London neurosurgeon Henry Marsh spends his vacation time donating his professional skills at a hospital in Kiev, where the patients are desperate for care and the doctors are frustrated with their rudimentary medical equipment.  For Marion, a poor young Ukrainian man diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, the arrival of Marsh ay be an answered prayer.  Before Marion's complicated surgery, Marsh makes a poignant journey to seek out the mother of a patient he failed to save several years earlier, in an attempt to let go of the memory that haunts him.  Featuring an original score written by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, this remarkable documentary is an intimate portrait of Marsh as he battles the painful dilemmas of the doctor-patient relationship and the limitations of neurosurgery.  Within the revealing examination of the deplorable medical conditions in Ukraine, The English Surgeon offers a sense of what it truly means to give people hope when they have none.

First feature film.

Turner Prize-winning video artist McQueen won the Camera d'Or (Best First Film) at Cannes Film Festival for Hunger, a provocative exploration of the politics of torture and the yearning for spiritual transcendence.  Set in Belfast's Maze Prison, the film is an interpretation of the highly emotive events surrounding the 1981 Irish Republican Army hunger strike, led by Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender).  Hunger plunges us into the world of the infamous H-blocks, a hellish place for prisoners and guards alike.  Their bodies are the prisoners' only weapons, and after a new round of humiliation and violence, Sands decides to start a hunger strike to continue the fight for political prisoner status for the Irish Republican internees.  Rigorous, spare and visceral, the film offers a compelling study of people in extreme circumstances resorting to extreme measures, and is seared into the mind by unforgettable performances from Michael Fassbinder and Liam Cunningham.

First feature film.

Of Time and the City was commimssioned to celebrate Liverpool, which won England's bid to become the European Union's Capital of Culture for 2008.  The idea was to commission a straightforward tribute film, but writer-director Davies had something else in mind, and crafted a very personal, poetic meditation--alternately angry, funny and moving--on his birthplace.  The film seamlessly fuses his distinct voice and wry humor with rich archival footage and half-forgotten bits of nostalgia.  Davies reflects on the feeling of timelessness and a lost sense of place, fashioning a love song and personal eulogy that invites one to "come closer.  See your dreams.  See mine."  Like Guy Maddin's recent My Winnipeg, rather than a dry, historical account of urban renewal and civic boosterism, this is a stimulating ode to a mid-twentieth century hometown.

Selected Filmography: Madonna and Child (80), Distant Voices, Still Lives (88), The Long Day Closes (92), The Neon Bible (95), The House of Mirth (00).