season 5.
September 2015 - July 2016
WEDNESDAY 9 SEPTEMBER 2015
Force Majeurre
Director: Ruben Östlund, Sweden 2014, 119 mins, cert 15
In this conversation-starting dark comedy and a sharply-observed psychodrama, Tomas and Ebba are an attractive, well-heeled Swedish couple with two small children, enjoying rare and precious time together on a five-day skiing holiday in the French Alps. When, on day two, a controlled avalanche almost engulfs the hotel’s balcony restaurant, Tomas’s instinctive, selfish reaction sends tremors through the seemingly idyllic marriage, and the family struggles to recover from the aftershocks.
Winner: Jury Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2014
““Wickedly enjoyable” Nigel Andrews, FT
WEDNESDAY 7 October 2015
Ida
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland 2013, 82 mins, cert 12A
Abandoned in a convent as a baby during German occupation of Poland in WW2, Anna is on the verge of taking vows as a nun when she learns she has a surviving relative. Her aunt Wanda, a former Communist state prosecutor, leads a dissolute, self-destructive life that contrasts sharply with the ascetic existence of her sheltered niece, and has some life-changing news for Anna about her past. Multi-award-winning and highly acclaimed, this complex excavation into Poland’s turbulent past is a starkly beautiful, compact masterpiece.
Winner: Best Foreign Language Film, Academy Awards 2015; Best Film Not in the English Language, BAFTA Awards 2015; Best Film, European Film Awards 2015, London Film Festival 2014, and many others
“Immaculate, miraculous… perfect” Tim Robey, Telegraph
WEDNESDAY 11 November 2015
Locke
Director: Steven Knight, UK 2013, 85 mins, cert 15
Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), a softly-spoken, dedicated family man and successful construction manager, receives a call on the eve of the biggest challenge of his career. During his consequent 90-minute real-time night drive down the motorway to London, and by way of back-to-back hands-free phonecalls, his carefully cultivated existence begins to unravel. Delivered entirely from the confines of a BMW, Hardy’s exceptional performance makes this one-man show a taut, multi-layered and riveting drama.
Winner: Best Screenplay, British Independent Film Awards 2013
“Tom Hardy is mesmerising in an engrossing solo thriller” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
WEDNESDAY 13 January 2016
grand Central
Director: Rebecca Zlotowski, France 2013, 94 mins, cert 15
Tahar Rahim (A Prophet) plays a likable, unskilled drifter who swaps tomato picking for more lucrative but dangerous work as a decontaminator in a nuclear power plant. Becoming part of the workers’ tight-knit community living in caravans overshadowed by the plant, he soon begins an affair with a co-worker’s fiancée, played by Léa Seydoux (Blue is the Warmest Colour). An intense, radioactively charged drama with standout performances from the two leads.
Winner: François Chalais Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2013
“A startling erotic drama…gripping, with an edge of delirium” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
WEDNESDAY 10 February 2016
Pelo Malo (Bad Hair)
Director: Mariana Rondón, Venezuela 2013, 93 mins, cert 15
Junior is a troubled boy growing up with his widowed mother and baby brother in a Caracas tenement block, during the dying days of Hugo Chávez. His struggle for motherly love and finding his own identity focuses on straightening his stubbornly curly hair, but in a society constructed along restrictive gender lines, his quirky behaviour and lack of masculine conformity are deeply resented by his volatile mother. A powerful, unaffected portrayal of everyday being and growing, and a vibrant examination of contemporary Venezuela’s social and economic fissures.
Winner: Best Film, Havana Film Festival 2013
“A quietly perceptive work that teases out insights without undue strain” Mike McCahill, Guardian
WEDNESDAY 9 March 2016
Winter Sleep
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey 2014, 196 mins, cert 15
Retired actor Aydin owns a hotel and several properties let out to local tenants on the Anatolian steppe, where he lives with his much younger, restless wife and troubled, watchful sister. As winter sets in and guest numbers dwindle, tensions and resentments begin to emerge both within the claustrophobic household and with the tenants and villagers. An avowedly Chekhovian drama, compelling and sombre, that deals with questions of conscience, responsibility and self-delusion.
Winner: Palme d’Or, Cannes Film Festival 2014
“Fiendishly intelligent… bold, beautiful” Robbie Collin, Telegraph
WEDNESDAY 13 April 2016
Heli
Director: Amat Escalante, Mexico 2013, 105 mins, cert 18
Heli, a young Mexican, lives with his wife, baby, father and 12-year-old sister Estela in a ramshackle house in the provinces, working night shifts at the local car plant. Studious schoolgirl Estela is planning to elope with a 17-year-old police cadet, Beto. To fund it, he hides stolen cocaine in the family’s water tank, triggering events that drag the whole family into the lawless – and terrifyingly routine – violent world of narco gangs and corrupt authorities. WARNING: includes graphic torture scene.
Winner: Best Director, Cannes Film Festival 2013
“Winningly provocative and always compelling” Dave Calhoun, TimeOut
WEDNESDAY 11 May 2016
My Name is Salt
Director: Jem Cohen, Austria/USA 2012, 107 mins, Cert 12A
This mesmerising, lyrical documentary unveils without narration or commentary the physically gruelling annual harvest of “the whitest salt in Earth” from Gujarati desert mud, before the monsoon rains wash all the work away. Using low-tech and arduous methods unchanged over generations, Sanabhai and his family quietly apply themselves to this eight-month long process with – despite the pittance they earn – a profound sense of purpose and pride, their endurance and craftsmanship revealed against a stunningly bleak landscape.
Winner: Best Documentary Feature Film, Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014
“An extraordinary sensory experience…Pacha finds her way into the very heart of this timeless ritual” Mark Kermode, Observer
WEDNESDAY 8 June 2016
Leviathan
Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev, Russia 2014, 140 mins, cert 15
Kolya lives with his teenage son and second wife in a house occupied by his family for generations, on a rocky shore in the barren wilderness of northwestern Russia. The thuggish local mayor has plans to acquire the property for redevelopment, and Kolya dares to stand up to him. His subsequent doomed struggle against a corrupt, all-powerful system provides a savagely bleak and powerful parable of post-Soviet Russia. An award-winning, sweepingly tragic tale shot through with tar-black comedy and biting satire.
Winner: Best Foreign Language Film, Golden Globes 2015; Best Screenplay, Cannes Film Festival 2014; Best International Film, Munich Film Festival 2014, and many others
“A compelling told, stunningly shot drama… superbly acted… impressive film-making on a grand scale” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
WEDNESDAY 13 July 2016
Taxi
Director: Jafar Panahi, Iran 2015, 82 mins, cert TBA
The Iranian filmmaker’s third feature produced while technically living under a filmmaking ban sees Panahi posing as a cab driver around Tehran, while tiny digital cameras record his seemingly spontaneous interactions with a series of oddball passengers. The result is a playful and highly entertaining musing on the intersection of life and art, via themes of ethics, criminality and social control in contemporary Iran, although a sense of profound outrage is never far from the surface: the missing credits speak for themselves.
Winner: Golden Bear, Berlin Film Festival 2015
“A beautifully humane fable” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
