A portrait of Italy observed through the eyes of teenagers who talk about the places they live in, the dream of what they want to become, the fear of failing and the trials they hope to overcome.

Asking a cross-section of young people about their hopes and fears... (The directors) encountered a generation worried about inequality, climate change and the rise of nationalism. Shooting started in late 2019, just before the pandemic. When the directors returned to work in mid-2020, their teenage subjects had lived through Italy’s long, strict lockdown. Still, even before that they talk about uncertainty in the face of economic insecurity and global warming. As one young rapper puts it, everything is a “six figure mess … someone snatched the world away”. (Subtitles)

Italy 2021 Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher 105m

As he did with 90s hit Crash, the director creates a bizarre new society of sicko sybarites where pain is the ultimate pleasure and ‘surgery is the new sex’

In the field of body horror, nobody is more accomplished than Cronenberg, whose classics of the genre (including The Fly, Scanners and Videodrome) have a terrible, clinging quality; they stick to you like parasites. His return to the land of icky-mucky-yucky is set in a future where the human body is undergoing big changes. Pain is a thing of the past (that’s good!), pleasure is also on the way out (that’s bad) and people are growing new organs (that’s weird). Viggo Mortensen plays a performance artist who incorporates his body’s rapidly expanding organ set into his art.

Canada / UK 2022 David Cronenberg 107m

Speeding through the Moroccan desert to attend an old friend's lavish weekend party, wealthy Londoners David and Jo Henninger (Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain) are involved in a tragic accident with a local teenage boy.

Arriving late at the grand villa with the debauched party raging, the couple attempts to cover up the incident with the collusion of the local police. But when the boy's father

arrives seeking justice, the stage is set for a tension-filled culture clash in which David and Jo must come to terms with their fateful act and its shattering consequences. A dark and dirty morality play where nobody's very concerned with morals, John Michael McDonagh's film takes some extremely questionable behaviour and makes it as intriguing as it is off-putting.

UK 2021 John Michael McDonagh 117m

Royal Opera House

Puccini’s devastating tragedy about a young geisha who falls in love with an American naval officer.

When the young geisha, Cio-Cio-San, marries American Naval Officer Pinkerton, she believes she is entering a real, binding marriage for life. Forsaking her religion and community, she learns all too late that for Pinkerton, their marriage is merely an illusion – with tragic consequences.

With a score that includes Butterfly’s aria, 'Un bel dì, vedremo' (‘One fine day’) and the Humming Chorus, Giacomo Puccini’s opera is entrancing and ultimately heart-breaking. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier’s exquisite production takes inspiration from 19th-century European images of Japan.

Maria Agresta and Lianna Haroutounian share the role of Cio-Cio-San, with Nicola Luisotti conducting.

190m inc interval

Tickets £17.50

Friends/Students £15

A robust, old-fashioned anti-war epic tells the true story of the soldier posted to the Philippines in the second world war, who refused to surrender until 1974.

inspired by the life of Japanese intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda, who during the second world war had trained as a commando with orders to hold Lubang island and never to surrender or take his own life. Fiercely loyal to these original instructions, and refusing to believe the war was over, he held out as a hermit-guerrilla for decades. In a world where the deluge of toxic opinion spewing from social media platforms has the ability to corrupt a rational mind, it’s a very prescient film in the way its subject is a person who has been wholly convinced of his destiny, to the point where he refuses to question the logic of his dire circumstance. (Subtitles)

France / Japan 2021 Arthur Harari 173m

Peter (Timothy Spall) has worked all his life at a Manchester bank. When he is awarded an early retirement, he decides to visit his brother in Benidorm, only to discover that he's disappeared. A favourite at our recent festival.

Having retired, Peter, a man of routines and few joys, decides to go to Benidorm to visit his brother Daniel with whom he has little contact. But when he arrives, Daniel seems to have vanished. Peter discovers that his brother owns the burlesque Benidorm Club. Among the dancers, Alex, a beautiful woman with an enigmatic past. Spall is terrific as the archetypal “little man” at the story’s heart. But the British-born Sarita Choudhury (‘The Green Knight’) is even better as the vampish Alex, who may even know what has befallen Daniel, but is in no mood to give up her secrets just yet. The film is as much a haunting portrait of Benidorm itself with its emphasis on the architecture and townscape. It is stunningly visual, with a colour palette, not dissimilar to its producer's Pedro Almodóvar.  

Spain/UK 2020 Isabel Coixet 117m

Love the films shown at Chichester Cinema? A friendly group meets once a month over a drink to discuss a choice of three films from each programme. This month the films under discussion are Official Competition, See How They Run and The Forgiven.

Discuss these films, shown recently at our cinema, with a friendly group on Thursday 29 Sep from 18:00 to 19:00 at Wagtail Café, Church Square, Chichester (next to Carluccio’s) – and other films too you would like to mention over a warming drink, a glass of wine or beer and one of their excellent snacks.

Don’t forget to book your place via the box office 01243 786650 or online – it’s free!

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

Wagtail Cafe

Gordon House, 1C-1D,

Church Square,

Chichester PO19 7BD

A divorced couple teams up and travels to Bali to stop their daughter from making the same mistake they think they made 25 years ago.

Academy Award winners George Clooney and Julia Roberts reunite on the big screen as exes who find themselves on a shared mission. When they meet by chance on a plane, they discover they both have the same motive (to stop their daughter marrying a local in Bali), they realise they must team up to sabotage the wedding. Kaitlyn Dever ('Booksmart') plays daughter Lily, but it is Lucas Bravo ('Emily in Paris'), who is hilarious, and almost steals the movie from Roberts and Clooney - if that is possible.

'Ticket to Paradise' is a romantic comedy about the sweet surprise of second chances. As for director Ol Parker, you will know him from 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' and the 'Mamma Mia' sequel, so expect a feelgood movie that will be a lot of fun.

USA 2022 Ol Parker 104m

A definitive exploration of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen as seen through the prism of his internationally renowned hymn, ‘Hallelujah’.

This feature-length documentary weaves together three creative strands: The songwriter and his times; the song's dramatic journey from record label reject to chart-topping hit; and moving testimonies from major recording artists for whom ‘Hallelujah’ has become a personal touchtone. Cohen is mostly presented as an insightful, aloof, wandering poet, creating monotonously sung, bleak and bitter tunes that were mostly inspired by either religion, the human condition or women he loved and lost. A film that works as both a retrospective for Cohen and an examination of the power of music.

USA 2021 Daniel Geller & Dayna Goldfine 118m

A lonely scholar, on a trip to Istanbul, discovers a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom.

Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is an academic -- content with life and a creature of reason. While in Istanbul attending a conference, she happens to encounter a Djinn (Idris Elba) who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems. First, she doubts that he is real and second, because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. A mythical extravaganza that packs an unexpected humanistic punch. Fans of historical fantasy will have a field day and those of us who just love storytelling in all its forms will also get a beautiful reminder as to why.

Australia / USA 2022 George Miller 108m

An aging film star retreats to the Scottish countryside with her nurse to recover from surgery. While there, mysterious forces of revenge emerge from the land where witches were burned.

A tangy blend of folk horror and post-MeToo reckoning with a salty spike of satire targeting the sort of new age piffle certain entitled rich people swoon over. Protagonist Veronica Ghent (Alice Krige, always elegant even when covered in mud and deliberately ageing makeup) is a haughty movie star of a certain age who has come to a boutique resort in Scotland to recover from a double mastectomy, accompanied by a young caregiver named Desi (Kota Eberhardt, magnetic). Unfortunately, the venue is not offering the healing isolation and quiet that Veronica had hoped for.

UK 2021 Charlotte Colbert 95m

Objects of Desire - the Subversive Cinema of Luis Buñuel

In this talk, illustrated by a range of clips, Patrick Hargood, Education Officer looks back at the career of one of the great iconoclasts of the cinema, Luis Buñuel.

In 1929 the young Luis Buñuel directed, with Salvador Dali, one of the most memorable and shocking short films ever made, ‘Un Chien Andalou’, followed the next year by the surrealist feature ‘L’Age d’or’, before disappearing as a film director for nearly twenty years. He re-emerged with the neo-realist masterpiece ‘Los Olvidados’, a prelude to one of the most glorious late flowerings of any film director, with a series of strikingly original and hugely entertaining works in the sixties and seventies, including ‘Viridiana’, ‘Belle de Jour’ and ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’, which is screening at Chichester Cinema on 8 and 11 October. In this talk, illustrated with plenty of clips, Patrick Hargood will look back at the life and career of an iconoclast of the cinema, who influenced, among others, David Lynch and Pedro Almodóvar. 90m + Q&A

Sat 1 Oct 10:30 - in the Auditorium

SPECIAL OFFER:

‘Luis Buñuel Talk’ plus ‘The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie’ for Only £13 (Friends £10)

Aka: Fire

Claire Denis’s latest film stars Juliette Binoche, Vincent Lindon and Grégoire Colin, who complete a turbulent romantic triangle in this intensely intimate examination of the rupturing force of a past love.

The three combatants are heavyweights of French cinema. Juliette Binoche is Sara, a presenter on a highbrow Paris radio talk show, who for 10 years has lived with Jean (played by the smoulderingly rumpled Vincent Lindon); a former sports star, who has served time in prison for an unspecified offence. Jean has a teen son, Marcus whose mother now lives abroad and who is being raised by Jean’s mother Nelly. The third corner of the triangle is François, Sara’s ex-lover whom she left for Jean on a passionate impulse a decade ago.  A tense and erotic yarn that is simply tremendous. (Subtitles)

France 2021 Claire Denis 117m

An immersive on-the-ground look at the tireless fight by indigenous people in the Brazilian rainforest to preserve their land and way of life.

A multi award-winning offering by National Geographic Documentary Films is a piece of expertly-crafted activist film-making following a young indigenous leader taking on the high stakes struggle against encroaching deforestation by farmers and illegal settlers. Intimate access to people on both sides of the clash, action unfolding in the moment and rich sound design make this a complex, thrilling and thoughtful exploration of the issues on both an epic and personal scale.

Brazil/Denmark/USA 2022 Alex Pritz 83m

Songs, crimes and falling in love with waitresses: Malachi Smyth’s debut “heist musical” finds two crooks singing their way down quite different paths, as one ambitiously schemes and the other finds himself pining for a different life.

Two small time crooks, Mike and Troy, are on a mission – the ‘score’ – that they both expect will transform their circumstances. At a roadside café, as they wait for a rendezvous hand-over, Troy falls in love with the waitress, Gloria, and begins to question his life choices… while the threat of real danger is driving to meet them. This meet is the reason Troy and Gloria cross paths, but what they do with that fateful collision is why we keep watching. It would be impossible not to since Will Poulter and Naomi Ackie make such an engaging and acerbic couple.

UK 2021 Malachi Smyth 100m

Jodie Comer ('Killing Eve') makes her West End debut in the UK premiere of Suzie Miller’s award-winning play, which takes us to the heart of where emotion and experience collide with the rules of the game.

Tessa is a young, brilliant barrister. She has worked her way up from working class origins to be at the top of her game; defending; cross examining and winning. An unexpected event forces her to confront the lines where the patriarchal power of the law, burden of proof and morals diverge.

'Prima Facie' takes us to the heart of where emotion and experience collide with the rules of the game.

Justin Martin directs this solo tour de force, captured live from the intimate Harold Pinter Theatre in London’s West End.

120m

Thu 21 Jul 19:00

Tickets £17.50

Friends/Students £15

A rollicking new comedy by Richard Bean (One Man, Two Guvnors) and Oliver Chris (Twelfth Night), based on Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals.

 

After an aerial dog fight, Pilot Officer Jack Absolute flies home to win the heart of his old flame, Lydia Languish. Back on British soil, Jack’s advances soon turn to anarchy when the young heiress demands to be loved on her own, very particular, terms. 

 

Emily Burns directs this spectacularly entertaining new version of Sheridan’s The Rivals. Featuring a cast including Caroline Quentin, Laurie Davidson, Natalie Simpson and Kelvin Fletcher. 

 

‘One of the funniest productions in the National’s history.’ Guardian on One Man, Two Guvnors 

Very well received as our closing film at the festival. When a self-destructive teenager is suspended from school and asked to look after his feisty alcoholic grandmother as a punishment, the crazy time they spend together turns his life around.

Sam (17) has been on a self-destructive spiral that could lead to his death. He returns home from boarding school to find his wheelchair-bound English grandmother, Ruth has moved in. Ruth is an ex- war photographer with a lust for life and a love of the bottle. Sam soon finds himself profoundly confronted by her alcoholic wit and chutzpah. Both strong-willed characters, a battle of supremacy ensues, enabling Sam to embrace life again and for Ruth to face her mortality. Rampling is of course in formidable form and local newcomer George Ferrier immediately commands our attention with a contained explosive performance.

New Zealand 2021 Matthew Saville 94m

A 1950s housewife living with her husband in a utopian experimental community begins to worry that his glamorous company may be hiding disturbing secrets.

Alice (Florence Pugh) and Jack (Harry Styles) are lucky to be living in Victory, the experimental company town housing the men who work for the top-secret Victory Project and their families. Life is perfect, with every resident's needs met by the company. All they ask in return is unquestioning commitment to the Victory cause. But when cracks in their idyllic life begin to appear, exposing flashes of something much more sinister lurking beneath the attractive façade. ‘Blue Velvet’ collides with ‘The Truman Show’ as utopia slips inexorably towards dystopia. Sexy, disturbing and boundary pushing.

USA 2022 Olivia Wilde 122m

In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-middle-class sextet sits down to a dinner that is continually delayed, by increasingly bizarre interruptions.

It is still superbly disturbing when everyone assembles around a dinner table in an unfamiliar house and then, when one wall suddenly moves away, they discover themselves to be on stage in a blaze of unnatural light, inspected by an auditorium full of frowning theatregoers. “I don’t know my lines,” mutters Sénéchal (Jean-Pierre Cassel) to himself in a cold sweat. An exotic and brilliant hothouse flower of a film. If you've never been a Bunuel film, this is a fine one to start with; Luis Bunuel is one of life's great originals and he's in top form here. A deliciously pungent concoction.

Spain / Italy / France 1972 Luis Buñuel 102m

Wim Wenders’ iconic vision of American alienation, starring Stanton as a weatherbeaten drifter, has held its mystery for 40 years.

Paris, Texas follows the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape all its own) as he tries to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski). From this simple setup, Wenders and writer Shepard produce a powerful statement on codes of masculinity and the myth of the American family, as well as an exquisite visual exploration of a vast, crumbling world of canyons and neon. Paris, Texas is a landmark work in every sense: understated, powerful, sublime – worth seeing for Stanton’s performance alone.

West Germany / France / UK 1982 Wim Wenders 145m

ROH Ballet

Dangerous desires, family secrets and political intrigues – a true story told through ballet.

Inspired by dark and gripping real life events, this Royal Ballet classic depicts the sexual and morbid obsessions of Crown Prince Rudolf leading to the murder-suicide scandal with his mistress Mary Vetsera. The oppressive glamour of the Austro-Hungarian court in the 1880s sets the scene for a suspenseful drama of psychological and political intrigue as Rudolf fixates on his mortality. Kenneth MacMillan's 1978 ballet remains a masterpiece of storytelling and this revival marks 30 years since the choreographer’s death. Expect to see the Company at its dramatic finestacross potent ensemble scenes and some of the most daring and emotionally demanding pas de deux in the ballet repertory.

205m inc Interval

Tickets £17.50

Friends/Students £15

A cinematic and musical odyssey that explores the remarkable relationship between humans and rivers.

Throughout history, rivers have shaped our landscapes and our journeys; flowed through our cultures and dreams. River takes its audience on a journey through space and time; spanning six continents, and drawing on extraordinary contemporary cinematography, including satellite filming, the film shows rivers on scales and from perspectives never seen before. Its union of image, music and sparse, poetic script create a film that is both dream-like and powerful, honouring the wildness of rivers but also recognizing their vulnerability. Rather than a dry scolding about the importance of our natural resources, River invites us in and shows us why this ecology is not only beautiful but vital.

Australia 2021 Jennifer Peedom 75m

A young gymnast, who tries desperately to please her demanding mother, discovers a strange egg. She hides it and keeps it warm, but when it hatches, what emerges shocks them all.

Tinja is desperate to please her image-obsessed mother, whose popular blog 'Lovely Everyday Life' presents their family's idyllic existence as manicured suburban perfection. One day, after finding a wounded bird in the woods, Tinja brings its strange egg home and nurtures it until it hatches. The creature that emerges becomes her closest friend and a living nightmare. Completely creepy, but also surprisingly sweet and observant about what it's like to be a 12-year-old girl. This is a brutal and elegantly crafted first feature from Bergholm who toys with multiple genres in exciting and unexpected ways. (Subtitles)

Finland / Sweden 2022 Hanna Bergholm 86m

Simply delightful in every sense of the word - a widowed cleaning lady in 1950s London falls madly in love with a couture Dior dress, and decides that she must have one of her own.

Leslie Man Mrs Harris is a warm, hard-working cleaning lady in 1950s London, doggedly going from house to house, quietly tidying up after lives far more exciting and glamorous than hers. But when she sees a Dior dress in one of her regular client’s bedrooms, she falls in love and sets her mind on travelling to Paris to get one herself. This 60-year-old story of pursuing a dream with resolute kindness could not feel more fresh in its knowing class clash. Lesley Manville is an absolute treasure, her command of comedic pathos supreme.

2022 Hungary / UK Anthony Fabian 115m

Royal Opera House

Love and duty collide and nations clash in Verdi's political drama, starring Elena Stikhina and Angel Blue and conducted by Antonio Pappano and Mark Elder.

Princess Aida has been kidnapped: a valuable prize in a war between Egypt and Ethiopia. Meanwhile, the ambitious soldier Radames wrestles with his feelings for her. As they draw closer together, each must make an agonising choice between their loyalty to home, and their love for each other. In this new production, director Robert Carsen situates Verdi’s large-scale political drama within a contemporary world, framing its power struggles and toxic jealousies in the apparatus of a modern, totalitarian state. Antonio Pappano and Mark Elder conduct Verdi’s glorious, monumental score.

205m inc Intervals

Tickets £17.50

Friends/Students £15

A cinematic odyssey exploring David Bowie's creative and musical journey. From visionary filmmaker Brett Morgen, and sanctioned by the Bowie estate.

Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream is a 140-minute shapeshifting epiphany-slash-freakout leading to the revelation that, yes, we’re lovers of David Bowie and that is that. It’s a glorious celebratory montage of archive material, live performance footage, Bowie’s own experimental video art and paintings, movie and stage work and interviews with various normcore TV personalities with whom Bowie is unfailingly polite, open and charming. Moonage Daydream is an immersive ride into David Bowie's sound and vision, and leaves you gobsmacked by his creative genius over the course of his 50-year career. A bombastic, overstimulating, poignant, life-affirming and risk-taking summation of a life.

Germany / USA 2022 Brett Morgen 140m

Jackie Brown' may be the only Quentin Tarantino movie that gets noticeably better with each viewing. His third film has matured into a classic neo-noir.

Jackie, (Pam Grier) a middle-aged air hostess, supplements her meagre wage by couriering cash for gun-smuggler Ordell (Jackson). Unfortunately, she gets lifted and is faced with an unpleasant choice: shop her boss - who has a habit of plugging traitors; or do time. With Jackie Brown, his third film, Tarantino defies the doubters, refusing merely to re-rehearse the hip irony of his first two movies and delivering a much more thoughtful, generally less frantic, adaptation of the pulpish Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch. The cast is outstanding with Samuel L Jackson, Robert DeNiro, Bridgit Fonda, Michael Keaton and the sublime Robert Forster.

USA 1997 Quentin Tarantino 154m

ROH Live

Paris, 1900. Penniless writer Rodolfo believes that art is all he needs – until he meets Mimì, the lonely seamstress who lives upstairs. So begins a timeless love story that blooms, fades, and rekindles with the passing seasons.

But while the couple’s friends Marcello and Musetta passionately row and make up, a force greater than love threatens Rodolfo and Mimì. Richard Jones’s production evokes the vivid contrasts of fin de siècle Paris, from Bohemian apartments to glittering arcades. Directed by Richard Jones. Cast: Royal Opera Chorus, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Danielle de Niese, Juan Diego Flórez, Ailyn Pérez, Andrey Zhilikhovsky, Ross Ramgobin, Michael Mofidian.

180m inc Interval

Tickets £17.50

Friends/Students £15

All the Things You Are – the Jazz Biopic

In this talk to mark Black History Month from Sandy Guthrie of the Education Team, illustrated by some memorable clips, he will explore the ways in which real life jazz musicians have been portrayed on the big screen.

The jazz musicians who created a new 20th Century art form, often at great cost to their wellbeing, have been brought to the big screen since the 1930s. Veering from a critical gaze to hagiography, the lives of the great jazz men and women have been recreated on screen with varying levels of accuracy – often using absolute guesswork and sometimes producing almost fictitious versions of reality.

No documentaries will be included in this look into the jazz biopic – simply the film portrayals of jazz icons over the decades, examining attitudes to the subjects and differences in filmmaking in the long-lasting and ever-developing world of jazz music.

From the early days of New Orleans jazz through to the giants of bebop and beyond, there will be plenty of exceptional music and clips from films purporting to tell the story of jazz and the people who have made it what it is.

120m

Sat 29 Oct 10:30 - in the Auditorium