Steve McQueen

Hunger

Hunger

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, twenty-seven-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. 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 of what a human being is willing to endure to be heard.

Film Info

  • Ireland, United Kingdom
  • 2008
  • 96 minutes
  • Color
  • 2.35:1
  • English
  • Spine #504

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Steve McQueen, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender
  • A short documentary on the making of Hunger, including interviews with McQueen, Fassbender, actors Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, and Brian Milligan, writer Enda Walsh, and producer Robin Gutch
  • “The Provo’s Last Card?,” a 1981 episode of the BBC program Panorama, about the Maze prison hunger strikes and the political and civilian reactions across Northern Ireland
  • Theatrical trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A new essay by film critic Chris Darke

    New cover by Rasmus Alkestrand

Purchase Options

On back-order

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Steve McQueen, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender
  • A short documentary on the making of Hunger, including interviews with McQueen, Fassbender, actors Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, and Brian Milligan, writer Enda Walsh, and producer Robin Gutch
  • “The Provo’s Last Card?,” a 1981 episode of the BBC program Panorama, about the Maze prison hunger strikes and the political and civilian reactions across Northern Ireland
  • Theatrical trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A new essay by film critic Chris Darke

    New cover by Rasmus Alkestrand
Hunger
Cast
Michael Fassbender
Bobby Sands
Stuart Graham
Raymond Lohan, guard
Helena Bereen
Raymond’s mother
Liam Cunningham
Father Dominic Moran
Laine Megaw
Lohan’s wife
Brian Milligan
Davey Gillen
Liam McMahon
Gerry Campbell
Karen Hassan
Gerry’s girlfriend
Frank McCusker
The governer
Credits
Screenplay
Enda Walsh
Producer
Robin Gutch
Producer
Laura Hastings-Smith
Director of photography
Sean Bobbitt
Editing
Joe Walker
Production design
Tom McCullagh
Costume Design
Anushia Nieradzik
Makeup and hair
Jacqueline Fowler
Music
David Holmes
Music
Leo Abrahams
Director
Steve McQueen
Screenplay
Steve McQueen

Current

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The feature film debut of British artist Steve McQueen, Hunger dramatizes the final weeks in the life of Irish Republican Army commander Bobby Sands and his death by hunger strike, aged twenty-seven, in 1981. Combining intense formal control and extr…

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