Bobby Sands story to become movie

Sands' protest brought him global recognition

The last weeks in the life of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands are to be made into a film.

It will be the first feature for Turner Prize-winning artist Steve McQueen, who will co-write and direct the film.

He said the production - called Hunger - would have "international contemporary resonance". It is due to be broadcast on Channel 4 next year.

Sands, 27, died in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison in May 1981, shortly after being elected an MP.

Political protest

McQueen said the phenomenon of the people using their bodies in political warfare was becoming more familiar.

"It is the final act of desperation, your own body is your last resource for protest. One uses what one has, rightly or wrongly," he explained.

"What I want to convey is something you can't find in books or archive, the ordinariness and extraordinariness of life in this prison.

"Yet also the film is an abstraction in a certain way, a meditation on what it is like to die for a cause."

The film will be shot in Northern Ireland.

Bobby Sands refused food for 66 days in a protest over political status for republican prisoners in the Maze prison. He was the first of 10 men to die.