Hunger follows the events of a hunger strike by IRA prisoners in Maze Prison in 1981. Leader Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) orders the IRA prisoners to go without food so that their plight may raise awareness of the struggles in North Ireland, and particulary within the prison, among the greater public. The film progresses in three acts. The first gives some background to the troubles of the time, the second consists soley of a conversation between Sands and his priest where Sands rationalises the strike. The third act is an almost completely silent sequence of Sands slowly starving to death over the course of several weeks.