A portrait of the social and political landscape of Northern Ireland in the early 1980s, on the 15th anniversary of the start of the modern Troubles.

The Year of the Beaver focuses on the industrial dispute at the Grunwicks photographic processing plant in Willesden, London in the summer of 1977. The workforce, predominately consisting of British Asian women, most of whom had only recently arrived in the UK, decided to go on strike over the issue of trade union recognition. The strike lasted for two years.