The Criterion Collection
Short Takes
Mar 2, 2010 — If the harrowing, formally daring Hunger, just out in Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions, left you wanting to deepen your acquaintance with director Steve McQueen’s visceral imagery, you’re in luck, at least if you live in the New York area....
Essays
Feb 17, 2010 — 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 extreme...
Jul 17, 2024 — Glauber Rocha’s ambitious breakthrough film manifested the project of Cinema Novo, a new wave that sought to overcome the influence of Brazil’s colonial origins and find images and sounds that could reconceive the nation.
Essays
Jan 15, 2019 — In Notorious (1946), love assumes different shapes and presentations—as a wound, a weapon, a promise, a curse. For Ingrid Bergman as the lusciously complex and raw-nerved Alicia Huberman, it’s all these things. As the film begins, Alicia is on the...
The Daily
Jan 31, 2026 — In the spotlight this week: Amir Naderi, Bahram Beyzaie, Hlynur Pálmason, Robert Aldrich, Reginald Hudlin, and the late Béla Tarr.
Jun 25, 2018 — It’s been six weeks since the Ukrainian filmmaker began his hunger strike.
Visual Analysis
May 30, 2018 — In the image of the Little Tramp choking, Chaplin found the perfect motif for evoking the horrors of hunger and modern consumption.
Essays
Mar 15, 2004 — This Japanese classic’s guiding passion is hunger, and its central image—a gaping black hole in the earth—is that of an all-consuming maw.
The director and producer reminisces about the emotional impact of his early moviegoing experiences, shares his passion for the films of Federico Fellini, and talks about the profound thrill of watching Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Wim Wenders’ Pina for the...
Mar 26, 2024 — In Gus Van Sant’s wickedly funny tale of suburban depravity, Nicole Kidman plays a vacuous weather reporter whose hunger for fame anticipates our own era of digital celebrity.