In The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which actor plays Damien O’Donovan?

Cillian Murphy plays Damien O’Donovan in The Wind That Shakes the Barley.

Ken Loach’s 2006 film follows Damien, a young doctor who abandons plans to work in London and joins the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the story moves into the Irish Civil War and examines the bitter division among former comrades.

Murphy stars opposite Pádraic Delaney, who plays Damien’s brother Teddy. Liam Cunningham portrays Sweeney, while Orla Fitzgerald plays Sinéad. The film’s title comes from a nineteenth-century Irish song associated with rebellion and political upheaval.

The film won the Palme d’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Its historical setting is sometimes simplified as the “Irish War,” but the narrative spans both the 1919–1921 War of Independence and the 1922–1923 Civil War, which had different causes and sides.