What You Don’t Know About Me

Dir: Rolando Colla, Italy, 2019, 114 mins

Ikendu, a refugee from Mali, and Patricia, a Czech single mother, live on the margins of society in the conformist, Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, both seeking a new life to escape the ghosts of their pasts. When they meet and their relationship blossoms, their carefree future together is soon jeopardised by events beyond their control.

A multi-layered story of two people finding each other in a world in which they have no part, and where they must confront the complex and harsh reality of their situation and the stereotypes that threaten to contaminate their relationship.

“A poetic and heartfelt film” Georgia del Don, Cineuropa

The Father

Director: Florian Zeller, England 2020, 97 minutes, 12A

Oscar-winning Hopkins gives an astounding performance as Anthony, a fiercely independent octogenarian struggling to make sense of his everyday world and the identity of the people close to him, as dementia takes hold. His patient and loyal daughter Anne (played superbly by Olivia Colman) is tested constantly by her father’s stubbornness and confusion.

While the perspectives of all involved are sympathetically conveyed, the viewer has the disturbing experience of being placed inside the ailing mind of Hopkins’ Anthony, sharing the ebb and flow of his moments of clarity and confusion.

A warm, at times funny, but ultimately devastating account of a man experiencing a gradual loss of self.

Veins of the World

Director: Byambasuren Davaa, Mongolia, 2020, 96 mins

The director of much-loved cinema classics The Story of the Weeping Camel and The Cave of the Yellow Dog transports us again to the spectacular beauty of the Mongolian steppe, this time looking at the encroachment of modernity and its effect on nomadic lifestyles that have changed little in hundreds of years.

“More than an ethnographic curiosity, the film, in its understated way, is an environmental cri de coeur” Screen International

Cat in the Wall

Director: Mina Mileva, UK 2020, 92 mins

Irina is a Bulgarian architect living with her brother and young son in a Peckham housing block and striving to practise her profession in her adopted country while making ends meet by working in a local bar. As owner-occupier of her flat, she is liable for a considerable share of the costs of the council’s renovation of the block, adding stress to her already precarious finances. When she finds and adopts an apparently ownerless cat outside her flat, tensions between the block’s occupants threaten to overboil. A humorous, insightful and ultimately devastating examination of post-Brexit Britain, based on true events and presented in a docu-fiction style.

“This terrific comedy-drama has a fresh, naturalistic element” Wendy Ide, Screen Daily

Noah Land

Director: Cenk Ertürk, Turkey 2020, 99 mins

In order to realise his estranged and terminally-ill father’s wish to be buried under the ‘Noah Tree’ his father swears he planted, Omer, a quick-tempered son in a mid-life crisis, has to face the villagers who believe that the ‘holy’ tree is the first tree planted by prophet Noah after the Great Flood and has the power to immediately answer their prayers. A deeply felt exploration of male ego in the tradition of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, staring Haluk Bilginer from Winter Sleep. 

Noah Land has been nominated for numerous festival awards and has won seven, including Best Screenplay (International Narrative Competition), and Best Actor (International Narrative Competition - Ali Atay) at Tribeca 2019, Best Actor (National Competition - Ali Atay) at the 2019 Bosphorus Film Festival and Best Film and Best Director at the 2019 Adana Film Festival. 

”Noah Land‘s strength lies in its imperfect characters who all admit or display their shortcomings and yet whose lives we come to care about… It is through the collection of characters, who all care very deeply and who acknowledge their faults, whether or not they contribute to the story’s minimal action, that Noah Land truly shines.” - Leah Singerman, FilmBook.