State and the other is committed to full independence for Ireland. Inevitaby, the film has a tragic, unforgettable conclusion.

It is also a valuable piece of work, because of its unflinching view of the British Empire, which is usually only ever discussed reverentially in Britain today. Although we should not consider historical films 'history lessons', and should always take their visions of 'truth' with a grain of salt, this movie does have some powerful and difficult things to say about what Britain was like as an Imperial power.

The Black and Tans, in particular, loathed throughout Ireland to this day, surface rarely in war films. It's important that this particular paramilitary force, ordered into Ireland by Churchill expressly to terrorise the population, are shown in this film as the vicious torturers that they were.