10 Overlooked First Films By Great Directors

10. Hunger - Steve McQueen

Rather than the actor from The Great Escape, this Steve McQueen is a British film director best known for the Best Picture Oscar winning drama 12 Years A Slave.

Outside of that film, he also directed the TV anthology Small Axe, the heist movie Widows, and the sex addicition thriller Shame. However, McQueen's on-screen career started with a dirty, naked Michael Fassbender.

In 2008, the director brought us Hunger, a story about the 1981 Irish hunger and no-wash strike. Fassbender plays Bobby Sands, a real-life IRA prisoner who died in jail as a result of the action.

Spoilers, but come on. These events happened over forty years ago.

Hunger was almost unanimously well-received by critics upon its debut at the Cannes film festival in 2008. Fassbender was praised for his nuanced performance, whilst McQueen was labelled as an emerging talent for his use of artistic flair to tell a story.

Those critics were correct, as McQueen is now one of the most treasured British film directors. He was even knighted in 2020.

As for Hunger, it's very different from McQueen's later work, but still a very enjoyable if somewhat challenging piece of cinema.