• Movies

    Hunger (2008)

    Hunger is about the brutality of sectarian violence, competing interests, bloodshed, and war. It chooses no sides, but instead puts at the center of its characterization a limpid sensitivity to the human individual, be he an Irish Republican or a devout Ulster Loyalist. The film is shot through with glittering images of the solitude and the sensitivity of a prisoner in whose sun-deprived fingers a fly finds its way, the lonely life of a prison guard whose days consist in checking for car bombs and brutalizing prisoners in between smoke breaks, and the gritty wasting away of a man that has devoted himself to what he believes is right—his own…

  • Movies

    A Man Escaped (1956)

    Taken to the Montluc prison in Lyon, France, a former member of the French Resistance is sentenced to death after a protracted imprisonment. He has hatched plans of escape, and a fellow prisoner by the name of Orsini has tried—and failed—to escape using his own plans. The countdown to his execution, after stalling for many months, makes every succeeding day a trial of uncertainty and fear; in the meantime, this prisoner whittles away at his plans, the wooden door through which he has fashioned a hole, the wires and ropes and hooks essential to his escape. And just before he makes his attempt, at the last moment, another prisoner arrives…