44. HUNGER
 
UK/Ireland
dir. Steve McQueen
world premiere 2008
U.S. release 2008
 

 
Because while the film's persistent impulse to challenge itself doesn't always pay off perfectly, the refusal to abstract moral or political principles and impose them onto a narrative leads, thrillingly, to a host of inventive means for deriving complex insights from the evidence of bodies, spaces, movement, and light. A knuckle, it turns out, is worth at least a thousand words.