Hunger (Danish: Sult, Swedish: Svält) is a 1966 black-and-white drama film directed by Denmark's Henning Carlsen, starring Swedish actor Per Oscarsson, and based upon the novel Hunger by Norwegian Nobel Prize-winning author Knut Hamsun.[1] Filmed on location in Oslo, it was the first film produced as a cooperative effort among the three Scandinavian countries.[2]
With its stark focus on a life of poverty and desperation, the film is considered a masterpiece of social realism.[3] Film historians suggest it was the first Danish film to gain serious international attention since the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer.[4] It is one of the ten films listed in Denmark's cultural canon by the Danish Ministry of Culture.[3]