With Hunger, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history's most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experience. In Northern Ireland's Maze prison in 1981, 27-year-old Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike to protest the British government's refusal to recognize him and his fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners, rather than as ordinary criminals. McQueen dramatizes prison existence and Sands's final days in a way that is purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror. Featuring an intense performance by Michael Fassbender, Hunger is an unflinching, transcendent depiction.

Actors:

Stuart Graham,Michael Fassbender,Liam Cunningham,Helena Bereen,Larry Cowan,Dennis McCambridge

Description:

HUNGER is Turner-prize winning artist Steve McQueen's first feature film, winner of the Camera d'Or at Cannes 2008 (as well as a slew of other awards last year), and widely agreed to be one of the most impressive debuts of the decade. McQueen tells the story of the 1981 IRA hunger strikes through the eyes of Bobby Sands (played with intensely physical conviction by Michael Fassbender), sparing no detail of the controversial fate of these men.