2020 - 2021 SEASON
​Click to access the voting results for each film of the season.
14 Sept 2020
Honeyland
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Macedonia 2019, 89 mins, Documentary, Drama
Colour, digital, Cert 12, Official trailer here
Director: Tamara Kotevska, Ljubomir Stefanov
Starring: Hatidže Muratova, Nazife Muratova, Hussein Sam
Language: Macedonian, Turkish
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Hatidže Muratova, Europe’s last female bee-hunter, lives in a mountain village in North Macedonia, where she ekes out a living harvesting honey from wild hives in keeping with ancient traditions. But when a family of profit-hungry nomadic beekeepers move into her land, both her livelihood and the bees’ fragile ecosystem are threatened. Shot over three years, Honeyland is a visually stunning fly-on-the-wall portrait of a vanishing world and a reminder of the delicate balance between man and nature.
​Nominated for Best Documentary and International Feature at the 2020 Oscars.
12 Oct 2020
Corpus Christi
Boze Cialo (Original Title)
Poland 201, 115 mins, Drama
Colour, digital, Cert 15 - Official trailer here
Director: Jan Komasa
Starring: Bartosz Bielenia, Aleksandra Konieczna, Eliza Rycembel
Language: Polish
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While serving time for a violent crime, 20-year-old Daniel has a spiritual awakening. As a convicted felon, however, he is prevented from applying to the seminary. Released on parole, he is assigned to work in a small town in South Poland, but instead he heads for the local church, posing as a priest. Before long, the young imposter finds himself standing in for the parish priest and celebrating mass. Though his unorthodox methods are popular with the congregation, his troubled past soon catches up with him. The film was inspired by real events.
Nominated for Best International Feature Film at 2020 Oscar.
9 Nov 2020 - CANCELLED
The Candidate
El Reino (Original Title)
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Spain 2019, 109 mins, Drama, Thriller
Colour, digital, Cert 15 - Official trailer here
Director: Rodrigo Sorogoyen
Starring: Antonio de la Torre, Mónica López, Josep Maria Pou
Language: Spanish
2007. A coastal city in Spain. An influential regional politician whose high-class lifestyle is based on nefarious and illegal business dealings is about to take the leap into national politics. But he becomes trapped in a struggle for survival when a newspaper exposes him to the public eye and threatens to break his entire party. This award-winning, razor-sharp thriller from the producers of The Secret in Their Eyes and Dogman grapples with Spain’s hottest topic: corruption among the political class.
‘Antonio de la Torre is magnetic as a politician at the centre of a web of betrayal’ (The Guardian).
14 Dec 2020
Wild Tales
Relatos salvajes (Original Title)
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Argentina 2014, 122 mins, Comedy, Drama, Thriller
Colour, digital, Cert 15 - Official trailer here
Director: Damián Szifron
Starring: Ricardo Darín, Oscar Martínez, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Erica Rivas, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg
Language: Spanish
Composed of six surreal and outlandishly entertaining stand-alone stories about revenge, Wild Tales highlights the pressure points of modern life and what happens to people when they are driven to the edge of reason, and beyond. This raucously explosive Oscar-nominated satire, co-produced by Pedro Almodovar and featuring many of Argentina’s finest actors, remains one of the country’s biggest box-office hits to date.
‘A tinderbox of delights’ (The Guardian); ‘The movie unfolds like a Buñuel comedy on speed’ (Indiewire)
Winner of 2016 BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English.
11 Jan 2021 - CANCELLED
The Truth
La vérité (Original Title)
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France 2019, 106 mins, Drama
Colour, digital, Cert PG - Official trailer here
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring: Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke
Language: French
In his first film made outside his native Japan, Hirokazu Koreeda subtly explores the secrets and lies we tell ourselves and those closest to us. Catherine Deneuve plays a legendary French film diva who reigns supreme and is adored by men, but has a fraught relationship with her estranged screenwriter daughter (played by Juliette Binoche). The release of the mother’s memoir, euphemistically entitled The Truth, ignites a family confrontation during which true feelings emerge, accounts are settled and love and resentment are confessed.
‘Koreeda’s understanding of the complexities of familial love and the disappointment of middle age is as wise as ever’ (BBC)
8 Feb 2021 - CANCELLED
42nd Street
Our Classic presentation
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USA 1933, 89 mins, Musical, Comedy, Romance
B&W, Cert A - Official trailer here
Director: : Lloyd Bacon & Busby Berkeley
Starring: Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, Ruby Keeler, George Brent, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers
Set in New York in the depths of the Depression, 42nd Street follows a Broadway musical from casting call to opening night, when the leading lady twists her ankle and a young chorus girl (Ruby Keeler) stands in and steals the show. An instant and enduring classic, the film launched the Golden Age of Hollywood and is renowned for its dazzling routines – and the immortal line: “Sawyer, you’re going out a youngster but you’ve got to come back a star!”
Perhaps the greatest musical of them all, this lively Warner Bros film served as the prototype plot for scores of other films.
8 Mar 2021 - CANCELLED
Sir
India, France 2018, 99 mins, Drama, Romance
Colour, digital - Official trailer here
Director: Rohena Gera
Starring: Tillotama Shome, Vivek Gomber, Ahmareen Anjum
Language: Hindi, English, Marathi
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A young woman, widowed at 19 after an arranged marriage, leaves her remote village to work as a live-in maid for the son of a wealthy family who has returned to Mumbai from New York after breaking off his engagement. In her award-winning debut feature, writer-director Rohena Gera uses a classic setup — forbidden love between two lost souls — to explore questions of class, and caste in a city that has grown from its colonial roots into a burgeoning world capital.
‘A refreshing film on impossible love between castes’ (Cineuropa).
12 Apr 2021 - CANCELLED
Bait
UK 2019, 89 mins, Drama
B&W, 16mm, Cert 15 - Official trailer here
Director: Mark Jenkin
Starring: Edward Rowe, Mary Woodvine, Simon Shepherd
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A Cornish fisherman without a boat struggles to make ends meet while coping with family rivalry and the influx of London money, Airbnb and stag parties to his picturesque harbour village. The summer season brings tensions between locals and newcomers to boiling point, with tragic consequences. Stunningly shot on Kodak B&W 16mm film, Bait is an impassioned tribute to Cornwall’s proud past and establishes Mark Jenkin as one of the most intriguing British film-makers of his generation.
BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer.
10 May 2021 - CANCELLED
Tel Aviv On Fire
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Israel 2019, 100 mins, Comedy, Drama, Romance
Colour, digital - Official trailer here
Director: Sameh Zoabi
Starring: Kais Nashif, Lubna Azabal, Yaniv Biton
Language: Arabic, Hebrew
Salam, a young, easy-going Palestinian, is a trainee on a Palestinian soap opera set in 1967, before the Six Day War, which is popular on both sides of the Wall. Each day, to get to from his home in Jerusalem to the TV studios in Ramallah, he has to pass a tense Israeli checkpoint. To curry favour with the army commander, Salam claims to be the soap’s scriptwriter and agrees to incorporate his story ideas into the show and ultimately to devise a happy ending. Salam’s screenwriting career takes off, but when the plot becomes too pro-Israel, he faces a dilemma.
‘Tel Aviv on Fire highlights the awful absurdity of war and proves it’s possible to find humour in the midst of cultural conflict.’ (Metacritic).
14 June 2021
Woman at war
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Iceland 2018, 101 mins, Action, Drama, Thriller
Colour, digital, Cert 12A - Official trailer here
Director: Benedikt Erlingsson
Leading actors: Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jóhann Sigurðarson, Juan Camillo Roman Estrada
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Halla, a woman in her forties, declares war on the local aluminum industry to prevent it from disfiguring her country. She risks all she has to protect the highlands of Iceland-but the situation could change with the unexpected arrival of a small orphan in her life.
“An attractive and sympathetic performance from Geirharðsdóttir as Halla: a woman with a fierce and focused energy who has mysteriously concentrated all her efforts on an environmental campaign, but comes, perhaps, to see that there is no contradiction between pursuing that and wanting to be a mother.”
The Icelandic entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2019 Academy Awards.