Popular American understanding of the word “protest” assigns it a meaning along the lines of “to speak against something.” The root words, however, mean the opposite: “to affirm, or to speak in favor of something.”

Such confusion is at the heart of The Wind that Shakes the Barley, winner of the Palme d’Or award for the best film at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. This Irish film by British director Ken Loach has finally made it across the Big Pond to appear in limited U.S. theatrical release this spring before a scheduled July 24 release on DVD.

Set during the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War, The Wind that Shakes the Barley tells the story of two Irish brothers. Teddy (Padraic Delany) leads the fight among his rural countrymen with the Irish Republican Army for independence. His brother Damien (Cillian Murphy) wants no part of it, setting off for England and a medical career—until their friend Micheail is brutally murdered by British overlords because he wouldn’t say his Gaelic name in English.

“I tried not to get in the war and did,” says Damien, whose own military vigilance leads him to execute a boyhood friend for having failed the cause. “Now I’m trying to get out [of the war], and I can’t.”

Drawing its name from an Irish ballad associated with a 1798 rebellion, The Wind that Shakes the Barley vividly portrays the scourge of violence that has touched the Emerald Isle for generations. In Robert Dwyer Joyce’s folksong, a rebel is about to end his relationship to fight for his country. Until, according to the song, “A bullet pierced my true love’s side in life’s young spring so early/ And on my breast in blood she died while soft winds shook the barley.”

Irish rebels of the 18^th-century carried barley oats in their pockets as provisions. Those killed and thrown into unmarked graves reportedly were the source of wild barley growth. This symbolized the regenerative nature of Irish resistance.

When The Wind that Shakes the Barley begins, the Irish know down to their very fiber they’re against British rule. But their wish turns out to be a curse when the British agree to a peace treaty that pits the new Irish Free State against the anti-treaty IRA—and pits the two brothers, Teddy and Damian, against each other. Teddy joins the military of the free state, believing they should accept the treaty and work within the system. Damian remains with the IRA, refusing to stop fighting until the country is freed completely from British rule.

“It’s easy to know what you are against,” Damian says. “It is quite another to know what you are for.”

Over the course of the 2-hour-and-7-minute film, Teddy, Damian and the Irish people try to sort out their own confusion about the meaning of protest.

In a week in which civil wars led to the destruction of a historic mosque in Iraq and tit-for-tat killings in the Gaza Strip, The Wind that Shakes the Barley seems more like a contemporary parable than a period piece. Its moral, echoing through the generations, reminds us that it’s critical to know what you’re fighting for.