A FILM on the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands has used his diaries to portray a determined and sincere man who fasted to death.

Sixty Six Days was produced to give younger people a sense of the emotions and political tensions surrounding one of the defining episodes of the Troubles.

It is 35 years since the Maze prison inmate starved himself as part of a Republican campaign for political status.

Sands was hailed a martyr by his supporters, while then prime minister Margaret Thatcher vowed never to bow to the demands of terrorists, and Unionists recalled IRA attacks on prison officers and killings committed even while Sands stood for election to Westminster.

Beginning his action the prisoner recorded: “I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world.

May God have mercy on my soul.”

Sands’ own words form the heart of the documentary- style work, through his many poems, letters and commAunications penned inside prison, and in particular, his personal diary which he kept for the first 17 days of his hunger strike. He wrote: “Human food can never keep a man alive forever and I console myself with the thought that I will get a great feed up above if I am worthy.”

The film by Irish director Brendan Byrne will premier in Belfast at the West Belfast Festival later this summer and will be aired at the Galway film festival this weekend.

Mr Byrne spoke to prison officers, Mrs Thatcher’s biographer Charles Moore and former Tory MP Norman Tebbit. He also interviewed many Republicans who shared the “H Blocks” with Sands.

Mr Byrne said: “I have tried to make it more than just about Bobby Sands, really an exploration of the Republican tradition in Ireland through the lens of Bobby Sands.”