Bobby Sands enters the Maze prison as a convicted IRA member and leaves it, after 66 days without food, as a symbol that outlives him. The film traces the five-year prison protest that preceded his death: the blanket protest that began in 1976 when Britain withdrew Special Category Status, and the dirty protest from 1978, when prisoners smeared cell walls with excrement rather than accept criminal status. A first hunger strike in 1980 involving seven men ended after 53 days with no resolution, setting up the 1981 strike as a direct confrontation with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who refused to negotiate. Partway through his fast, Sands is elected to the British Parliament, turning a prison dispute into international news. He dies 66 days in, the first of ten prisoners to starve to death that year; his funeral draws an estimated 100,000 people. Drawing on BBC and RTE archival material, the film follows how the strike's aftermath pushed Sinn Féin from the margins into mainstream Irish nationalist politics.