Bosco Hogan plays Joyce's alter-ego, Stephen Daedelus, growing up in Ireland in the early part of the 20th century, and at odds with the strictures of his Catholic home and family. The film charts his search for knowledge and understanding, during a decline in his family's circumstances, that leads him to revelations on the nature of art, beauty, and politics. However, his personal renaissance makes him feel unwelcome in his own country, and forces him to make a choice between exile as artist or staying and facing personal defeat.

The relationship between brothers Terry and Matt, both active in the IRA, comes under strain when Terry begins to question the use of violence.

Michael Flaherty (Craig Wasson), an American Vietnam veteran of Irish descent, returns to Belfast to join the cause of his grandfather, Seamus (Sterling Hayden). Soon he finds that he is not as welcomed in his home country as he imagined he would be. Even worse, he's the target of an IRA assassination plot designed to make the British forces look bad in order to elicit financial support from wealthy Americans.

Cal, a young man on the fringes of the IRA, falls in love with Marcella, a Catholic woman whose husband, a Protestant policeman, was killed one year earlier by the IRA.

A young Irishman comes up with an unusual plan to get the money to emigrate to Tahiti. One of the Ealing comedies.

What happens to the saints and sinners of a small Irish village on the day the world is supposed to end.

'One of your Popes had a great thing to say once. He had been listening to some music by Palestrina with Palestrina himself. He said to him, " The law, my dear Palestrina, ought to employ your music to lead hardened criminals to repentance".'