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

Le Procès du Chien

A young lawyer goes to great lengths to save her client, a repeat-offender dog, from capital punishment. This dog helps Avril accept her own human complexity.

Feisty, feminist lawyer Avril (Laetitia Dosch), who specialises in the defence of animals, is prepared to do anything to save her client, Cosmos, a dog that has been convicted of biting three people. She has no choice but to win the case, as otherwise her unusual client risks being put down. Avril begins to question her belief in justice and discovers the contempt some humans show for animals. Perhaps it is this dog (played by four-legged star Kodi and recipient of the Palm Dog award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival) who will help Avril accept her inner demons. Marking the directorial debut of Swiss-French actress and writer Laetitia Dosch the film (based on several real cases) mixes both comedy and drama while raising questions about our relationships with animals. This is a film that will make you laugh, think… and just hang out with Cosmos the dog.

Switzerland/France 2024 Laetitia Dosch 80m

In 1960, sixteen newly independent African countries enter the United Nations. To the rhythms of a jazz soundtrack, Congo becomes the arena in which the battle over the UN is fought.

As Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe at the UN in reaction to the neo-colonial grab of the resources of newly independent Congo, UN delegates from African Countries are blackmailed. In an incredulous twist Patrice Lumumba’s assassination unites the Afro-Asian block, demanding the UN General Assembly to vote for immediate worldwide decolonisation. In this highly explosive context, the United States government dispatches Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Nina Simone as Jazz Ambassadors around the world – as a diversion from CIA-backed coups. Cutting between home movies, official texts, historical footage and Patrice Lumumba’s speeches, the film uses an endless rhythm of rumba and jazz to unravel colonial machinations of power in 1960. ‘Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat’ is a huge achievement, one that intertwines the history of jazz and colonisation. (Some subtitles)

Belgium/France 2024 Johan Grimonprez 150m

Shichinin no samurai

New 4K restoration. A poor village under attack by bandits recruits seven unemployed samurai to help them defend themselves in Kurosawa’s influential classic.

Kambei the samurai assembles his team of reluctant warriors to participate in a probable suicide mission that will bring them neither money nor fame. The second act explores the strained relationship between villager and warrior class while the last act depicts the epic final battle when the bandits attack the village. The shoot lasted a year, but the results are there to be seen with its sublime photography and choreography. Kurosawa’s approach to historical realism was utterly committed with meticulously researched sets and costumes with masterful deployment of natural lighting and weather conditions to enhance the drama.

Japan 1954 Akira Kurosawa 206m

Spectateurs

What does it mean, to go to the movies? Why have people been going for over one hundred years? This is an unmissable film for lovers of cinema.

Arnaud Desplechin set out to celebrate cinemas and their manifold magic. He walked in the footsteps of his young alter ego Paul Dédalus, as if in a filmgoer’s coming-of-age story. Memories, fiction, discoveries come together in an irrepressible torrent of pictures. The warm, inviting tone of the film and Desplechin’s use of a stunning selection of movie clips should make this hugely appealing for cinephiles who will consider it must-see. ‘Cheerfully makes the point that we grow with cinema, and cinema with us’ – Variety.

(Subtitles)

France 2024 Arnaud Desplechin 88m

We hope to welcome French filmmaker Mathieu Almaric for a Q&A after the screening. (tbc)

International Panorama: Japan

Gojira -1.0

Termed by critics as the best Godzilla film in decades - an instant classic with terrific special effects and a really entertaining story to match. Re-released in recognition of its Oscar earlier this year.

Post war Japan is at its lowest point when a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb.

Kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) stumbles into a Godzilla attack at the start of the film, and his cowardice costs lives. So, when the creature stirs again a few years later, Shikishima has a chance to redeem himself and save his new family, but can he face his greatest fear? A tough call, as this Godzilla is an elemental, uncaring force, a manifestation of Japan's darkest psychology.

It is the rare kaiju (giant monster genre) movie that cares this deeply about the inner lives and motivations of the people scurrying out of the way of the monster’s giant thudding feet.

An instant classic with terrific special effects and a really entertaining story to match.

Japan 2023 Takashi Yamazaki 124m

98% - Rotten Tomatoes

Winner of five Oscars, including Best Film, Director, Actor and Actress. A true classic which must be seen by all lovers of quality film.

1963. When Korean War veteran Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) gets transferred for evaluation from a prison to a mental institution, he assumes it will be a less restrictive environment. But the tyrannical Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) runs the psychiatric ward with an iron fist, keeping her patients cowed through abuse, medication and sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. The battle of wills between the rebellious McMurphy and the inflexible Ratched soon affects all the ward's patients. This nearly flawless film makes us question our judgments on who is mad and who is sane.

USA 1975 Milos Forman 133m

L'amour Ouf

Set in the 1980s in northern France, actor turned director Gilles Lellouche charts an improbable relationship between Jackie (Adèle Exarchopoulos) from an upper-middleclass family and Clotaire (François Civil) from a modest background.

They grow up in the same town and attend the same high school. Whilst she is dedicated to her studies, he plays truant and becomes involved in a gang. Their paths cross later in life in adulthood and they fall madly in love. Lellouche (who previously came to the French Film Festival with ‘Sink or Swim’), returns with an emotional rollercoaster spanning over 15 years in the lives of star-crossed lovers, leaving us questioning the nature of love or an amour fou. ‘Lellouche’s stages action sequences and tender scenes of young love with finesse and ingenuity’ – IndieWire. (Subtitles)

France/Belgium 2024 Gilles Lellouche 116m

Spot the film-making talents of tomorrow in this selection of garlanded francophone shorts, curated by Martine Pierquin. Full film details are online.

How Do I Know? / Comment Savoir …? - Best short film Cabourg Film Festival 2024. France 18m

Danavan - Apprehension about the arrival of the new next-door neighbour in Quebec. Canada 12m

Montsouris Park / Montsouris - Winner, Leitz Cine Discovery Prize, Cannes Film Festival 2024. France 14m

Sira / Langue Maternelle - Best Film in French, Dakar Court, Senegal 2023. France 24m

Pumpkin / Pupuce - Brussels Short Film Festival –Prix de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles 2024. Belgium 19m

Summer 96 / Été 96 - Animation - Winner of César for Best Animated Short Film, 2024. France 12m

Caregiver / Auxiliaire - A caregiver must break the news of his departure. France 24m

Various 123m