With Hunger, British filmmaker and Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history's most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experience.

In Northern Ireland's Maze prison in 1981, twenty-seven-year-old Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike to protest the British government's refusal to recognize him and his fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners, rather than as ordinary criminals. McQueen dramatizes prison existence and Sands's final days in a way that is purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror.

Featuring an intense performance by Michael Fassbender, Hunger is an unflinching, transcendent depiction of what a human being is willing to endure to be heard.

Hunger has been announced for a US DVD and Blu-ray release as part of the Criterion Collection on 16th February 2009 at the SRP of $39.95 each. Both discs feature a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Steve McQueen (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition) and the following extras:

• Video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender;
• A short documentary on the making of Hunger, including interviews with McQueen, Fassbender, actors Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, and Brian Milligan, writer Enda Walsh, and producer Robin Gutch;
• "The Provo's Last Card?" – a 1981 episode of the BBC program Panorama, about the causes and effects of the IRA hunger strikes at the Maze prison and the political and civilian reactions across Northern Ireland;
• Theatrical trailer;
• A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Chris Darke.