Hunger (2008)
You might think Hunger – the debut feature film of British director Steve McQueen, set in Northern Ireland — maybe shouldn’t count as one of the best movies set in Ireland, since Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom.
Well: Hunger‘s heart is very much with Ireland. It’s the true story of Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands (Irish-German actor Michael Fassbender) who led a hunger strike to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize he fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners.
The Criterion Collection notes that the film is at times “purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror.” It is ultimately about not just Ireland, but people held captive everywhere, and the ways they assert their humanity.
McQueen went on to win the Best Picture Oscar for Twelve Years a Slave.
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