Un Certain Regard Opening Film: “Hunger” by Steve McQueen

The Un Certain Regard selection of the 61st Festival of Cannes opens today with the presentation of Hunger by Steve McQueen.
Eligible for a Golden Camera award, Hunger, the first film by this British director, tells the story of Bobby Sands, the IRA political prisoner who was an emblematic figure in the Blanket Protest of the late 1970s. To obtain special political status for IRA prisoners, Sands launched an unprecedented hunger strike which resulted in the starvation deaths of ten men.

Steve McQueen talks about his intentions Hunger :
"I want to show what it was like to see, hear, smell and touch in the H-block in 1981. What I want to convey is something you cannot find in books or archives: the ordinary and extraordinary, of life in this prison.
Hunger for me has contemporary resonance. The body as a site of political warfare is becoming a more familiar phenomenon. It is the final act of desperation; your own body is your last resource for protest. One uses what one has, rightly or wrongly… In Hunger there is no simplistic notion of ‘hero’ or ‘martyr’ or ‘victim’. My intention is to provoke debate in the audience, to challenge our own morality through film. "