Hunger
Director Steve McQueen's award-winning Hunger dramatizes Bobby Sands' decision to lead a hunger strike in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison in 1981. A source of great controversy, the protesters sought to pressure the British government to recognize them as political prisoners and the IRA as a legitimate political organization. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government took the position they were violent criminals and did not deserve political status. McQueen's film portrays Sands in a heroic light and is unflinching in depicting the brutality of the prison and Sands' starvation. In a very long and riveting scene with a visiting priest, Michael Fassbender (300) is brilliant as the determined and calculating Sands, who is attempting to influence the greater struggle from his jail cell and courting martyrdom. Hunger screens as part of the ongoing Patois New Orleans International Human Rights Film Fest. Tickets $8. — Will Coviello
Hunger (NR)
7 p.m. Tue., March 31
Canal Place Cinema, The Shops at Canal Place, 333 Canal St., third floor, 363-1117; www.patoisfilmfest.org
