We are delighted to welcome local director Max Keegan (Fishbourne) for a Q&A following his documentary about an aging shepherd struggling to find a successor as bears prey on his flock.

Set high in the majestic French Pyrenees, we learn of a conflict provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears amid a traditional shepherding community. 63-year-old Yves struggles to find a successor to take over his work whilst a teenage boy becomes obsessed with tracking the bears, recently reintroduced after their disappearance in 2004. Through its breathtaking cinematography and immersive storytelling, ‘The Shepherd and the Bear’ is a modern folktale about tradition, community and humanity’s relationship with a vanishing natural world. Keegan learned to speak French fluently from scratch for the film and spent two years living in the Pyrenees with his subjects. ‘Lyrical, visually and aurally ravishing’ – Screen International. (Some subtitles)

UK/France 2024 Max Keegan 101m

In our second staff pick, our Executive Director Anne-Marie Flynn has chosen this 1951 love story which sees a handsome, earnest but ambitious young man getting a job in his rich uncle’s factory and finding himself entangled in an impossible love triangle, ending in tragedy.

Anne-Marie: “This is the film which made me fall hopelessly in love with cinema. Shot in atmospheric, shimmering black and white, every luminous frame is beautiful to behold. This deeply romantic but ultimately tragic tale is also a terrific, suspenseful drama with dramatic moments which pulsate with tension. Described by Charlie Chaplin as “the greatest film ever made about America”, this classic version of Theodore Dreiser's 1951 novel ‘An American Tragedy’ won six Oscars and the first ever Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama. It pairs two of Hollywood’s most heavenly creatures; Montgomery Clift as George Eastman, the impoverished nephew of a wealthy industrialist and Elizabeth Taylor as glamorous socialite, Angela Vickers. This is a magnificent tale of passion, ambition, class struggle and morality. George faces the ultimate dilemma of fulfilling all his American dreams in a life with Angela or doing the right thing with office co-worker Alice, (a wonderfully downtrodden Shelley Winters) and succumbing to a life of drudgery.  If ever a film was made to be seen on the big screen, it is this one. I urge you to savour every dazzling moment”

USA 1951 George Stevens 122m

A powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of William Shakespeare's timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.

Agnes (Jessie Buckley), an expert falconer, and Will (Paul Mescal), a Latin tutor who longs to be a writer, quickly fall in love, marry and have three children, the happiness of their rustic Stratford-Upon-Avon home only interrupted by Will’s occasional journeys to London to workshop his plays. But when their only son, 11-year-old Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), succumbs to the plague, Agnes and Will face the first severe challenge to their relationship, their grief turning to animosity between them. Chloe Zhao’s (‘Nomadland’) adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell novel charts the romance between Shakespeare and his wife as the couple experience wedded bliss and then tragedy, inspiring the birth of the Bard’s heralded ‘Hamlet’. Where other films reduce the act of creation to a simplistic cause-and-effect scenario, ‘Hamnet’ far more profoundly investigates how love and art shift in intensity and clarity over time. So much of the movie is meticulously composed, colourful and detailed, that it almost feels like a romantic fairytale. What ‘Hamnet’ leaves you with isn’t sadness, but joy – at the human capacity to reckon with death’s implacability through art, or love, or just the basic act of carrying-on in its defiance. One of the must-sees of the season.

UK/USA 2025 Chloé Zhao 125m

In this satirical black comedy thriller from one of South Korea’s best directors, an unemployed man devises a unique plan to secure a new job: eliminate his competition.

When paper expert Yoo Man-soo (Lee Byung-hun from ‘Squid Game’) is abruptly laid off, he loses the perfect life he’s worked hard for. So, when a new job comes along, he realises a perfect plan – by getting rid of his competition via any available means. Park Chan-wook is one of Asia’s best contemporary directors, having two of the 21st Century’s best in his canon (‘Oldboy’, ‘The Handmaiden’). He has once again delivered with this delightfully wicked, continually surprising black comedy, featuring his signature twists and exquisite imagery – everything that has made him such a unique cinematic presence. (Subtitles)

South Korea 2025 Park Chan-wook 139m

A compelling drama that explores a family's bond with Africa's land and the war's impact on the region and individuals through a child's perspective.

8-year-old Bobo (Lexi Venter) lives on her family's Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) farm during the Bush War's final stages. Set against this violent backdrop, and seen through her eyes, we witness the family's desperate attachment to Africa's soil and the deep, festering scars of a war that reshapes both land and soul. Venter, who was only 7-years-old when making this film, is remarkable and entirely natural: a captivating, curious presence and our guide in this uncertain world. This is an earthy adaptation of Alexandra Fuller’s autobiographical novel about her childhood. (Some subtitles)

South Africa 2024 Embeth Davidtz 99m

Honshin

Would knowing the truth about somebody you loved bring you happiness? This is a possible glimpse into our future and a critique of advancing technology.

Factory worker Ishikawa Sakuya (Ikematsu Sosuke) witnesses his mother (Tanaka Yuko) drowning in a river. One year later, after waking from a coma caused by an injury sustained while trying to save her, he discovers that she participated in government approved “elective death” programme, leaving Sakuya distraught and confused. Sakuya meets a developer (Tsumabuki Satoshi) of AI recreations of the dead built from harvested data and accessed through VR goggles, and commissions a ‘Virtual Figure’ of his mother. However, her digital image gradually reveals a side of her that Sakuya has never known. From AI to virtual beings to the controversial topic of assisted dying, it tackles urgent social issues while confronting audiences with the question of what we might feel when we finally learn the truth about others. (Subtitles)

Japan 2024 Ishii Yuya 122m

A conversation between photographer Peter Hujar and Linda Rosenkrantz from 1974 sheds light on New York's vibrant downtown art world and the introspective journey of an artist's life.

Hujar (Ben Wishaw) was a brilliant photographer and stylish gay man of the 1970s and 80s, associated with Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe and part of a hip New York coterie of artists and intellectuals. In 1974, he took part in a kind of documentary nonfiction project undertaken by author Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall), in which he simply came to her apartment and recounted into a tape machine everything that happened to him on a certain day. Through their freewheeling, intimate exchange, Hujar shares vivid stories of his interactions with literary and cultural icons like William Burroughs, Candy Darling, Susan Sontag and Allen Ginsberg, and what initially feels like art world name-dropping gossip quickly becomes an intriguing time capsule of life in New York’s 1970s downtown scene.

USA/Germany/UK 2025 Ira Sachs 76m

Exhibition on Screen

Mystery, intrigue, beauty, passion, murder – shine a new light on Caravaggio in this dramatic biography.

Five years in production, this is the most extensive film ever made about one of the greatest artists of all time. Featuring masterpiece after masterpiece and with first-hand testimony from the artist himself on the eve of his mysterious disappearance. Caravaggio’s masterpieces are some of art’s most instantly recognisable. No one else uses his signature blend of dramatic light, intense naturalism and bold, striking figures. His incredible paintings have captivated audiences for centuries. But there lies a deeper mystery - one that still beckons us to explore. What do these masterpieces reveal about the man behind the brush? The intriguing self-depictions within his works - sometimes disguised, sometimes in plain sight - offer a rare window into his psyche and personal struggles. Join us as we unravel the story of one of history’s most brilliant, complex and controversial figures.

UK 2025 David Bickerstaff/Phil Grabsky 100m

Tickets £15

Tue 11 Nov 14:15

Thu 13 Nov 16:00

Sun 16 nov 15:30

Mon 17 Nov 18:00

A heart-warming family comedy about a disgraced TV Host and a young indigenous girl who work together to rescue and rehabilitate a group of orphaned joeys in a remote Australian Outback community.

When Chris Masterman (Ryan Corr) loses his job as a TV breakfast show presenter in Sydney, he heads west to take up another offer but accidentally runs over a kangaroo with a joey in its pouch, damaging his sports car in the process. The only person he can interest in his predicament is 12-year-old indigenous girl Charlie (Lily Whiteley – a real find here) who is having her own problems adjusting to the Outback town, but finds him (and the joey) a place to stay. Here, Chris has a chance for redemption, but not before making heavy weather of ingratiating himself with the locals. Ernie Dingo (‘Crocodile Dundee’) is at his homespun best as chatty local mechanic who is in no hurry to fix Chris’s car. ‘Kangaroo’ is a fun film, loaded with Aussie charm, and manages to sell both the wonder of the beleaguered Alice Springs region, and glitzy Bondi Beach, to the world.

Australia 2025 Kate Woods 117m

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an evil is waiting to welcome them back.

The dreams of rabble-rousing (and former Chicago enforcers for Al Capone) twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) come to fruition when they return to their small Mississippi hometown and successfully open a music bar in an abandoned sawmill. The place overflows with music and mysticism, and when their cousin Preacher Boy (Miles Caton) picks up his guitar and plays the Blues in front of a rowdy audience, all hell (including a rabble of vampires) breaks loose. Jack O’Connell’s co-stars as the despicably smirking villain in this rip-roaring fusion of masterful visual storytelling and outstanding toe-tapping blues. It looks phenomenal too: shot on 70mm film, the frame throbs with sultry reds and golds. Do not let any vampire film prejudice stop you from seeing this film, it is a recent stand-out of the genre.

USA 2025 Ryan Coogler 137m

Les Quatre Cents Coups

François Truffaut's semi-autobiographical 1959 debut is one of the French new wave's most accessible and best-loved films.

Jean-Pierre Léaud is Antoine, a tearaway kid perpetually in trouble both in school and at home: his difficult family circumstances are only revealed at the very end - a cool narrative coup. Antoine resolves to leave home and see life for himself eventually ending up in reform school. The film looks superb and Antoine's heartbreakingly open face is like Truffaut's monochrome Paris: beautiful, tough, innocent and yet worldly. One of the great movies about childhood, you will never forget Léaud’s extraordinary central performance or the film’s remarkable coda. Perhaps Truffaut’s best film – it was also his first and what a startling and vigorous debut it is. (Subtitles)

France 1959 François Truffaut 99m

One of the most watched NT Live releases of all time. Academy Award-winner Helen Mirren plays Queen Elizabeth II in the much-anticipated return of the Olivier Award–winning hit production, that inspired Netflix’s The Crown.

Peter Morgan's play shows a series of the Queen's weekly meetings with various prime ministers to have held office during her reign, including Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron. For sixty years she has met each of her twelve Prime Ministers in a weekly audience at Buckingham Palace - a meeting like no other in British public life - it is private. 'The Audience' breaks this contract of silence - and imagines a series of pivotal meetings between the Downing Street incumbents and their Queen. From Churchill to Cameron, each Prime Minister has used these private conversations as a sounding board and a confessional - sometimes intimate, sometimes explosive. Directed by Stephen Daldry ('Billy Elliot', 'The Hours').

180m including interval.

The story of Jean-Luc Godard making ‘Breathless’, told by American director Richard Linklater (‘Before Sunrise’, ‘Boyhood’) in the form and spirit of the times.

This is a playful, black-and-white making-of story for Godard’s New Wave classic ‘À Bout de Souffle’ that captures a revolutionary moment in cinema history with reverence and a touch of cheek. Styled as a mischievous declaration of love for the 1959 cult film, but also for a pivotal period of cinema that Linklater nostalgically revisits right down to techniques characteristic of the era. More than the portrait of a man and his art, the film evokes a prolific period in film, symbolised by freedom of voice, improvisation, and an attachment to everyday poetry. “It’s the story of a personal revolution of cinema led by a man, and by everyone around him”, the filmmaker says. The cast includes Guillaume Marbeck (Jean-Luc Godard), Zoey Deutsch (Jean Seberg), Aubry Dullin (Jean-Paul Belmondo), Adrien Rouyard (François Truffaut) and Antoine Besson (Claude Chabrol), with the film paying tribute to their accomplishments with infectious admiration. ‘An enchanting ode to the rapture of cinema’. Variety. (Subtitles)

France/USA 2025 Richard Linklater 105m

The passionate and tumultuous love story set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors, exploring the intense and destructive relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

UK 2026 Emerald Fennell

The paths of an elusive thief and a disillusioned insurance broker intertwine, with only a relentless detective in the way of the multi-million dollar heist they are planning.

Set against the sun-bleached grit of Los Angeles, elusive thief Davis’s (Chris Hemsworth) high-stakes robberies along the iconic 101 freeway have mystified police. When he eyes the score of a lifetime with hopes of this being his final job, his path collides with disillusioned insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry) who is facing her own crossroads. As the multimillion-dollar heist approaches, relentless detective Lou (Mark Ruffalo) closes in, and the line between hunter and hunted begins to blur. This high action thriller also stars Barry Keoghan as the more ruthless rival thief.

USA 2026 Bart Layton 135m

The Revolutionary Vision of the French New Wave

As Richard Linklater’s ‘Nouvelle Vague’ returns to the cinema, accompanied by a screening of ‘Breathless’, this talk will examine the impact of one of the most radical movements in cinema history.

Sat 28 Feb 10:30

À Bout de Souffle

Screening in conjunction with ‘Nouvelle Vague’, Jean-Luc Godard's gritty and engaging first feature had an almost revolutionary impact when first released in 1960.

Small-time thief (Jean-Paul Belmondo) steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he reunites with a hip American journalism student (Jean Seberg) and attempts to persuade her to run away with him to Italy. Widely regarded as the ground zero of the French New Wave movement and clearly hugely influential and standout in terms of narrative and attitude. The film feels cuttingly original and has an aura of edge, attitude and freedom to the proceedings. A landmark film, it forever changed perceptions of cinema. (Subtitles)

France 1960 Jean-Luc Godard 90m

Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot

Monsieur Hulot arrives at a beachside hotel for a vacation, where he accidentally (but good-naturedly) causes havoc.

This was the first film to introduce Jacques Tati’s much-loved alter ego Monsieur Hulot, it set the pattern for future appearances, throwing the bumbling hero unwittingly into the middle of the action and letting the ensuing mishaps provoke humour ranging from gentle observations to fairly biting satire. Nearly dialogue-free and driven more by episode than plot, standout set pieces include a disrupted funeral, an interrupted game of cards, and a game of tennis played with rules that can politely be called unconventional. Tati was the heir to the great comics of the silent era - Chaplin, Keaton and Lloyd. If you have not seen this classic – make sure you see it this time around. (Some subtitles)

France 1953 Jacques Tati 114m

Umi no Chinmoku

The line between imitation and authenticity is thin, and so is the line that determines the value of art. Where does the truth about ourselves lie?

A major incident occurs at an exhibition celebrating the career of world-renowned artist Tamura Shuzo (Ishizaka Koji): one of the displayed works is revealed to be a forgery. Guided by artistic conscience or pride – Shuzo publicly acknowledges it, even conceding its superiority. When the body of a tattooed woman is discovered, suspicions quickly fall on Shuzo’s rival and former prodigy Tsuyama Ryuji (Motoki Masahiro). Having made a living by creating forgeries and tattooing women, Ryuji is now terminally ill and pursued for his crimes, and obsessively devoting his final days to completing one last painting. Featuring stunning cinematography and an extraordinary lead performance by Motoki. (Subtitles)

Japan 2024 Wakamatsu Setsuro 112m

Royal Ballet & Opera

Set to Adolphe Adam’s evocative score and with atmospheric designs by John Macfarlane, this classic ballet conjures up the earthly and otherworldly realms in a tale of love, betrayal and redemption.

Tue 3 Mar 19:15

Sun 8 Mar 15:15

Theatre Royal

Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ rages to life like never before in an explosive new production from the theatre Royal. David Harewood (‘Homeland’, ‘Best of Enemies’) is compelling as the suave Othello while Toby Jones (‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’, ‘Detectorists’) is a gleefully malicious Iago.

Wed 4 Mar

Sat 7 Mar

Sign up for the next CineCircle to discuss films seen at New Park.

Choose a warming drink, a glass of wine or beer at Brasserie Blanc.

TICKETS ARE FREE, but bookings are essential as we have limited numbers.

Brasserie Blanc, Chichester

‘Lightning and Thunder’, a Milwaukee husband and wife Neil Diamond tribute act, experience soaring success and devastating heartbreak in their musical journey together.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson shine as these troubled souls - a middle-aged mechanic and hairdresser - drawn to each other as much as they are to their shared love of the venerable singer-songwriter, and the film’s musical sequences are superb. The best Neil Diamond songs are catchy enough to unite huge crowds, they’re deeply sentimental, and they refuse to make even the slightest effort to be cool… just like this film.  It shows us that everyone has a voice worth using and the world is a better place when we all sing along.

USA 2025 Craig Brewer 133m

Amidst the chaos of World War II, Tommy Shelby returns to a bombed Birmingham and becomes involved in secret wartime missions based on true events, facing new threats as he reckons with his past and rising national stakes.

Set in 1940, the film shifts the narrative into the heart of the Second World War. This is a brilliant, if inevitable, progression. We left Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) in 1936, a man who had faked his own death to escape the suffocating walls of his own making. The title, ‘The Immortal Man’, carries a heavy irony. Is it a reference to Tommy’s uncanny ability to survive the impossible, or a nod to the fact that the ghost of the Birmingham gangster can never truly rest while the world burns around him? Tom Harper returns to direct the film, and joining the returning cast such as Murphy, Sophie Rundle and Stephen Graham, are Barry Keoghan, known for his roles in ‘Saltburn’ and ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’, along with ‘Dune’ actor Rebecca Ferguson and ‘Pulp Fiction’ star Tim Roth.

UK 2026 Tom Harper 112m

A captivating portrait of the gifted musician Jeff Buckley, who died tragically in 1997, having only released the one, seminal, album.

This moving documentary covers the life of the rising young star with an otherworldly voice and boundary-pushing artistry, who left the 1990s music world reeling when he died suddenly, at age 30, after the release of his critically acclaimed debut album ‘Grace’. Told through never-before-seen footage from Buckley's archives and intimate accounts from his mother Mary Guibert, former partners Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser, Jeff's former bandmates, including Michael Tighe and Parker Kindred, and luminaries like Ben Harper and Aimee Mann.

USA 2025 Amy Berg 106m

Through loss, love and self-discovery, a woman transforms pain into art and writes a life on her own terms.

Stewart makes her feature directorial debut here with an unflinching portrait of womanhood, survival and artistry at the fragmented crossroads of memory and memoir, adapted from the book of the same name by Lidia Yuknavitch. Imogen Poots stars as Lidia, a young woman who finds escape from an abusive home through competitive swimming in the 1980s. After her athletic dreams are derailed, she navigates love, loss, addiction, sexuality and her own self-destructive impulses while discovering her voice, and healing, through the transformative act of writing. Poots is astounding, giving heart and soul to a performance of a woman who cannot help but careen her way through life like a bull in a china shop.

USA 2025 Kristen Stewart 128m

Hosenka

A man with a criminal past seeks a new beginning in life — but can he really become someone beyond himself?

An elderly man named Akutsu Minoru (Kobayashi Kaoru past self, Tozuka Junki present self), serving a life sentence, awaits a lonely death in his prison cell. The only real sign of life in the cell is a potted balsam flower — hosenka in Japanese. One night, Minoru begins sharing his life story with the flower — and, improbably, it starts talking back. Through their conversations, Minoru recalls his past and reflects on the meaning of his life.

The summer of 1987. Minoru, a low-ranking yakuza member, moves into a modest seaside apartment with Nagata Nana (Mitsushima Hikari past self, Miyazaki Yoshiko present self), a single mother, and her son Kensuke (Hanae

Natsuki). This living arrangement comes through Tsutsumi (Yasumoto Hiroki), a senior gangster Minoru respects. Despite his criminal lifestyle and his shyness in expressing his feelings for Nana, Minoru loves them with all his heart. The balsam plants in his garden witness their peaceful and seemingly ordinary life.

One day, Minoru suddenly finds himself in desperate need of a large sum of money and, together with Tsutsumi, steals 300 million yen from their gang’s safe. Caught in a web of misplaced loyalty and friendship, Minoru finds

himself manipulated — by others or by fate — but still clings to the hope of one last secret comeback from his troubled life.

Director Kinoshita Baku’s thoughtful and tender anime explores love and life’s changes in a way that everybody can resonate with. (Subtitles)

Japan 2025 Kinoshita Baku 90m

Exhibition on Screen

Celebrating the 250th anniversary of their births, this unmissable new documentary explores Turner and Constable’s intertwined lives and legacies alongside the groundbreaking Tate exhibition.

Two of Britain’s greatest painters, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable were also the greatest of rivals. Born within a year of each other, both used landscape painting to reflect the changing world around them. Tate Britain is bringing these two greats together for a groundbreaking exhibition from November 2025 to April 2026, and we bring their extraordinary art and remarkable stories to Chichester. Discover unexpected sides to both artists with intimate views of sketchbooks and personal items and insights from leading experts. Critics compared their starkly different styles to a clash of ‘fire and water’.

UK 2026 David Bickerstaff 91m

We are delighted to welcome back producer Phil Grabsky for a Q&A after the Tuesday screening.

The story of the founding leader of the Shaker Movement, depicting her establishment of a utopian society and the Shakers' worship through song and dance.

In this musical (of sorts), we are transported through Ann Lee’s (Amanda Seyfried) pious childhood in Manchester, her initial enlightenment at a meeting of the Shaking Quakers (so called due to their chanting, juddering dances and a precursor to Lee’s Shaker movement) and her marriage to Abraham (Christopher Abbott). Family tragedy guides Lee onward with an evangelical passion, through visions, being locked in prison and believing she is the second coming of Christ on Earth. Shot in rich 70mm stock by the duo behind ‘The Brutalist’, this is a wild, wonderful tribute to one hell of a woman and Seyfried is the glowing flame at its heart.

USA 2025 Mona Fastvold 137m

A WWII psychiatrist evaluates Nazi leaders before the Nuremberg trials, growing increasingly obsessed with understanding evil as he forms a disturbing bond with Hermann Göring.

At the end of WWII, after Adolf Hitler and many of his high command officers committed suicide, the allied countries wanted to put the mess of the war behind them. After millions lost their lives to a genocide of unspeakable proportions, several governments came together to put on an unprecedented trial that would challenge international law. As the Nuremberg trials (as they would come to be known) are set to begin, a U.S. Army psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (Rami Malek) gets locked in a dramatic psychological showdown with accused Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe). Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson (Michael Shannon) is a lead prosecutor in the case and relies on Kelley’s instincts to persuade Göring to admit certain criminal activities and assist in how to cross-examine the Nazi leader best. Richard E. Grant, as British lawyer David Maxwell Fyfe, take the courtroom scenes to higher ground, tearing Göring down with carefully crafted monologues. The potent performances by Crowe and Malek ignite this bracingly relevant historical courtroom drama.

USA 2025 James Vanderbilt 148m

With her life crashing down around her, a woman attempts to navigate her child's mysterious illness, her absent husband, a missing person and an increasingly hostile relationship with her therapist.

New York therapist Linda (Rose Byrne) is raising her young, sick daughter (Delaney Quinn) practically on her own. Her husband Charlie (Christian Slater) is always away for work. Besides a caved in ceiling at home, she must also contend with a needy client (Danielle Macdonald); her own increasingly frustrated therapist (Conan O’Brien); and a concerned physician (Mary Bronstein), who insists that Linda make time to talk to her about the child’s mysterious ailment. Byrne is raw, brittle and believably volatile, bringing such immediacy and nervous energy to every scene that we understand why Linda cannot think straight - and why the seemingly most simple tasks (like making an appointment with the doctor) are beyond her. This is a tour de force of matriarchal fury from Byrne, expertly guided by director Bronstein.

USA 2025 Mary Bronstein 113m

O Agente Secreto

Best Actor and Director awards at Cannes 2025. Brazil 1977: a technology expert flees from a mysterious past and returns to his hometown of Recife in search of peace. He soon realizes that the city is far from being the refuge he seeks.

Widower Marcelo (Wagner Moura from ‘Narcos’) is travelling across Brazil to his son. In his previous life as an academic, he discovered information that implicates a government minister of corruption, and this minister needs Marcelo gone, so hires a couple of hitmen to find him. Marcelo is welcomed into a covert community of refugees, all in hiding from the dictatorship for one reason or another. It’s a family of sorts, presided over by 77-year-old den mother Dona Sebastiana (a wonderful Tania Maria who steals every scene she is in). The film’s visual brilliance, dark comedy treats, sensual big-city intrigue, ghastly lowlife walk-ons and perfectly paced storytelling combine to create something very special. Watch out for the nods to classic films such as ‘Jaws’, ‘The Omen’ and even Jean-Paul Belmondo in ‘Le Magnifique’, from where the film’s title is sourced. (Subtitles)

Brazil 2025 Kleber Mendonça Filho 161m

To complement our screenings of ‘Turner & Constable’, we present this much lauded biopic, exploring the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner's life.

Turner (Timothy Spall) lives in London with his doting father (Paul Jesson) and equally devoted housekeeper Hannah Danby (Dorothy Atkinson). When his father dies, he travels to Margate to paint, and meets Sophia, who succumbs to the artist's charms long before she finally discovers who he is, and why everyone else thinks he's so damned important. Meanwhile, Turner mingles among the aristocracy and rules the roost at the Royal Academy. The work is an astonishingly detailed and richly enjoyable recreation of the era, but one that's also immediately familiar as another slice of director Mike Leigh himself - class-conscious, awkward and affectionate. Leigh's long-term collaborator Spall is astounding as Turner and delivers a tour de force reminiscent of Charles Laughton in his prime.

UK 2014 Mike Leigh 150m

Ninian McGuffie from the Box Office takes charge for this month’s Staff Choice. He has chosen a 1970s hidden gem that sees a God-fearing boy dodging the Civil War draft, joining up with a hard-up group of like runaways heading west.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire: Civil War draft dodger Drew Dixon (Barry Brown) avoids the horrors of war by fleeing west, only to become mixed up with a gang of lawless youths led by the debonair con man Jake Rumsey – brilliantly played by a young Jeff Bridges. The allure of a free-spirited desperado life is quickly spoiled by a series of mishaps that leave the bandits lacking food and money and in constant fear of more sinister criminals like Big Joe (David Huddleston). They are traveling through territory that’s supposed to be crawling with ferocious native tribes like the Arapaho, but in fact the dangers they meet are imported from the East. Well acted and gritty, this is one of the more authentic Westerns of its era.

USA 1972 Robert Benton 93m

Enjo

In the stillness of a sacred temple, one young man’s yearning for purity becomes a descent into darkness.

In postwar Kyoto, Mizoguchi Goichi (Ichikawa Raizo VIII), a troubled and stuttering youth, arrives at Shukaku Temple seeking solace and spiritual purpose as an apprentice monk, hoping one day to succeed as head priest.

Having been raised himself in a temple and inspired by his father’s stories of Shukaku Temple’s divine beauty, Goichi is enchanted by its serene perfection yet tormented by memories of his mother’s adultery and his father’s death.

As the world around the temple begins to intrude — tainted by vanity, lust, and hypocrisy — his ideal of pure beauty twists into something darker. The head priest, Tayama Dosen (Nakamura Ganjiro II), a friend of Goichi’s father,

keeps a geisha mistress, and with the monks profiting from tourism while indulging in worldly pleasures, Goichi’s disillusionment deepens. He becomes increasingly unmoored from reality. Ostracised for his speech disorder and manipulated by a cynical friend (Nakadai Tatsuya), Goichi’s remaining faith in humanity and religion completely disintegrates. What begins as reverence curdles into obsession. Convinced that the only way to preserve the temple’s purity is through its destruction, he makes a decision from which there is no

return: to set it ablaze.

Inspired by true events and Mishima Yukio’s novel ‘The Temple of the Golden Pavilion’, this haunting psychological drama examines the fragile boundary between reverence and fanaticism, revealing the turbulent inner conflicts at

the heart of the human condition. Director Ichikawa Kon (‘The Inugami Family’, JFTFP25) presents the story in a dreamlike, fragmented style that mirrors Goichi’s mental descent. 4K digital remastered film.

The President’s Cake (PG)

A young schoolgirl is chosen to bake President Saddam Hussein’s birthday cake. A compulsory task with punishment if she fails.

While people across 1990s Iraq struggle to survive, 9-year-old Lamia (Baneen Ahmad Nayyef) has been selected to prepare a cake to celebrate the President's birthday. In a landscape of fear and scarcity, where basic ingredients are nearly impossible to find, Lamia sets out on a determined journey throughout the big city in search of eggs, flour and sugar. Accompanied by her grandmother (Waheed Thabet Khreibat), her loyal friend Saeed (Sajad Mohamad Qasem) and her pet rooster Hindi, she navigates vendors and police officers along her odyssey. While the film plays mostly like a genial fairy tale, with superbly balanced humour and drama, director Hadi is still unsparing about the ills of this patriarchal society. The film is set among beautiful Mesopotamian marshes of the director’s childhood, where school children glide through marshlands in canoes to get to their classes. (Subtitles)

Iraq 2025 Hasan Hadi 105m

‘Mother’s Pride’ is a comedy drama about a failing pub, a divided community and a grieving family whose lives are changed by brewing real ale and entering the Great British Beer Awards!

Despite once being the lifeblood of many communities, tens of thousands of pubs and breweries across Britain have closed down since the 1970s, with thousands more falling victim to Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions. Now, leading British filmmakers Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft who made ‘Fisherman’s Friends (one of the most successful British independent films of the past decade) have taken inspiration from the near loss of their own community pubs to produce a comedy feature film that they describe as “a love-letter to family, community, real ale and Britain’s forgotten rural traditions”. Its great British cast includes Mark Addy (‘The Full Monty’), Martin Clunes, Miles Jupp and Josie Lawrence.

UK 2025 Nick Moorcroft 90m

Disowned at birth by his obscenely wealthy family, a blue-collar man will stop at nothing to reclaim his inheritance, no matter how many relatives stand in his way.

$28 billion inheritance. Seven relatives standing in the way.

USA 2026 John Patton Ford 98m

This French and Spanish co-production shared the jury prize at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and has been selected as Spain’s official Oscars’ entry for 2026.

Luis (Sergi Lopez) is traveling through southern Morocco with his son, Esteban (Bruno Núñez Arjona). They are searching for his daughter, who has been missing for five months, last seen at a dance festival in the desert. As the pair travel from party to party, they hear of a semi-mythical rave near the border of Mauritania. Descending into the scorched terrain as a not-so-distant global conflict encroaches, Luis and Esteban are soon drawn into a primal landscape in which they must walk a tightrope between heaven and hell. Part existential road movie, part apocalyptic sci-fi, ‘Sirât’ mixes a bit of ‘Zabriskie Point’ and ‘Fury Road’ and shakes them up. Some of its images are indelible, in the same way Antonioni’s were in 1970, but director Laxe’s major weapon here is his outstanding sound design. ‘An energising film - a project determined to wake us up’. Hollywood Reporter. (Subtitles)

Spain/France 2025 Oliver Laxe 115m

Met Opera

After years of anticipation, a truly unmissable event arrives in cinemas worldwide as the electrifying Lise Davidsen tackles one of the ultimate roles for dramatic soprano: the Irish princess Isolde in Wagner’s transcendent meditation on love and death.

Heroic tenor Michael Spyres stars opposite Davidsen as the love-drunk Tristan. The momentous occasion also marks the advent of a new, Met-debut staging by Yuval Sharon - hailed by The New York Times as “the most visionary opera director of his generation” and the first American to direct an opera at the famed Wagner festival in Bayreuth - as well as Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s first time leading ‘Tristan und Isolde’ at the Met. Mezzosoprano Ekaterina Gubanova reprises her portrayal of Brangäne, alongside bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny, who sings Kurwenal after celebrated Met appearances in Wagner’s ‘Der Fliegende Holländer’ and ‘Ring’ cycle. Bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green makes an important role debut as King Marke.

310m inc. 2 intervals

Sun 22 Mar 12:00

A master of shogi, haunted by secrets darker than the game itself.

Deep in the mountains, a skeletal corpse is unearthed — the only clue to its identity, a single handcrafted shogi piece from one of only seven sets known to exist. Shogi, often described as Japanese chess, becomes the key to

unravelling a complex case. The investigation soon points to Kamijo Keisuke (Sakaguchi Kentaro), a mysterious young prodigy who seemingly appeared from nowhere to dominate the professional shogi world and skyrocket to fame.

The trail leads further into the underworld, to Tomyo Shigeyoshi (award-winning actor, Watanabe Ken), a powerful shogi player closely tied to illegal gambling who knows Keisuke’s past. As the investigation progresses, Keisuke’s carefully constructed image of a genius begins to crumble, exposing the emotional wounds and fractured relationships that shaped him.

Supported by talented actors, the narrative moves fluidly between past and present, set against the unique backdrop of the shogi world. Director Kumazawa Naoto, who previously demonstrated his masterful skill in ‘Yurigokoro’ (JFTFP19), explores ambition, trauma, and the fine line between brilliance and self-destruction, culminating in a spectacular ending. Newly released in Japan at the end of October 2025.

Japan 2025 Kumazawa Naoto 123m

In this Burtonesque animation adapted from the Guy Bass children’s book, a small creature is awoken by a Mad Professor to protect the other creations from the local townspeople.

High above the little town of Grubbers Nubbin looms Castle Grotteskew where the maddest of all mad professors (Rob Brydon) brings his latest monstrous creations to (almost)-life. Stitch Head (Asa Butterfield) is the professor’s first, long-forgotten creation, made up of spare parts, he is quite a sight to behold, with his bald, round head covered in a patchwork of stitches. He splits his time between keeping the castle safe and the other monsters hidden, as even the smallest sign of monstrousness may see the townsfolk burn the castle to the ground. But when a freak show arrives in town, Stitch Head may just be the much needed new attraction. The offbeat humour and enjoyably quirky character design will keep both young and old highly amused. Voice cast also includes Alison Steadman and Joel Fry.

UK 2025 Steve Hudson 92m

Tôi Yama-nami no Hikari

Dual timelines explore a Japanese widow's memories spanning post-war Nagasaki in 1950s and England during 1980s Cold War era, unravelling secrets that intertwine her past and present experiences across borders.

In a modest home in the English countryside, a young woman rummages through her mother’s belongings. Among half-packed boxes and cluttered papers, she finds an envelope of photographs. “I’ve not seen many pictures of you in Nagasaki; you look so young.” Desperate to understand her family's past in Japan before her birth, Niki (Camilla Aiko) probes her mother, Etsuko (Suzu Hirose), about their time in Nagasaki. Told through flashbacks, Etsuko recounts the tale of a friend she knew long ago. Spanning the two timelines, the film is a moving and hopeful account of the generational impact of war and tragedy on one family. This beautiful looking film is an adaptation of Nobel prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro’s haunting 1982 debut novel. (Subtitles)

Japan 2025 Kei Ishikawa 123m

Affeksjonsverdi

An intimate exploration of family, memories and the reconciliatory power of art.

Sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a once-renowned film director. He offers Nora, a famous face at the National Theatre in Oslo, a role in his comeback passion project, which she turns down, later discovering he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star (Elle Fanning). Suddenly, the two sisters must navigate their complicated relationship with their father - and deal with an American star dropped right into the middle of their complex family dynamics. This is a heart-swelling and unexpectedly humour-filled tale that will break you before it makes you whole again. At one point Gustav says, “when it comes to world cinema, they really don’t make ‘em like they used to”. He is right of course, but what a treat when someone makes one like this. Cinema this intelligent is rarely this much fun to watch. (Subtitles)

Norway 2025 Joachim Trier 133m

In 1930s Chicago, groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious brings a murdered young woman back to life to be a companion for Frankenstein's monster. What happens next is beyond what either of them could ever have imagined.

1930s: Dr. Frankenstein and his lonely Creature (Christian Bale) travel to Chicago to seek the aid of a Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) in creating a companion for the Creature. The two doctors reinvigorate a murdered young woman and the Bride (Jessie Buckley) is born. She is beyond what either of them intended, igniting a combustible romance, the attention of the police and a wild and radical social movement. This is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second films as director – after 2021’s ‘The Lost Daughter’ – and what we are seeing here is a brave and very skilful filmmaker coming to the fore.

USA 2026 Maggie Gyllenhaal 126m

The Lurid Love Lives of Women Artists on Film

To mark Women’s History Month a talk looking back at the representation of women artists on film.

Sat 28 Mar 10:30am

Led by acclaimed actor Dominic West, this is a feature-length documentary exploring the heart of Kyrgyzstan – a hidden gem of Central Asia.

Through encounters with traders, herders and highland farmers, it reveals how the ancient Silk Road and nomadic traditions continue to shape the country’s identity. West begins in the south at a high-altitude caravanserai before meeting a yak herder whose animals remain central to life in the mountains. In the capital, he joins adventurer Alexandra Tolstoy and reunites with ‘The Wire’ co-star Clarke Peters for a stunning horseback journey into the western highlands, living as nomads have for centuries. What begins as a travelogue becomes a reflection on resilience, hospitality and the quiet strength of tradition.

UK 2026 Sean McDonnell 79m

After a Palestinian teen gets swept up into a West Bank protest, his mother recounts the family story of hope, courage and relentless struggle that led to this fateful moment.

In the Occupied West Bank of the 1980s, a Palestinian teenager Noor (Mohammad Abed Elrahman) is swept into a protest that changes the course of his family's life. Reeling from its aftermath, his mother, Hanan (played by the director Cherien Dabis herself), shares the story that led them to that fateful moment. Spanning seven decades, this epic drama traces the hopes and heartaches of one uprooted family, revealing not only the scars of displacement, but the unbreakable spirit of survival. Starting with the teen’s grandfather's (Adam Bakri) displacement from Jaffa in 1948, this is an epic historical drama chronicling the story of one family over three generations and examining the passage of trauma to each. (Subtitles)

Palestine/Jordan 2025 Cherien Dabis 145m

The true story of painter Margaret Keane's life in obscurity while her husband gleaned the notoriety for being the face of her work.

Tim Burton brings us this biographical drama about American artist Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) whose work was fraudulently claimed in the 1950s and 1960s by her then-husband, Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz). Walter became a national celebrity and talk show fixture after he pioneered the mass production of prints of big-eyed kids and used his marketing savvy to sell them cheaply in hardware stores and gas stations across the USA. The ruse broke up their marriage, and when Margaret tried to make it known that she authored the paintings, they ended up in a court battle after Walter called her crazy. Screening in conjunction with our ‘Women Artists in Film’ talk during Women’s History Month.

USA 2014 Tim Burton 106m

Baz Luhrman's new documentary features Elvis in his Las Vegas residency period, with lots of previously unseen footage of concerts and newly found recordings.

The director originally planned to incorporate never-before-seen footage of this period into his film ‘Elvis’, and decided against it. But what he discovered, at the time, was 68 boxes of 35mm and 8mm footage in the Warner Bros. archives. This film is a revelation. For 100 minutes it shows you just how intoxicating Elvis Presley was when he began to perform live in Las Vegas in 1969 and the early 1970s. There is an indescribable magic in watching one of the brightest of all stars conjure a crowd’s hysteria. And because the image on screen is so crystal clear and crisp, his aura bursts through as if it’s a window.

Australia/USA 2025 Baz Luhrmann 100m

If ‘Terminator 2’ and ‘Groundhog Day’ were melded into one film, we would get something very close to this action comedy.

A "Man from the Future" (Sam Rockwell) walks into a Los Angeles diner wearing a clear plastic raincoat, mismatched shoes and what looks like a suicide vest. He claims to have been sent back in time to save humanity from the imminent and inevitable AI uprising. After some convincing, a curious crew of diners who are all fed up with the unstoppable rise of technology agree to help the man in his quest. Director Gore Verbinski last directed a feature film ten years ago, which is far too long a wait for one of filmmaking's most unique and innovative voices. Few directors have shown such versatility in their careers, having previously made everything from a psychological horror masterpiece with ‘The Ring’, swashbuckling epics with the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ trilogy, and even the innovative animation ‘Rango’.

USA 2025 Gore Verbinski 134m

Willem Dafoe plays Vincent Van Gogh in this expressive biopic, concentrated on the Dutch painter’s later years in Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise, France, shortly before his death at age 37. 

Director Julian Schnabel, a painter himself, rightly focuses on Van Gogh’s most prolific period, in which the artist churned out more than 200 paintings in 15 months, with minimal dialogue and striking visual poetry. Other influential characters - Van Gogh’s loving brother and benefactor, Theo (Rupert Friend) and his demonstrative peer, the French painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac) - drift into the film, reminding the painter to soak up the vivid, quotidian ephemera of his surroundings when he is, for the most part, living in solitude. Dafoe fully commits to his performance, as does Schnabel to the painter’s vision and humanity. This is a journey inside the world and mind of a person who, despite scepticism, ridicule and illness, created some of the world's most beloved and stunning works of art.

Switzerland 2018 Julian Schnabel 111m

Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness. Believe the hype – this will be one of the films of the year!

1952: In the Jewish heart of New York’s Lower East Side, we meet Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet) – ping-pong legend in waiting, hustler, woman-slayer and then some. Essentially the film is about the calamitous, all-swaggering rise of Marty, including an interaction with ageing, married film star Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) on smoulderingly good form, who is seduced before being financially hoodwinked. The payback for Marty is a gloriously humiliating. Chalamet turns in an Oscar-worthy performance with a titular character that is by equal turns an arrogant, abrasive people user while also being completely lovable and endearing.

USA 2025 Josh Safdie 149m

In this adaptation of the 1943 Enid Blyton classic, a modern family relocates to the countryside where the children discover a magical tree with eccentric residents.

Claire Foy and Andrew Garfield star as Polly and Tim Thompson. Much to their three children’s (Delilah Bennett-Cardy, Billy Gadsdon and Phoenix Laroche) disappointment, they move to new rural lands without the comfort of WiFi, instead, full of the “most boring things in the world” – trees. When the kids stumble upon the eponymous 'Faraway Tree', so tall that its topmost branches reach into the clouds, everything begins to change. They are transported to fantastical lands, rekindling their family bond through wonderful adventures. This classic story was adapted by Simon Farnaby (‘Paddington’, ‘Horrible Histories’) from the Enid Blyton book series of the same name.

UK 2026 Ben Gregor 110m

National Theatre director Polly Findlay joins forces with two top-notch British actors in a beautiful drama about a longtime couple who take a life-changing trip to Amsterdam.

Married Irish couple Stella (Lesley Manville) and Gerry (Ciaran Hinds) are in their 60s and have lived an ordinary life near Glasgow since escaping the Troubles. Stella decides to book a trip to Amsterdam for the pair in what appears to be an attempt bring some excitement into their relationship. Once they arrive, she is keen to visit a particular part of the city which may have a link to their past. The drama is leavened with touches of humour – little jokes about Irishness, or about how comfortable people get in their marriages in later life – balancing the film beautifully. This stirring meditation on faith, commitment and the enduring power of love is based on the novel by Bernard MacLaverty.

UK 2026 Polly Findlay 90m

Royal Ballet & Opera

Raised by a scheming dwarf and unaware of his true family origins, a young man embarks on an epic journey. Soon, destiny brings him face-to-face with a shattered sword, a fearsome dragon and the cursed ring it guards, and a Valkyrie forced into enchanted slumber.

Sun 5 Apr 12:00

A novice recruit in Vietnam finds himself caught in a battle of wills between two sergeants, one good and the other evil. A shrewd examination of the brutality of war and the duality of man in conflict.

Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen) leaves his university studies to enlist in combat duty in Vietnam in 1967. Once he is on the ground in the middle of battle, his idealism fades. Infighting in his unit between Staff Sergeant Barnes (Tom Berenger), who believes nearby villagers are harbouring Viet Cong soldiers, and Sergeant Elias (Willem Dafoe), who has a more sympathetic view of the locals, ends up pitting the soldiers against each other as well as against the enemy. Informed by director Oliver Stone's personal experiences in Vietnam, ‘Platoon’ forgoes easy sermonising in favour of a harrowing, ground-level view of war, bolstered by no-holds-barred performances from Sheen and Dafoe. Winner of four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director.

USA 1986 Oliver Stone 120m

February 1977. A disgruntled Indianapolis man entered the office of the president of a mortgage company and took him hostage with a shotgun wired with a "dead man's wire" from the trigger to his own neck.

This absolutely terrible plan and all the absurdities that ensued over 63 hours and under the full flare of national news coverage, are captured with terrific gusto in this tragicomic thriller. Bill Skarsgård plays the disgruntled assailant (Tony Kiritsis) demanding an apology and millions of dollars in compensation, whilst Al Pacino plays the father of the captive Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery). This is another perceptive state-of-the-nation movie from indie auteur Gus Van Sant to add to ‘Elephant’ (2003) and Milk (2008), sharing their preoccupation with guns as a manifestation of American ambition and dysfunction. Beyond the guilty laughs and authentically beige ’70s period detail, there is an offbeat anti-capitalist folk tale here that will strike a chord in the current moment.  

USA 2025 Gus Van Sant 105m

Paolo Sorrentino (‘The Great Beauty’) reunites with his muse and alter-ego Tony Servillo in this beautifully presented political human drama.

Mariano (Servillo) is the widowed Italian president nearing the end of his term. He is admired for his rectitude and stately bearing and for having thwarted an extremist candidate. But he also faces moral crises over euthanasia legislation and pardoning killers while also grappling with his late wife's infidelity. ‘La Grazia’ is a stylish and enigmatic film, and like ‘The Great Beauty’ it broods on the ‘Roman-ness’ of the capital; the way in which its history is inscribed on its buildings for those who understand it. The set piece moments are tremendous (as always for Sorrentino): Mariano bursting into song at a veterans’ dinner is one to look out for. 66-year-old Servillo is an actor to savour, able to suggest fathomless depths of sadness or lenient humour with a single smile. (Subtitles)

Italy 2025 Paolo Sorrentino 131m

Rock icon Marianne Faithfull's six-decade journey through music, fame and reinvention unfolds in an intimate documentary, blending reality and imagination as she makes her final artistic statement.

This is an inventive semi-dramatised documentary which features George MacKay and Tilda Swinton. It is a film which is fully infused with Marianne Faithfull's distinctive spirit – free, candid and rebellious to the core. It all culminates with her last recorded musical performance - gently singing the aching, yearning ‘Misunderstanding’ (from her 2018 album ‘Negative Capability’) with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. With that one sequence, ‘Broken English’ delivers the kind of transcendent moment that will have you bawling in the aisles. The directors had previously made the Sundance prize-winning film about Nick Cave, ‘20,000 Days on Earth’.

UK 2025 Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard 99m

Thriller Talk

This film talk, illustrated by a range of clips, will discuss the structure of the classic thriller.

Sat 11 Apr 10:30am

An edge-of-your-seat adventure into one man's fight to reclaim his life by taking on the world's most dangerous marathon swims, the Oceans Seven.

Across five continents and seven of the world’s most brutal channels, Australian swimmer Mark Sowerby takes on the Oceans Seven, an ordeal as unforgiving as Everest, but in open water. No cage. No wetsuit. No escape. Just man against Mother Nature. Over a decade of relentless pursuit, from the icy Irish Sea to the shark-patrolled waters of Hawaii, Mark pushes human endurance to its limits. What unfolds is not only a quest for survival but a profound journey of resilience and healing. Featuring unforgettable characters, raw vulnerability and breathtaking ocean feats, it's a gripping, uplifting journey of resilience, reinvention and what it really takes to survive.

Australia 2026 Jeff Tseng 94m

Le Assaggiatrici

Based on Margot Wölk’s extraordinary real-life account, this film sees a group of women risk their lives as Hitler’s ‘food tasters’.

Rosa Sauer (Elisa Schlott) flees her bombed-out Berlin apartment, moves in with her in-laws, all while her husband, a German soldier, is fighting in Ukraine. Not too far away in a forest surrounded by barbed wire is the "Wolf's Lair" - the Eastern Front military headquarters of Adolf Hitler. Rosa lands among a group of war-weary young women, long deprived of sufficient food, who are forcibly recruited by the SS. They are driven every day to Hitler's complex to serve as his food tasters, dining on abundant vegetarian delicacies three times a day. The only price: risking their lives with each bite as they are tasked with making sure that the food intended for Adolf Hitler has not been poisoned. The extraordinary account by then 95-year-old Margot Wölk created a sensation when it first appeared in a Berlin tabloid more than a decade ago. Her decision to break decades of silence about her wartime experiences captured the imagination of German reporters, then global media, finally inspiring a documentary, two novels and a play. You may remember the director from his wonderful 2000 film ‘Bread and Tulips’. (Subtitles)

Italy/Belgium/Switzerland 2025 Silvio Soldini 123m

An extraordinary, dreamlike, visionary psychological drama from Chinese director Bi Gan which won the Special Jury prize at Cannes 2025.

In a society where humanity has surrendered its ability to dream in exchange for immortality, an outcast (Jackson Yee) finds illusion, nightmarish visions and beauty in an intoxicating world of his own making. We experience five dreams, for each of the senses, each chronologically representing a period of cinema. A work of staggering imagination from a visionary director, ‘Resurrection’ conjures vast and ever-shifting worlds on the brink of collapse in an era-spanning journey through our deepest and most human desires. This is a real work of artistry that will be even more appreciated by lovers of film history. (Subtitles)

China 2025 Bi Gan 140m

National Theatre

A five-star, triumphantly acclaimed new production of Arthur Miller’s classic play, from visionary director Ivo Van Hove (‘A View from the Bridge’).

One family, the heart of the American dream. When wartime delivers profits for Joe, it comes at a price when his partner is charged with criminal manufacturing deals, and his eldest son goes missing in action. Will peacetime bring peace of mind, or will he be confronted by the consequence of his actions? Bryan Cranston (‘Breaking Bad’) and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (‘Hard Truths’) feature in this disturbingly prescient play, along with Paapa Essiedu (‘I May Destroy You’), Tom Glynn-Carney (‘House of the Dragon’) and Hayley Squires (‘I, Daniel Blake’). Filmed live from the West End.

130m inc Interval

Thu 16 Apr 18:00

Sun 19 Apr 15:00 (tbc)

Ástin Sem Eftir Er

Through intimate vignettes and strange occurrences, this film explores the complexities of family, love and the impact of shared memories.

Anna (Saga Garðarsdóttir), an artist, and Magnús (Sverrir Gudnason), a fisherman, live with their three children and charismatic sheepdog in the quiet grandeur of the Icelandic countryside. As the fractures in their marriage come to the surface, the couple try to hold onto the afterimages of a life together and make sense of a deep and lingering devotion. Filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (‘Godland’) brings surprising humour and emotional weight to these gorgeous, intimate and brilliantly expansive scenes from a marriage,. This film is beautiful to look at, with lots of shots of Icelandic landscapes amidst the majestic backdrop of the changing seasons, coupled with a wonderful score. (Subtitles)

Iceland 2025 Hlynur Pálmason 109m

30th Anniversary Remaster

Baz Luhrmann’s vibrant adaptation of Shakespeare's famous play gets a 4K remaster for its 30th anniversary. It is set in the hip modern suburb of Verona Beach and retains the original dialogue.

The Capulets and the Montagues are two rival gangs. Juliet (Claire Danes) is attending a costume ball thrown by her parents. Her father Fulgencio Capulet (Paul Sorvino) has arranged her marriage to the boorish Paris (Paul Rudd) as part of a strategic investment plan. When Romeo (Leonardo DiCaprio) of the Montagues attends the masked ball, he and Juliet fall in love. The family feud erupts anew when a carload of Montagues take on the hot-blooded Tybalt Capulet (John Leguizamo) and his kinsmen at a gas station, which goes up in a spectacular conflagration. Luhrmann is at his most  inventive and innovative here, lavishing us with vibrant camera work and keeping a blistering tempo throughout.

Australia 1996 Baz Luhrmann 120m

An astronaut tries to save Earth while alone in outer space.

Science teacher Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) wakes up on a spaceship, light years from home, with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. As his memory returns, he begins to uncover his mission: solve the riddle of the mysterious substance causing the sun to die out. He must call on his scientific knowledge and unorthodox ideas to save everything on Earth from extinction... but an unexpected friendship means he may not have to do it alone.

USA 2026 Phil Lord & Christopher Miller 136m

With echoes of Nick Hornby’s ‘High Fidelity’, this road movie comedy finds two music-loving friends, who travel the length of Ireland to save their record store from closure.

Dermot (Brenock O’Connor) and Elvis (Owen Colgan) are a couple of guys from Northern Ireland who run a record shop in Omagh, County Tyrone, dealing in old-school vinyl, but they are terrorised by their mean landlord (Tara Lynne O’Neill from ‘Derry Girls’). They desperately need cash for rent arrears when Dermot discovers that a farmer in Cork is offering what appear to be hugely valuable records by the blues legend Robert Johnson for just £30 – not realising their real value. The boys hope to sell the precious discs for a mouthwatering ‘40 grand’, but does that mean they are selling their souls, the way Robert Johnson is supposed to have done at a remote crossroads?

Ireland 2025 Michael Head 92m

Arthur Miller’s America on Screen

With a new production of ‘All My Sons’ screening as part of National Theatre Live, this talk looks back at the many film adaptations of the great American playwright’s work, including a range of clips.

Sat 18 Apr 10:30am

Plus Q&A with Ian Knight

A dramatization of the Battle of Isandlwana, where the British Army met its match against the Zulu nation. We welcome Chichester resident Ian Knight - author of 'Zulu Rising' - for a Q&A following the screening.

This prequel to the 1964 classic ‘Zulu’, which featured Michael Caine in his first-ever starring role, was released fifteen years later, and starred Burt Lancaster, Peter O’Toole and John Mills to name a few. This historical epic is lush with details and destruction, striving to take advantage of the larger-than-life screens the film was made to be viewed upon. This is a brand new 4k remaster for 2026, so be prepared for a visually stunning experience.

USA 1979 Douglas Hickox 98m

This is the definitive feature-length documentary on visionary author George Orwell, with the exclusive cooperation of the Orwell Estate.

This is like two Orwell documentaries in one. The first is wholly constructed from his diaries and correspondences, delivered in a gravelly whisper by the actor Damian Lewis. The second, intercut throughout, is a polemical film inspired by Orwell’s last book, ‘1984’. Published 76 years ago, the novel is the core of Raoul Peck’s portrait of the writer. The director charges from the Spanish Civil War to the firebombing of Japan to the war in Iraq, the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, what Putin calls the “special operation” (the phrase is bleakly ridiculed) in Ukraine and the destruction in Gaza, all the while arguing that we have now reached a peak moment of Orwellian untruth. The rich selection of archival material is punctuated by new footage, clips from a fascinating cross-section of documentaries and dramas, including several screen iterations of ‘1984’ and Orwell’s novella ‘Animal Farm’.

France/USA 2025 Raoul Peck 119m

The biographical story of Michelangelo's troubles while painting the Sistine Chapel at the urging of Pope Julius II.

During the Italian Renaissance, Pope Julius II (Rex Harrison) contracts the influential artist Michelangelo (Charlton Heston) to sculpt 40 statues for his tomb. When the pope changes his mind and asks the sculptor to paint a mural in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo doubts his painting skills and abandons the project. Divine inspiration returns Michelangelo to the mural, but his artistic vision clashes with the pope's demanding personality and threatens the success of the historic painting. Viewers will find it fascinating to see how frescoes were painted using fresh plaster and paper guides, and to see how the marble slabs for large statues were mined in the Tuscan quarries. Others will revel in the pomp and ceremony of the age, or the contentious relationship of two very stubborn men.

USA 1965 Carol Reed 138m

In die Sonne Schauen

Over the course of a century, as four girls from different time periods experience their youth on a German farm, their lives become intertwined until time seems to dissolve.

The action takes place in the same location: a farm in Saxony-Anhalt in northeastern Germany. Each segment is rooted in the perspective of one or two central characters - usually sisters, or mothers and daughters - but the connections from one timeline to the next are seldom clarified up front. Gradually, the connections between the characters reveal themselves, as if caught in a stream-of-consciousness. Like Haneke’s ‘The White Ribbon’, Schilinski’s film is something like a ghost story. As visually innovative as it is thematically stunning, the century of women’s stories is intertwined with a spiritual lens. (Subtitles)

Germany 2025 Mascha Schilinski 149m

Diamonds

A director assembles all his favourite actresses to film a movie set in 1970s Rome that tells the story of a prestigious costume design atelier.

Alberta (Luisa Ranieri) and Gabriella (Jasmine Trinca) are owners of an atelier, staffed mostly by dedicated female seamstresses. The two very different sisters both love and resent one another, Alberta is highly strung while Gabriella is gentle and distracted. Enter Oscar-winning costume designer Bianca Vega (Vanessa Scalera) who is irrational and demanding… and choosing an atelier for her next film. Channelling a little Almodóvar, director Özpetek’s world is loaded with many a melodramatic twist and turn: loneliness, passions, anxieties and unbreakable bonds permeate the film. This is a love letter to cinema’s leading ladies as well as the tremendously talented women who have costumed actors and extras throughout film history. (Subtitles)

Italy 2024 Ferzan Özpetek 135m

A 15-year-old Yuruk boy from a remote Macedonian village escapes into music amidst parental expectations, societal conservatism and forbidden love for a promised girl.

Ahmet (Arif Jakup) laboriously herds sheep while caring for his little brother Naim (Agush Agushev), the picture of adorableness, who hasn’t spoken since their mother died. One evening while tending to the flock, Ahmet discovers a secret dance party, an event that rekindles a love for music that was passed down by his mother. It is there that he first catches a glimpse of Aya (Dora Akan Zlatnova), a young girl only in the village to enter into an arranged marriage. This delightful and beguilingly sharp film playfully critiques certain Muslim customs, but never in a demeaning way, and with an unforgettable ensemble, laugh-out-loud comedy moments and heartbreaking drama, this story of a teenage boy defying his traditional community feels like a revelation. (Subtitles)

North Macedonia 2025 Georgi M. Unkovski 99m

Royal Ballet & Opera

Mozart's masterpiece, an enchanting quest for love and wisdom, glitters in David McVicar’s enchanting production.

Princess Pamina has been captured. Her mother, the Queen of the Night, tasks the young Prince Tamino with her daughter’s rescue. But when Tamino and his friendly sidekick, Papageno, embark on their adventure, they soon learn that when it comes to the quest for love, nothing is as it really seems. Guided by a magic flute, they encounter monsters, villains, and a mysterious brotherhood of men – but help, it turns out, comes when you least expect it.

Mozart’s fantastical opera glitters in David McVicar’s enchanting production. The star cast includes Julia Bullock as Pamina, Amitai Pati as Tamino, Huw Montague Rendall as Papageno, Kathryn Lewek as the Queen of the Night and Soloman Howard as Sarastro, led by French conductor Marie Jacquot in her Covent Garden debut. Sung in German with subtitles.

210 minutes inc 2 intervals

Tickets £19.50

Tue 21 Apr 18:45

Sun 26 Apr 14:00 (tbc)

L’Etranger

Sixty years after Luchino Visconti, François Ozon has adapted a monumental work of literature for the screen – ‘The Stranger’ by Albert Camus.

In 1930s Algeria, apathetic Frenchman Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) shows total indifference to life. His daily life is soon disrupted by his neighbour, Raymond Sintès, who draws Meursault into his shady dealings. Until one blisteringly hot day, a tragic event occurs on a beach. Ozon has said: “The themes in the book could hardly be more topical: an emotionally absent hero detached from the world, confronting our mortality, the individual’s quest for meaning in an increasingly alienating world.” Shot in moody, period-appropriate black and white, this was one of the highlights at the 2025 Venice Film Festival. Cast includes Rebecca Marder, Swann Arlaud, Pierre Lottin and Denis Lavant. ‘A crackling yet tasteful erotic charge’. Screen Daily. (Subtitles)

France 2025 François Ozon 120m

Jim Jarmusch explores the awkwardness and closeness of parents with their grownup children in three slyly comic panels of drama set in rural USA, Dublin and Paris.

The three stories all concern the relationships between adult children, their somewhat distant parent (or parents), and each other. Each of the three chapters takes place in the present, and each in a different country.

Siblings Emily (Mayim Bialik) and Jeff (Adam Driver), making the arduous trip out into the countryside to see their ageing (and sneaky) dad (Tom Waits). Meanwhile, in Dublin, Charlotte Rampling plays a characteristically self-possessed and self-assured woman who is welcoming her two grownup daughters (Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps) for their annual visit for tea. She is entirely content to make these visits a rarity. In Paris, non-identical twins Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) pay a final visit to their parents’ apartment. The parents have recently died, apparently piloting a light aircraft in the Azores. The film seems to ask: who are our parents? Did they have real existences before we were born that we will never understand? And are our own existences destined to be effaced and rendered irrelevant or taboo by our own children? This is a subtly haunting and wryly funny triptych that transforms the banal awkwardness of family life into a bittersweet meditation on the bonds that persist.

USA 2025 Jim Jarmusch 110m

In James McAvoy’s first – and very impressive – outing as a director, two lads from Dundee con the music industry by pretending to be an established Californian rap duo.

This dark music comedy centres on Gavin Bain (Seamus McLean Ross) and Billy Boyd (Samuel Bottomley), two young Scots with dreams of being rap stars. After an open call audition with a major record label goes terribly because the executives can't take their accents seriously, the boys reinvent themselves as American rappers to secure record deals and reveal they're actually Scottish at the height of fame to call out the music industry. Problem is, their overnight success is not as fabulous as they had hoped. Look out for McAvoy hamming it up as a record company executive with Malcolm Tucker-style dialogue.

UK 2025 James McAvoy 101m

Värn

During the Cold War peak, a Swedish farmhand transforms his house into a community shelter, his fixation contrasting with everyday rural life, captured in striking black and white imagery.

Karl-Göran Persson (Denis Lavant) is a farmhand in southernmost Sweden. He spends most of his time – from the 1940s to the 1970s - fortifying his house, using any scrap of material he could get his hands on. Grown-ups shake their heads and chuckle at his persistence but leave the likeable fellow alone. Unlike children, who see Karl-Göran as one of their own and in turn, we become witness to his own childlike traits. This is a deeply heartwarming and concise tribute to a real-life obsession with the Swiss ‘Re-doubt’; a speculative Cold War community fall-out shelter. The film has a heart of gold, and Lavant, a skilled disciple of pantomime and vintage movie comedy, is in his absolute element as the agitated, toiling farmhand. (Subtitles)

Sweden 2025 John Skoog 85m

An arthritic Nova Scotia woman works as a housekeeper while she hones her skills as an artist and eventually becomes a beloved figure in the community.

We first meet Maud Lewis (Sally Hawkins), a smart, vibrant woman living with arthritis and struggling to stay independent, in the late 1930s amid vast Nova Scotia landscapes, picturesquely lit by cinematographer Guy Godfree. To break free from her overbearing family, Maud responds to an ad for a live-in maid, placed by grouchy hermit Everett (Ethan Hawke), who lives in a tiny box of a house and runs a business selling fish. These odd outcasts aren’t exactly a match made in heaven on paper, yet they form a unique, loving companionship over time. Maud wears down Everett’s grumpiness, painting naive happy murals of the countryside on the walls of their shack. Her art – colourful flowers, cats and chickens – grabs the attention of sophisticated New Yorker Sandra (Kari Matchett), who commissions Maud to make work for her. The artist’s fame grows, reaching far beyond the confines of their small world. ‘Maudie’ will break your heart with its infectious positivity and an outstanding, big-hearted performance by Sally Hawkins as the self-taught artist.

UK 2016 Aisling Walsh 115m

1937 Stalinist USSR: A newly appointed prosecutor discovers an undestroyed letter from a prisoner that reveals corruption in the secret police, the NKVD. His search for the truth becomes very dangerous.

A desperate letter from an unjustly imprisoned man reaches a newly appointed local prosecutor (Aleksandr Kuznetsov). He vows to correct this injustice, jumping dutifully through every bureaucratic hoop until he can meet with the government bigwig who can help. Adapted from a 1969 novel by gulag survivor Georgy Demidov, this is a shout of futility that is also strangely, bitterly funny. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry. Impeccably photographed, staged and acted, the film has a chilling resonance with modern times. (Subtitles)

France/Germany/Ukraine 2025 Sergey Loznitsa 118m