Hunger is a 2008 British/Irish film based in Northern Ireland, UK. It is a historical drama film directed by Steve McQueen and starring Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham and Liam McMahon, about the 1981 Irish hunger strike. It was written by Enda Walsh and McQueen. The film stars Fassbender as Bobby Sands, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer and M.P. who led the second IRA hunger strike and participated in the no wash protest (led by Brendan “The Dark” Hughes) in which Republican prisoners tried to regain political status when it was revoked by the British government in 1976. It dramatises events in the Maze Prison in the period leading up to the hunger strike and Sands’ death. It premiered at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, winning the prestigious Camera d’Or award for first-time filmmakers.
