UPCOMING FILMS

Omar is a promising young musician, seeking asylum in Scotland. Separated from his Syrian family, he is stuck along with other migrants on a bleak, remote island, awaiting the fate of his application. Spiritually he is lost and he has not played his oud since he arrived. The film does have humour in an elegant, deadpan style and it deals tenderly and sadly with the plight of the displaced, who question their decision to leave their homeland and families.

Janis and Ana meet in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn't regret it. Ana, an adolescent, is scared and repentant. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance changes their lives in a decisive way. Nominated for two Oscars.

The romance of Clio Barnard’s fourth feature, Ali & Ava, has a naturalism rarely captured in cinema. Set in Bradford, this is a love story that never loses sight of the wider world.  Jocular property manager (and DJ) Ali, and teaching assistant Ava, both lonely for different reasons, and each carrying considerable emotional baggage from failed marriages, develop an unexpected and delightful connection over the course of a month.

This film was inspired by a true story. Like many women in Kosovo, Fahrije Hoti is hoping for news about her husband, who is still missing seven years after the war (1998-9). Widows are not expected to work, but she has to provide for her family and joins forces with other widows to start a business producing ajvar, a popular condiment, even though the community already condemns her for daring to drive. 

A girl meets her mother as a child in the woods in a moving jewel of a film about memory, friendship and kin. It is a ghost story, or a parable, played with realist calm. The girls talk about the future and the past as casually as they would talk about anything else. Making these two characters vulnerable and delicate children is an artistic masterstroke on Sciamma’s part. What a superb movie! (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian). By the director of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, one of last season’s most appreciated films.

Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys) is an investigative journalist who receives an assignment to profile children’s television entertainer, Fred Rogers, aka Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks).  He approaches the interview with scepticism, as he finds it hard to believe that anyone can have such a good nature. Roger's empathy, kindness and decency soon chip away at Vogel's jaded outlook on life, forcing the reporter to reconcile with his own painful past.

Frances McDormand hits the road in an expansive portrait of itinerant lives and shares the screen with several non-professional actors and real-life van travellers. After a company town officially went out of existence in 2010, when the local gypsum mine and the factory shut down, Fern, a widow, in her van joins a rolling, dispersed tribe — a subculture and a literal movement of itinerant Americans and their vehicles; an unsettled nation within the boundaries of the USA. 

Off Croatia's gorgeous Adriatic coast Julia loves underwater spearfishing with her father but is struggling to break free of his domineering nature to leave for a university education and a wider range of options for her future. She senses an opportunity during a visit by his foreign friend Javier (Maori actor Cliff Curtis). Winner of Cannes' Golden Camera award for the best debut film, Murina features astonishing underwater sequences and an unforgettable ending.

From the director of Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, this is another charming and gentle exploration of the outsiders in society. In 19th-century Oregon, an unlikely friendship develops between a sensitive cook and a Chinese immigrant on the run. Their dream is to open a bakery in San Francisco, and we follow their adventures and mishaps as they pursue their fantasy. The film beautifully subverts the familiar expectations of the rough frontier setting. It includes a cameo appearance from Toby Jones.

After a stroke leaves him paralysed in one arm, 85-year-old André demands that his eldest daughter, Emmanuelle, help him commit suicide. With the grudging support of her younger sister Pascale, Emmanuelle begins sorting through the complicated processes and bureaucratic hurdles necessary to fulfil her father's request. 

Set in the port town of Dover, where Mary Hussain, a Muslim convert, (Joanna Scanlon) suddenly finds herself a widow following the unexpected death of her husband. A day after the burial, Mary looks through her husband’s wallet and discovers he had a secret just twenty-one miles across the English Channel in Calais. She travels to Calais to unravel his other life. “Khan’s debut confidently blends old-school melodrama with a contemporary political consciousness.”  Variety

A huge hit at the 2021 Leeds International Film Festival, this warm and wonderful Iranian road movie follows the journey of a bickering family (and a sick dog) to the border with Turkey. The director is the son of Jafar Panahi (Offside, Taxi Tehran), currently under a 20-year ban from directing by his government, and this film is very much in his father's style. Once again an Iranian director proves you can shoot almost an entire film inside a car!

Led by moving performances from Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci, Supernova is a heartbreaking look at the emotional toll that comes with accepting mortality, yet it never lapses into sentimentality.  Sam and Tusker, partners for 20 years and amateur astronomers, travel in a campervan across England for a reunion with friends and family. Tusker has been diagnosed with early onset of dementia, with his illness putting strain on their relationship. The charismatic leads are understated and often humorous, surprisingly.

A modern story of love and life, charting the interwoven relationships among four twenty-somethings in Paris's 13th arrondissement, home to a predominantly East Asian community. Co-written by Celine Sciamma (Portrait Of A Lady On Fire, Petite Maman), Audiard's passionate romance is shot in gorgeous black & white and is the fifth of his twelve features to be screened by the Society, following A Self-Made Hero, Read My Lips, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, and Dheepan.

PLEASE NOTE: This replaces the film originally scheduled for this date which is currently unavailable.

During the military dictatorship of the 1980s a Swiss banker arrives in Argentina to replace his partner because of worrying rumours. He finds the man has disappeared. His attempts to make sense of events lead him out of his depth into a network of corruption and terror linking government, finance, armed forces and church. The result is a riveting film of darkness and suspense.

An absorbing and multilayered exploration of grief, regret, disappointment and loss with a great soundtrack and cinematography. In Hiroshima a middle aged theatre director directs his dead wife’s lover in a production of Uncle Vanya. His wife, Oto’s, sudden death and the unfinished business in their relationship haunts him as he is driven by a hired chauffeuse who shares her own tales of life’s emotional setbacks. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami.

Billed as a typical British crowd pleaser telling the real-life story of a loveable rogue, this film has a darker, more uncomfortable side to it as well as remaining very funny. Maurice Flitcroft (Mark Rylance) inveigles his way into top golf tournaments, to the frustration of ‘authority’ and the delight of the public. His long-suffering wife (Sally Hawkins) and twin disco dancing sons add to the general sense of weirdness and unreality, and one is left wondering about Flitcroft’s motivation.