British Film wins Palme d'Or and its about the Irish War of Independence

Normally I get pissed off when the British media hijack Irish stars as being British or more vaguely "from the British Isles" but this time I think we should all let them away with it. After all it's not every year a "British" movie wins the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

The beauty of this particular British movie, called The Wind that Shakes the Barley, is in it's subject matter.

The film charts the republican struggle in the years after the Irish election of 1918, a period when British Black and Tans and Auxiliaries committed atrocities on the Irish population. Loach and his screenwriter, Paul Laverty, wanted to expose the "true underbelly" of Britain's colonial past, a history that is repeating itself, they argue, in Iraq today.

If the British media wants to publicise a movie that details the actions of the Black and Tans they who are we to complain? Also it cant hurt to have someone make an internationally released movie that covers events in the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War, two conflicts that I feel have been forgotten by most of the world and replaced in the public mind with the actions of the Provisional IRA. Most people probably think the Irish War of Independence was fought by Brad Pitt, Richard Gere and Sean Bean.

That said the trailer makes the movie look pretty shakey with lines like "Did you see our position when you came over the crest of that hill? You did not. You were looking down at your shoes. There'll be clean shoes on your corpse".