Filmmaker Steve McQueen received the Camera d'Or (first-time director) Award at Cannes in 2008 for this brutally lyrical film about hunger striking I.R.A. prisoners. The film is divided into three quite different sections. In the first, prison officer Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham) reluctantly preps for work. The camera lingers on his breakfast crumbs while Margaret Thatcher denounces the terrorist tactics of his prisonerson the radio in the background. The two following sections take place in the prison, where the men have staged a "blanket protest," meaning they refuse to wash or wear the prison uniforms--a revolt against being classed as criminals instead of political prisoners. Young Republican Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) becomes a central figure as he lies nearly naked in a filthy cell, bravely enduring the taunts and tortures of his confused and terrified captors. The prison world that McQueen shows us is a shockingly raw and disturbing place, wrought here in the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio's darkest works. In the final section, a hunger striking prisoner, Bobby Sands (played by actor Michael Fassbender who lost close to 50 pounds for the role) debates the ethics of his deadly choice with a horrified but sympathetic priest. McQueen's earlier works, like Bear, a 1993 work which stages glances between two menacing naked men, and 1997's Deadpan, a re-staging of a Buster Keaton scene in which a house collapses around him while he remains unscathed, have won him international acclaim and a Turner Prize. more at ifcfilms.com 35mm Cinemascope
2008, color, 1 hour 30 minutes, UK/Ireland