In the Name of the Father

In the Name of the Father (1993) is Jim Sheridan's drama, free to watch online on iFILM. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Gerry Conlon, a Belfast kid whose life is wrecked by a bombing he had nothing to do with.

London, the mid-seventies. A pub blast kills several people, and the police need names fast. Gerry, a petty thief drifting through the city, becomes the easiest target. Beaten into a confession, he is locked away for an attack he never carried out. His father Giuseppe, a gentle and devout man played by Pete Postlethwaite, is dragged into the same cell to die there. Emma Thompson is Gareth Peirce, the solicitor who spends years pulling the case apart line by line.

Sheridan turns courtroom horror into something quieter: a son and a father learning who the other really is, separated by prison bars. It draws on the real ordeal of the Guildford Four, jailed fifteen years for someone else's crime. Seven Oscar nominations, with a score by Bono and Gavin Friday. Watch In the Name of the Father (1993) online on iFILM.