Claude, Romy, Michel… and the Others

With ‘Cesar and Rosalie’, starring Yves Montand and Romy Schneider screening in this year’s French Film Festival, this talk looks back at the remarkable career of its director, Claude Sautet.

Sat 23 Nov 10:30 - In the Auditorium

NT Encore

Written and directed by celebrated playwright Conor McPherson and featuring Tony Award-winning orchestrations by Simon Hale, ‘Girl From the North Country’ reimagines 20 legendary songs of Bob Dylan as they’ve never been heard before.

Sat 23 Nov 13:00

Everyone’s favourite bear Paddington returns to Peru, as he and the Browns visit his beloved Aunt Lucy. A thrilling adventure ensues when a mystery plunges them into an unexpected journey through the Amazon and beyond.

UK 2024 Dougal Wilson 103m

Coup de Chance

 

Woody Allen features in the French Film Festival UK for the first time with a thriller set in the upper-class echelons of Paris society and written, acted and filmed entirely in French.

For his 50th film Allen deals with a bored wife in Paris (Lou de Laâge) who cheats on her wealthy and aloof husband (Melvile Poupaud) with an old high school friend (Niels Schneider)… which triggers fatal consequences. Allen at 88 has more than a half-century career as a writer and director of influential classics such as ‘Annie Hall’ (1977) and ‘Crimes and Misdemeanours’ (1989). He has an affection for France and his 2011 comedy ‘Midnight in Paris’ brought him his fourth Oscar, for original screenplay. Here he has coaxed superb performances from a sterling cast especially newcomer Lou de Laâge, who has distinct traces of Diane Keaton. Stunning cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. ‘Restores the masterful filmmaker to his deserved position as one of the screen’s most profound storytellers’ - The Observer. (Subtitles)

France/USA/UK 2024 Woody Allen 96m

Met Opera

In this production of Puccini's masterpiece, extraordinary soprano Lise Davidsen stars as the volatile diva Floria Tosca for her first time at the Met.

Sun 24 Nov 14:30

Thu 28 Nov 19.15

En corps

Élise is a talented ballet dancer whose life is turned upside down – first by injury and then when she catches her boyfriend cheating with her understudy.

On a path to physical and emotional recovery, she travels from Paris to Brittany, where she embraces the artistic freedom of contemporary dance. On this journey of self-discovery, she finds friendship and new ways to reinvent herself. Cédric Klapisch (Someone Somewhere, Back to Burgundy) delivers a tale of strength and resilience. Cast includes Marion Barbeau, Hofesh Shechter, Denis Podalydès, Pio Marmaï, François Civil, Muriel Robin. (Subtitles)

France/Belgium 2022 Cédric Klapisch 117m

In this psychological thriller, two young women of religion are drawn into a game of cat-and-mouse in the house of a strange man.

Hugh Grant is arguably delivering career-best work here as the sinister Mr. Reed, a theologist who engages in a riveting game of matching wits and beliefs with Sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Paxton (Chloe East), two Mormon missionaries, who visit his seemingly humble abode with the initial intention of converting him. ‘Heretic’ brings an incredibly sharp religious thriller script to life through a chilling and charismatic performance by Grant. Most of the movie's horror and tension is achieved through dialogue and conversations about faith and power. It's provocative, divisive and challenges the audience to question their own convictions when it comes to faith.

USA 2024 Scott Beck & Bryan Woods 110m

César et Rosalie

A man is in love with a woman. But she isn't making it easy for him, especially when her old flame enters the picture.

One of Claude Sautet's most celebrated films, this film reunited the director with his on-screen muse Romy Schneider. After her marriage ends in divorce, the beautiful Rosalie (Romy Schneider) begins dating César (Yves Montand), a wealthy playboy and businessman. But when her old flame, David (Sami Frey), unexpectedly re-enters her life, the two men simultaneously vie for her affections. This is a snapshot of the shifting sands in the Seventies sexual revolution. The cast also includes Bernard Le Coq, Eva Maria Meineke and Isabelle Huppert. We are screening this as a classic tribute to Claude Sautet in the centenary year of his birth. (Subtitles)

France 1972 Claude Sautet 111m

The boundary-pushing Ida Rubinstein selects Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet, leading to the creation of his greatest and most timeless success ever - Boléro. Closed the 2024 Chichester International Film Festival.

In the two decades between the First and Second World War, Maurice Ravel (Raphaël Personnaz) was feted as France’s greatest living composer. His work melded modernism, baroque and neoclassicism, with later compositions also embracing jazz. Ravel is best known for his 1928 composition Boléro, whose conception lies at the heart of Anne Fontaine’s elegant film. It weaves Ravel’s working process and life through his encounters with three women: the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein (Jeanne Balibar), whose commission led to the music’s creation; his patron Misia Sert (Doria Tillier), and his pianist friend Marguerite Long (Emmanuelle Devos). (Subtitles)

France/Belgium 2024 Anne Fontaine 120m

This documentary focuses on the making of the 235-minute, silent epic ‘Napoléon’ by director/writer/actor Abel Gance.

‘Napoléon’ showcased Gance's talents with the camera, his use of multiple images (like a split screen), and his handling of crowded action scenes – all brought to the fore in this documentary by Nelly Kaplan, who became his assistant. Kaplan used vintage footage, such as Gance filming the famous snowball fight at the Brienne military school and still photographs and excerpts from Gance's production diaries. ‘Napoléon’ (the first part) was restored most recently for screening at this year’s 77th Cannes Film Festival and the “new” version is showing in its entirety in various summer festivals with music by 250 musicians from Radio France. Keep an eye out for a possible 2025 screening at Chichester Cinema. (Subtitles)

France 1984 Nelly Kaplan 60m

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

Our Fund Raising Film Quiz is back!

After a year's hiatus, our popular annual film quiz A Mind for Movies returns. This fund-raiser will help with our on-going recovery post-Covid and a very challenging summer at the box office.

The Quiz will be hosted by Walter Francisco (Head of Programming) and Patrick Hargood (Education Officer).

 

Get a group of 6 together, bring your quiz partner, or come by yourself and make some new friends -  everyone is welcome!  It's a fun-night of multiple choice, great film clips and lots of laughs! Cheese and biscuits platters will be provided as before.

There will be a raffle and a trophy for the winning team

Thu 28 Nov

Doors open at 18:30 for a 19:00 start

Assembly Rooms (North St, Chichester)

 

Tickets £24

Book at table of 6 for £144.00

Steve McQueen’s new film follows the story of a group of Londoners during the bombings of the British capital in World War II.

Nine-year-old George (Elliott Heffernan) is evacuated to the countryside by his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), to escape the bombings. Defiant and determined to return to his family, George embarks on a journey back home as Rita searches for him. His adventures see him leap from a moving train before finding charity and bigotry, air-raid wardens and criminals (the always wonderful Kathy Burke and Stephen Graham). McQueen does a great job of showing an overview of the Blitz through a series of often powerful and moving moments, somehow making the subject matter feel monumental, even though we have seen documented, honoured and reinterpreted on screen many times before.

UK 2024 Steve McQueen 120m

Follows the lives of the Charles family as they deal with themes of family legacy and more, in deciding what to do with an heirloom, the family piano.

Mississippi 4 July 1911. As the white landowners are outdoors enjoying thunderous Independence Day fireworks, young Black men, led by Boy Charles (Stephan James), break into one of their antebellum homes to take a piano with intricate carvings etching his family’s history from slavery to its wood panels. There is conflict from Boy Willie (John David Washington) who is keen to sell the heirloom, and Uncle Doaker (Samuel L Jackson) is a highlight as he takes a comically neutral - but not informed - stance to arguments over the piano and the ghosts shackled to it. This is the third film, after ‘Fences’ and ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’, that Denzel Washington has produced from playwright August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. It’s also the finest.

USA 2024 Malcolm Washington 127m

Iris et les Hommes

Iris, a woman who has everything: a wonderful husband, two perfect daughters, a successful business - but no sex life. Perhaps the time has come to find a lover.

"They're not". This is how Iris (Laure Calamy) answers her doctor when she is asked how things are going with her husband (Vincent Elbaz). The words slip from her mouth like a brutal realization: how long has it been since they last made love? Yet everything else is great: her partner loves her, they have two happy daughters, she runs a successful medical practice, lives in a beautiful apartment and has the best friends one could hope for. But soon Iris will be turning 50. It is a stranger who whispers the seed of an idea: "Take a lover". So, she dares open Pandora's box, and hesitantly registers herself on a dating app. Immediately, men start to appear, as if it were raining...

France 2023 Caroline Vignal 98m

Andrea Arnold’s latest film premiered in Cannes and stars probably the most impressive British actor of current times – Barry Keoghan.

Bailey (Nykiya Adams) lives with her brother Hunter (Jason Buda) and her father Bug (Keoghan), who raises them alone in a squat in northern Kent. Bug doesn't have much time to devote to them, so Bailey looks for attention and adventure elsewhere, including with a mysterious man named Bird (a riveting Franz Rogowski). Keoghan is superbly attuned to Arnold’s naturalistic style, and in turn, Arnold brings out the best of his softness and charisma. Arnold’s filmmaking is typically robust, buoyed by another great soundtrack of course, and she leaves us with the sentiment that the kids, regardless of life’s trivial circumstances, are going to be all right.

UK 2024 Andrea Arnold 119m