A fanciful, occasionally moving take on dying, grieving and highly symbolic parrots. 

A young girl named Tuesday, (Lola Petticrew), is reaching the end of her life after what seems to have been a long illness. Death comes to her in the shape of a giant shape-shifting, pot-smoking, colourful macaw whose hearing is perpetually attuned to the sound of pain and suffering, and who spreads his wings to mark the last breath of the dying. Tuesday’s mother Zora (Julia Louis Dreyfuss) takes on Death herself, going to extreme measures to keep her daughter alive. ‘Tuesday’ is a challenging watch at times, and it requires an acceptance of the strange world it inhabits, but it’s a deeply worthwhile experience made all the more poignant by the highly versatile and watchable Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.

UK/USA 2023 Daina O. Pusic 111m

Le Comte de Monte-Cristo

This new adaptation of the famous novel by Alexandre Dumas was the summer box office smash in France.

Set against the tumultuous post-Napoleonic era, the story follows Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney), who is wrongly imprisoned and then escapes, crafting intricate revenge schemes against those who wronged him. This is a stunning and emotionally gratifying adventure film, built on rock-solid source material of course – with its timeless revenge theme still entertaining modern-day viewers. Compared to earlier adaptations, this latest version is briskly paced and rousingly acted by an all-around stellar ensemble. Everything about this robust and very enjoyable retelling of the classic is epic in scale: from the lavish sets and the orchestral score to the bold performances and the running time. We will include a short intermission.

France 2024 Alexandre de La Patellière & Matthieu Delaporte 178m

Night Courier

In the heart of Riyadh, where desperation and opportunity collide, this is the gripping tale of a mentally fragile man racing against time to save his ailing father.

‘Mandoob’ is a darkly comedic, gripping tale about the lives of Saudi Arabia’s gig workers, who toil in the shadows to make the fantastical lives of elites possible. Fahad’s (Mohammed Aldokhei) aspiring entrepreneur sister Sarah (Hajar Alshammari) and their ailing father Nasser (Mohammed Alttowayan) know that Fahad means well and genuinely wants what’s best for the family. But he is a restless call centre worker whose habitual lateness and apathy regarding irrational customers gets him fired. He becomes a delivery driver for an Uber-like service known as Mandoob (which loosely translates to “courier” in Arabic). This powerful and surprising film cleverly shows the realities of how hard it is to thrive as a gig worker in a system that’s designed to keep them nameless, faceless, perpetually busy and underpaid.

Saudi Arabia 2023 Ali Kalthami 110m

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