This love story chronicles the lifelong relationship of conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. A symphonic love story with sparkling, awards-worthy performances.

Bradley Cooper takes on the triple role of lead actor, director and writer. He wisely eschews the conventional biopic logic of ticking off Bernstein’s career highlights. Instead, ‘Maestro’ zeroes in on his vivid, life-long love affair with Chilean émigré Felicia Montealegre, beautifully played by Carey Mulligan who is the beating heart of the film. ‘Maestro’ digs deep into Bernstein’s music to unleash some of the greatest hits (‘West Side Story,’ ‘On the Waterfront’) and a few lesser-known pieces. A recreation of his legendary performance of Mahler in 1968 just about blows the roof off New York’s St Patrick’s Cathedral. This is a film for cinephiles as well as musos and romantics, with its discrete ‘movements’ mirroring the movie making style of its time frame. Early scenes are filmed in 35mm black-and-white, while Lenny and Felicia’s stormy late 1960s patch is captured in Technicolor. This elegant, ambitious biopic is a love letter to life and art, and at its core is an emotionally epic portrayal of family and love. "An absolute marvel." Rolling Stone

USA 2023 Bradley Cooper 129m

Met Opera

This Met premiere stars soprano Ailyn Pérez as Florencia in a new production that brings the mystical realm of the Amazon to the stage. Inspired by the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the opera focuses on opera diva Florencia Grimaldi, who returns to her native Brazil to perform and to search for her lost lover.

Sun 10 Dec 15:15

A riveting tribute to Tyneside photographer Tish Murtha, who lived a life as tough as those she shot in different eras of deprivation and marginalisation.

Tish chronicled working-class lives in the north east in the 1970s and 80s (and also those of Soho sex workers in London), earning for herself the nickname “Demon Snapper” in the papers. In capturing the reality of poverty and deprivation in communities where the misery of unemployment had been allowed to settle by Westminster, Murtha showed her subjects’ humour, optimism and refusal to be cowed – particularly in the faces of children. The film is presented with enormous humanity and warmth by Murtha’s grownup daughter Ella, who is an eerie likeness of her late mother. The centrally important point is that Murtha was not an outsider: she was a part of the people whose lives she recorded.

UK 2023 Paul Sng 90m