Steve McQueen

England | 2008 | 90mins | 35mm | Colour

Video artist Steve McQueen’s debut feature tells the story of Bobby Sands, focusing on the final days of his hunger strike at the Maze prison in 1981. Written by playwright Enda Walsh (Disco Pigs, Bedbound), McQueen displays a deft touch with breathtaking physical imagery, sound and tone as his portrait of Sands delivers a definitive account of political violence and idealism.

The focus of the film stays initially on the inmates in the Maze with Margaret Thatcher’s proclamations serving as a ghostly presence on the soundtrack. Indeed the full, unadulterated horror of the prisoners’ dirty protest against Thatcher’s regime is unflinchingly addressed by McQueen, along with a mesmerising 17-minute take as Sands informs his priest of his plan to begin the hunger strike, against the priest’s wishes.

Hunger has been described as a visual tour-de-force, with Fassbender turning in a spellbinding performance as Sands, from portraying his flair for political rhetoric through to his horrendous physical decline.