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

The inspiring story of British farmers standing up against the industrial food system and transforming the way they produce food - to heal the soil, benefit our health and provide for local communities.

“Despite all our accomplishments, we owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact it rains.” Paul Harvey (1978) U.S. radio broadcaster. This documentary tells the story of remarkable farmers, communities, small businesses, chefs and entrepreneurs who are leading the way to transform how our food is produced and consumed. Agroecology is an approach to farming that includes ‘regenerative’ farming techniques that work in harmony with, rather than against nature. It focuses on local food systems and shorter supply chains. ‘Six Inches of Soil’ tells the inspiring story of young British farmers standing up against the industrial food system and transforming the way they produce food - to heal the soil, our health and provide for local communities.

UK 2024 Colin Ramsay 96m

Filmed in West Sussex, this local film focuses on an old man who works all alone to maintain his ancestral farmland, as his children prove to be at once both remote and controlling.

David (Rory Kinnear) and Laura (Emily Beecham) are in their early forties and tearaway underachievers who grew up on a still-lucrative family farm run by their father (Roger Marten). With David’s alcohol and drug addictions plaguing the majority of his adult life and Laura working on farms in sunnier climes like California and Spain, their eyes are drawn homeward as their father enjoys his final years of work, as they each proffer their case to inherit the land. This feature debut shows impressive audio-driven film storytelling, reaching something unique in its tale of an intransigent English farmer. The unique way this story is told is nothing less than inspired – we only ever see one of the characters, the farmer, although we never see him speak. Instead, the camera follows him as he goes about his business on the farm. We do however hear a series of answering machine messages from the children, because their father tends to have his phone turned off when he’s out in the fields. Filmed close to Pulborough, West Sussex.

UK 2023 Nicholas Parish 93m

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

Isabella Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, strive to breathe new life into the ailing Knepp estate near Pulborough. A dying landscape is healed against all odds, and goes on to thrive in astonishing ways.

Imagine you’ve inherited a castle in West Sussex plus five square miles of farmland. You continue the family tradition of mixed arable and dairy farming, but the soil is so depleted that yields decrease, year on year. In 2000, faced with these dire circumstances, Isabella and Charlie took the risky decision. They abandoned farming, tore down the fences, introduced herds of Exmoor ponies, longhorn cattle and deer and some cute Tamworth pigs… and waited. 20 years later, largely by helping nature restore itself, Knepp has become a wildlife haven – and a beacon of hope for nature lovers. In this glorious documentary that engenders hope, you will be treated to beautiful Attenborough-style photography of the countryside reasserting itself and of the animals that returned to it. This is unmissable cinema (a huge hit across the country this Summer), and a source of pride for this area of the UK.

UK 2024 David Allen 75m

This gently absorbing documentary follows Amber, a happiness agent, as he travels the Bhutanese Himalayas surveying people's wellbeing for the government’s Happiness Survey.

How can you measure happiness? The country of Bhutan invented Gross National Happiness to do just that; the concept was first introduced by the 4th King of Bhutan, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in the late 1970s as a wellbeing measurement, when he stated that Gross National Happiness was more important than Gross Domestic Product. Amber travels door- to-door to meet people and measure how happy they are. At the age of 40, he is a a hopeless romantic who still dreams of finding love: a happiness agent in search of his own happiness. This slow burning documentary is suffused with warmth and combines breathtaking scenery with gentle humour whilst not avoiding the darker themes which also emerge, such as alcoholism and loneliness. As we accompany Amber on his cross-country road trip, meeting citizens from all walks of life, we are reminded of the fragility and beauty of our own happiness.  (Subtitles)

Bhutan/Hungary 2024 Director Arun Bhattarai & Dorottya Zurbó 94m

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

Instead of coming in from the Cold War, British agent Alec Leamas chooses to face another mission. Screening in conjunction with our ‘John le Carré on Screen’ Talk and complementing the Chichester Festival Theatre production.

At the height of the Cold War, British spy Alec Leamas (Richard Burton) is nearly ready to retire, but first he has to take on one last dangerous assignment. Going deep undercover, he poses as a drunken, disgraced former MI5 agent in East Germany in order to gain information about colleagues who have been captured. When he himself is thrown in jail and interrogated, Leamas finds himself caught in a sinister labyrinth of plots and counter-plots unlike anything in his long career. This is the definitive anti-Bond spy movie and the best big-screen adaptation of John le Carré.

UK 1965 Martin Ritt 112m