I screened Steve McQueen’s 2008 film ‘Hunger‘ last night. I’d happened on it a few months back. It’s is a very brutal but relatively unbiased film that centers on the Bobby Sands hunger strike while incarcerated in Long Kesh prison during ‘the troubles’ in Northern Ireland. I remembered when ‘Before Night Falls’ was in pre-production and Julian was telling me about the film. The thing that I remember most was Julian telling me ‘that he wanted to make a film that shows what artists go through to make art’. So both films, to my mind, are very similar and very effective in metering out what people will endure to reach their goals. In Reynaldo Arena’s case it was art. In Bobby Sands case it was a belief system.