Hunger (2008)

The UK network premiere of artist Steve McQueen's award-winning drama, which focuses on the 1981 hunger strikes by Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland.

Michael Fassbender plays Bobby Sands, one of a group of prisoners who first "took to the blanket" with a "dirty protest" in pursuit of their claims for recognition as political prisoners. Sands then became the first one of the group to embark on a hunger strike that was to end in his death.

McQueen's film captures the reek of the urine-flooded, excrement-smeared cells, the intransigence of both sides and, at centre of the film, uses a bravura extended dialogue between Sands and Father Moran (Liam Cunningham) to ask if the strike and the resultant deaths will have any effect at all.