trailer break: ‘Hunger’

I’m not sure this is, strictly speaking, a trailer: it seems to be more a kind of promo reel, which isn’t quite the same thing, and it seems to cut off just before the end. But it’s worth checking out because it’s so striking. There’s not a word of dialogue in it -- apparently there’s no dialogue in the film for its first hour -- just a long stream of stark images and one brief voiceover that sets a certain tone for this depiction of the final six weeks of the life of IRA hungerstriker Bobby Sands.

The film is stirring up quite a shitstorm in the U.K., as might have been expected no matter what angle English writer-director Steve McQueen, making his filmmaking debut, had taken. But it won the Camera D’Or prize at Cannes this year and is now being positioned in front of American critics for this year’s awards season, so it’s gonna be around for a while, shitstorm or no.

Hunger is now playing the U.K.; it gets a one-week Academy run in Los Angeles starting December 5; no wider U.S. release has been announced yet -- that will probably depend on how it fares with critics groups and the Academy come year’s end.