2022 - 2023 SEASON
Click to access the voting results for each film of the season.
12 Sept 2022
Nomadland Official trailer here
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USA 2020, 107 min, Cert 12A, Drama
​Director: Chloe Zhao
Starring: Frances McDormand, David Strathairm, Linda May
Language: English
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After losing everything in the Great Recession, and following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada, Fern – a woman in her sixties – packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside conventional society as a modern-day nomad. The third feature film from director Chloé Zhao, Nomadland features three real nomads as Fern's mentors and comrades on her journey of self-discovery through the vast landscape of the American West.
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‘A gentle, compassionate, questioning film about the American soul' (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
Winner of 3 Oscars in 2021: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actress​
10 Oct 2022
Parallel Mothers Official trailer here
Original title: Madres paralelas
Spain 2021, 123 min, Cert 15, Drama
​Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Penélope Cruz, Milena Smit, Israel Elejalde
Language: Spanish
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Two women have a chance encounter in a hospital maternity ward that leads to a lifelong bond. Both are single and became pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn't regret it and is exultant. The other, Ana, a teenager, is scared, repentant and traumatised. They give birth on the same day but their babies are accidentally switched, resulting in a gradually unravelling story of secrets and lies that also explores the legacy of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s rule in Spain.
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‘Almodóvar’s new movie has the warmth and the grandiloquent flair of a picture from Hollywood’s golden age and the whiplash twists and addictive sugar-rush bumps of a daytime soap’ (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
14 Nov 2022
Compartment No. 6 Official trailer here
Original title: Hytti nro 6
Finland 2021, 107 min, Cert 15, Drama, Romance
​Director: Juho Kuosmanen
Starring: Yuri Borisov, Seidi Haarla, Valeriy Nikolaev
Language: Russian, Finnish
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A young Finnish woman escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the Arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a larger-than-life Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of Compartment No. 6 to face major truths about the human connection. Pre-smartphone loneliness has never felt so lovely.
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‘A wry, heartfelt study of two characters who can’t escape their entwined fate, forged within the confines of cramped quarters and the peculiar intimacies of Russian train travel’ (Washington Post)
12 Dec 2022
The Truffle Hunters Official trailer here
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Italy 2020, 84 min, Cert 12A, Documentary
​Director: Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
Starring: Pietro Botto, Sergio Cauda, Maria Cicciù
Language: Italian
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This immersive documentary, filmed over three years, observes a group of elderly Italian men who live deep in the forests of Piedmont and hunt for the rare, expensive white Alba truffle, which to date has resisted all efforts at cultivation. Guided by tradition and arcane knowledge passed down through generations, as well as by the noses of their cherished, expertly trained dogs, they evince the power of a simple, slower way of life lived in harmony with their animals, their community and nature.
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‘A timely reminder that the world does not turn to the industrialised rhythms of mankind alone, and that we lose track of its natural heartbeat at our peril’ (Mark Kermode, The Observer)
Shortlisted for the 2021 Oscar for Best Documentary
9 Jan 2023
The Big Hit Official trailer here
Original title: Un triomphe
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France 2020, 105 min, Cert 15, Comedy, Drama
​Director: Emmanuel Courcol
Starring: Kad Merad, David Ayala, Lamine Cissokho
Language: French
Etienne, an often out-of-work but endearing actor, runs a theatre workshop in a prison, where he brings together an unlikely troupe of prisoners to stage Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. When he gets to take the colourful band of convicts on a tour outside of prison, Etienne finally has a chance to thrive. Each date is a new success and a unique bond grows between the actors and their director. But soon comes the final performance in Paris. Will their last night be the biggest hit?
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The story is inspired by real events in 1985 at a high-security prison in Sweden, where inmates formed a theatre group
Cannes Film Festival Official Selection 2020
13 Feb 2023
Strangers On A Train Official trailer here
Our Classic presentation
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USA 1951, 101 min, B1W, Cert PG, Drama, Crime
​Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman
Language: English
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A story about two strangers who meet on a train, one of whom is a psychopath who suggests to the other, a tennis star, that they ‘exchange’ murders so that neither will be caught. Based on the eponymous psychological thriller novel by Patricia Highsmith, the film is constructed as a three-stage dance of death between the two men.
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‘The film initially received mixed reviews but is now regarded as one of Hitchcock's finest. In 2021, it was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’.
13 Mar 2023
Dear Comrades! Official trailer here
Original title: Dorogie tovarishchi
Russia 2020, 121 min, Cert 15, Drama, History
​Director: Andrey Konchalovskiy
Starring: Yuliya Vysotskaya, Vladislav Komarov, Andrey Gusev
Language: Russian
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Novocherkassk, USSR, 1962. Lyudmila is a devout Communist Party official and idealistic WWII veteran. When local factory workers strike in protest at rising food prices, she and other officials are caught off guard. Moscow steps in and government forces fire on the crowds. After the bloodbath, she searches desperately for her missing daughter, undeterred by curfews, mass arrests, and ruthless cover-up attempts. Her unquestioning faith in the Party is shaken, and a gaping rift opens in her world view.
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‘A heart-rending drama with an electrifying central performance” (Irish Times)
‘Dear Comrades! shows the gears of oppressive government bureaucracy with blistering precision’ (Variety)
Special Jury Prize, 2020 Venice Film Festival
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10 Apr 2023
Drive My Car Official trailer here
Original title: Doraibu mai kâ
Japan 2021, 179 min, Cert 15, Drama
​Director: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Starring: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tôko Miura, Reika Kirishima
Language: Japanese
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Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, Drive My Car is a haunting road movie travelling a path of love, loss, acceptance, and peace. Two years after his wife’s unexpected death, a renowned stage actor and director receives an offer to direct a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at a theatre festival in Hiroshima. There, an introverted young woman is assigned to chauffeur him in his own beloved red Saab 900. Together, they confront painful truths raised from the past and find new ways to move forward.
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‘A haunting road movie travelling a path of love, loss, acceptance and peace’ (Modern Films)
At the 2002 Oscars, the film won Best International Feature Film, and was the first Japanese film to receive a Best Picture nomination.
8 May 2023
Memories Of My father Official trailer here
Original title: El olvido que seremos
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Colombia 2020, 136 min, Cert 15, Drama, History
​Director: Fernando Trueba
Starring: Javier Cámara, Nicolás Reyes Cano, Juan Pablo Urrego
Language: Spanish, Italian, English
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Beloved by his boisterous family and the Medellín communities he cared for, Héctor Abad Gomez was a prominent physician and tireless public health activist. The film – an adaptation of the memoir written by his only son, Héctor Abad Faciolince, one of Colombia’s leading writers – shifts from reminiscences of carefree childhood days in the 70s to a growing foreboding of the extremes of violence of the late 80s. In 1987, Gomez – an outspoken critic of the Colombian regime – was murdered by paramilitaries.
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‘A wonderfully sympathetic, deeply felt and tenderly funny family drama’ (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
2020 Cannes Film Festival Official Selection
12 June 2023
Azor Official trailer here
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Switzerland, France, Argentina 2021, 100 min, Thriller
​Director: Andreas Fontana
Starring: Fabrizio Rongione, Stéphanie Cléau, Carmen Iriondo
Language: French, Spanish, English
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1980. Argentina is under a military dictatorship. Swiss banker Yvan has just arrived in Buenos Aires from Geneva, ostensibly on an emergency diplomatic visit. Discretion is crucial in his line of work. (Azor is slang for ‘careful what you say’.) With the help of his wife Inés, he tours plush hotel bars and private pools, reassuring his well-heeled, secretive clients, who are troubled by the new regime, that their assets are safe. Except that there are rumours of horses being ‘disappeared’.
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‘Fontana’s striking feature film debut brings a prickly thriller sensibility to the closed world of high finance and a piquancy to the phrase "dirty money"' (Screen International)
Ranked No. 8 in the Guardian’s 50 best films of 2021 in the UK