Hunger

The Maze prison in Northern Ireland, 1981. Republican prisoners demanding political status go through the blanket and dirty protests and then into a hunger strike. At the centre of the film is Bobby Sands. It is Steve McQueen's first feature and won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes, the prize for first-time filmmakers. Michael Fassbender plays Sands. Fassbender ate less than 900 calories a day for ten weeks, mostly berries, nuts and sardines, and walked about four and a half miles daily through the same period. The most discussed passage is a seventeen-minute unbroken shot of Sands and a priest arguing about the morality of the hunger strike. Liam Cunningham, who plays the priest, rehearsed it at length with Fassbender. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 90 percent with a 7.8 average and Metacritic at 82. Critics praised McQueen's visual craft; one wrote that the film shows unflinching attention to what things looked like, moment by moment. It won the Sydney Film Prize, took several BAFTA nominations and topped many best-of-2008 lists. Who it is for: viewers who like formally radical films with little dialogue. Who it is not for: anyone unable to sit through detailed violence and physical collapse. The film shortens nothing.