Hunger (2008)

Director: Steve McQueen
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham

British visual artist Steve McQueen's debut focuses on the 1981 hunger strike staged by IRA agent Bobby Sands (Fassbender). The film's real power lies in the attention to physical detail rather than the dialogue: the expression of the guards before a controlled beating, the cleaning of a hallway filled with piss, the labored breaths of a dying man.

Shot with a painterly eye for composition, Hunger is an ordeal. Viewers are made to watch the realities of the human body under duress, and there is nothing else like it.