This screening was so popular on Friday 28th February that we’ve booked another! Don’t miss this wonderful film celebrating apples!

Known historically as the Orchard of England, Herefordshire is apple country. This film brings together a wide-ranging and eccentric cast of local people – farmers, Travellers, former apple-pickers, clergymen, wassailers, cider makers, fruit sellers – to explore the deep relationship between the people of this area and its historic crop. Part portrait of a fading way of life, part celebration of how a living culture continues to manifest itself, the film raises deep questions about human nature. Expect games, pies, dancing, petty crime, and varieties of apple beyond your most delirious dreams. Prepare to honour the apple.  

Directed by: Louis Norris  

Co-producer Hilary Lyon will introduce the film with a Q&A to follow.

A retelling of Odysseus’ (Ralph Fiennes) return to Ithaca pivots on the hero’s inner state of being. Odysseus’s homecoming from 20 years of war and adventure is far from peaceful. Haggard and drained, he’s a shadow of his former wily self. His wife, Penelope (Juliette Binoche) is held prisoner by suitors vying to be king and his son faces death at their hands. To win back his family, his kingdom and his self-respect, Odysseus must rediscover his strength. No Cyclops or Sirens here, the performances of Fiennes and Binoche are key, enhanced by ravishing cinematography that renders the film simply gorgeous to look at.  

 Preview courtesy of Modern Films.

Directed by: Uberto Pasolini
Cast includes: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Charlie Plummer

Filmed on location in the western French Alps, this earthy romp offers a realistic insight into the hardscrabble life of French agriculture, a moving romance and an ode to the love of cheese. 18-year-old Totone spends most of his time drinking beer and partying with his friends in the Jura region of France. But when he’s unexpectedly faced with taking care of his young sister and making a living, he decides to enter a competition for the best Comté cheese in the region – hoping to win gold and a 30,000 euro prize. 

Featuring a lively ensemble cast of first-time actors drawn from the region with an especially charming performance from its young lead. 

“Lovingly shot in warm natural light, and accompanied by a gentle, lilting soundtrack” Screen International

Preview courtesy of Conic.

Directed by: Louise Courvoisier

Cast includes: Clément Faveau, Maiwenne Barthelemy, Luna Garret

Mike Leigh returns with a fierce, compassionate and darkly funny character study.  

Angry, depressed and wracked by fear, Pansy (BAFTA-winner Jean-Baptiste) lashes out at family and strangers alike. She simply cannot help herself. Her constant criticism isolates her from others save her warm, easy-going sister Chantal who remains sympathetic despite their clashing temperaments. Inverting the optimism of Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, this rich and expansive film from a master dramatist explores family, sisterhood and the enduring mysteries of character.  

 
“A Mike Leigh classic… Marianne Jean-Baptiste is exceptional” ★★★★ Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian 

Directed by: Mike Leigh
Cast includes: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michele Austin, David Webber

Filmed over a year, this documentary has a lot to say about personal and intimate interaction, how it’s affected by creativity, recognition, fame and ageing. Thirty years after a chance encounter, Maggie and Joel, aged 75 and 84, are still very much in love. But their relationship is complicated and prickly. Born in the tough Bronx, Joel Meyerowitz is a world-renowned photographer with major exhibitions and 40 books to his name. British-born Maggie Barrett is a talented but less recognised artist and writer. The unease between them is further strained when Maggie breaks her leg and Joel becomes her carer. In the shadow of mortality, with a long and dramatic life behind each of them Maggie and Joel attempt to find a shared inner peace while there is still time.

Preview courtesy of Modern Films.

Directed by: Jacob Perlmutter, Manon Ouimet

Cast includes: Maggie Barrett, Joel Meyerowitz

Known historically as the Orchard of England, Herefordshire is apple country. This film brings together a wide-ranging and eccentric cast of local people – farmers, Travellers, former apple-pickers, clergymen, wassailers, cider makers, fruit sellers – to explore the deep relationship between the people of this area and its historic crop. Part portrait of a fading way of life, part celebration of how a living culture continues to manifest itself, the film raises deep questions about human nature. Expect games, pies, dancing, petty crime, and varieties of apple beyond your most delirious dreams. Prepare to honour the apple.  

Directed by: Louis Norris  

Co-producers Hilary Lyon, Louis Norris and Jonathan Ben-Shaul will introduce the film with a Q&A to follow.

From Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro), a tale of lost love and an ethereal spiritual journey. Arriving in Riparbella, Tuscany, in the early ’80s, Arthur, a melancholic British archaeologist in a grimy linen suit, is fresh out of prison. Yearning for his dead lover, the daughter of a local aristocrat, he falls back in with a group of tombaroli (tomb robbers), a rowdy, Fellini-esque crew of twentysomethings who pilfer the area’s ancient burial sites for Etruscan treasures to sell on the black market. Continuing Rohrwacher’s project of mining and mythologising her country’s past, La Chimera creates its own wild, improbable fictional space, halfway between the dead and the living, and draws you into its spell.

“A joyous, masterful work of folk magic” Jessica Kiang, Sight & Sound

Preview courtesy of Curzon Film

Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Starring: Josh O’Connor, Carol Duarte, Alba Rohrwacher, Isabella Rossellini
Italy/France/Switzerland, 2023, 2 hours 13 minutes, Italian/English + English subtitles

From Vietnamese director Trần Anh Hùng (The Scent of Green Papaya) comes a mouth-watering ‘gastromance’, superbly concocted by leads Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel.

France, 1885: Celebrated gourmet Dodin lives on an idyllic Loire Valley estate alongside Eugénie, his cook for over 20 years. Adapted from a 1924 novel by French epicure Marcel Rouff, this intimate, humorous and sensual story about love and food is executed with detail and practical precision but without a hint of sickliness. Opening with a bravura 40-minute sequence of preparation and indulgence in one epic meal, it’s a deep tribute to the closeness of collaborative work. A veritable feast.

Best Director, Cannes Film Festival 2023

Shortlisted for International Feature Film Oscar

Director: Trần Anh Hùng
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Benoît Magimel, Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire
France, 2023, 2 hours 25 minutes, French + English subtitles

Loosely based on the novel by Martin Amis, this bold, surgical probe into our capacity for zoning out on genocide is chilling indeed. Rudolf, Hedwig and their children live a pastoral idyll, in a bright villa with a cultivated garden full of roses and hothouse fruit. But the backdrop is a high wall with chimneys beyond, and behind the birdsong are other persistent but indistinguishable sounds. Rudolf Höss is the commandant of Auschwitz. Eschewing the conventions of Holocaust drama, Jonathan Glazer’s (Under the Skin) film penetrates the too bright surface of bourgeois domesticity with visual and aural precision to reveal the horrors beneath.

Shortlisted for International Feature Film Oscar

Director: Jonathan Glazer
Starring: Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel
US/UK/Poland, 2023, 1 hour 46 minutes, German/Polish + English subtitles

Andrew Haigh follows 45 Years with a sublime, uncommonly perceptive and moving film.

Adam (Fleabag’s Andrew Scott), a screenwriter living in a spookily empty London high rise, strikes up a relationship with his mysterious neighbour Harry (Mescal). At the same time, he makes a miraculous discovery at his old family home in the suburbs – one that keeps him returning. Using a metaphysical conceit to meditate on love, grief and profound loss, Haigh’s carefully modulated ghost story revisits the fears and traumas of a specific generation of gay men while illuminating the human condition more broadly.

Paul Mescal, Joint Best Supporting Performance, British Independent Film Awards 2023

Director: Andrew Haigh
Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell
1 hour 45minutes

Please note: This film contains flashing images that may be unsuitable for viewers with photosensitive epilepsy

Wry, endearing, thoughtful, this tale of a late-blooming heroine awakened by intimations of romance and mortality is utterly refreshing. 48-year-old Etero, single by choice, lives in a small Georgian village where she runs a toiletry store. Commanding and intelligent, possessed of a stoic independence and a dry wit, she cherishes her freedom as much as the mille-feuille she repeat-orders at her local café. But when a passionate encounter brings a new recklessness into her life, she must decide whether to pursue love or continue alone. Adapted from a first-person novel by Georgian author Tamta Melashvili, funny and sad by turns, Eka Chavleishvili is magnificent as the redoubtable Etero.

Preview courtesy of New Wave Films

Director: Elene Naveriani
Starring: Eka Chavleishvili, Temiko Chichinadze, Lia Abuladze
Switzerland/Georgia, 2023, 1 hour 50 minutes, Georgian + English subtitles

Outwardly simple, beautifully nuanced and utterly heartbreaking, Ozu’s Tokyo Story remains, even after 70 years, one of cinema’s most enduring masterpieces. Elderly couple Tomi and Shukichi decide to visit their grown-up children in bustling post-war Tokyo. The experience is bewildering; it’s a sweltering summer and they do not receive the welcome they deserve from their own offspring. A wealth of domestic detail reveals a compelling contrast between the dignity of age and the insensitivity of a younger generation. Stylised and restrained though it is, this is a film that manages to evoke exactly how fragile and ephemeral life is.

Director: Yasujirō Ozu
Starring: Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, Toru Abu, Setsuko Hara
Japan, 1953, 2 hours 16 minutes, Japanese + English subtitles

Andrew Haigh follows 45 Years with a sublime, uncommonly perceptive and moving film.

Adam (Fleabag’s Andrew Scott), a screenwriter living in a spookily empty London high rise, strikes up a relationship with his mysterious neighbour Harry (Mescal). At the same time, he makes a miraculous discovery at his old family home in the suburbs – one that keeps him returning. Using a metaphysical conceit to meditate on love, grief and profound loss, Haigh’s carefully modulated ghost story revisits the fears and traumas of a specific generation of gay men while illuminating the human condition more broadly.

Paul Mescal, Joint Best Supporting Performance, British Independent Film Awards 2023

Director: Andrew Haigh
Starring: Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell
1 hour 45minutes

Please note: This film contains flashing images that may be unsuitable for viewers with photosensitive epilepsy