Hunger
Director: Steve McQueen

Hunger is a hard-hitting film and an extraordinary achievement for first-time feature director and veteran artist Steve McQueen. McQueen, better known as a film and video installation artist in the UK, landed the Camera d'Or at Cannes this year for Hunger. The film takes up the infamous 1981 hunger strike of Irish Republican Army leader Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) and fellow IRA inmates of the notorious Maze Prison as its subject. It is a visually striking and uniquely powerful film that spares no detail of the inmates' experience.

Although jaw-droppingly shocking, this film succeeds as a dramatic work that is unexpected for a filmmaker whose previous work is primarily experimental and non-narrative. “Explicit,” “hardcore,” “uncompromising,” and “political” are perhaps ways to describe this film, but in most regards Hunger eludes description. In lieu of proper words to tell you just how much this film will leave you in awe, check out the trailer here.