Winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Hidden Agenda is a political thriller that centres on the investigation into the murder of an American activist in Northern Ireland. The film, starring Frances McDormand (who plays the murdered man’s girlfriend), focuses on the terrorism practised by groups such as the IRA, but also on the response given to it (outside the law) by the British security forces. Loach would return to this theme with The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006), about two brothers who join the Irish Republican Army.