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Drama

WOMAN AT WAR [KONA FER Í STRÍÐ – ICELAND], THU 26 SEPTEMBER, 8PM

By archive, Season 21 films

A music teacher leads a double life as an environmental warrior/industrial saboteur in this jet-black comedy.  An intelligent, feel-good film that manages to tackle urgent global issues with humour.

Meet Halla, a music teacher in her forties. She is a happy, upbeat woman who leads a quiet and routine life. But unbeknown to most she is also ‘The Mountain Woman’: a lone wolf environmental activist who disrupts the operations of an aluminium plant in the Icelandic highlands, by cutting power supply and damaging pylons in acts of industrial sabatogue.

As the authorities intensify their campaign to catch her, she receives an update on a long forgotten adoption application and learns she has been matched with a four-year-old girl in the Ukraine. Can she reconcile this with her crusade to protect her homeland from big industry or will her efforts destroy her chances of finally becoming a mother?

A funny, moving and utterly unique film.

A huge showcase for Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, who brings grit, determination, and quiet charisma to every scene. An engaging curiosity and an absolute joy. – The Irish Times

Amid the jet-black comedy of Woman at War, which takes as its catastrophic subject matter the despoliation of planet Earth, there is a warmth, wit and wisdom that transcend national and cultural boundaries, making this a truly universal treat. – The Guardian ★★★★

97% rating and ★★★★★ from Rotten Tomatoes.

Winner – Best Screenplay, Critics’ Week, Cannes Film Festival 2018

Winner – LUX Film Prize 2018

Iceland, 2018 | Language: Icelandic | 101 minutes | Cert: 12A

Director: Benedikt Erlingsson

Cast: Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir, Jóhann Sigurðarson, Roman Estrada, Jörundur Ragnarsson

A SEASON IN FRANCE [UNE SAISON EN FRANCE – FRANCE], THU 3 OCTOBER, 8PM

By archive, Season 21 films

The pride, pain and desperation of an educated African refugee family in France is portrayed with compassion and a sharp edge.  For the college professor at the heart of this searching film, his loss of dignity is the most bitter pill.

Abbas, a college professor and father of two, seeks political asylum in France after fleeing the civil war that has raged in the Central African Republic since 2013. Widowed when his wife died in attempting to escape the country with him, he has since met Carole, who consoles him in his anguish at the French immigration system.

Two years of waiting finally elicit a response from the authorities. Everything he holds dear, including his hopes for both his future and those of his children, lie in their decision. Compelling performances from both lead actors, while director Haroun masterfully contrasts the intimacy of human relationships with the cold bureaucracy of a vast, impersonal system.

A deeply felt, compassionate film about refugees who find that one of their bitterest abasements is the loss of dignity and status.The Guardian ★★★

A jolting drama with the most shocking scene of the year.The Irish Times ★★★

The film builds toward an explicit condemnation of Europe’s handling of the refugee crisis, encouraging the viewer’s fury at the family’s forced circumstances. – The New York Times

Warm and subtly heartbreaking, offering a moving vision of life for those stuck in legal and emotional limbo. – The Hollywood Reporter

France, 2017 | Language: France | 100 minutes | Cert: 12A

Director: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

Cast: Eriq Ebouaney, Sandrine Bonnaire, Aalayna Lys, Bibi Tanga, Ibrahim Burama Darboe

NEVER LOOK AWAY [WERK OHNE AUTOR – GERMANY], THU 10 OCTOBER

By archive, Season 21 films

Event cinema!  We are showing this Oscar-nominated film in two parts on one night, starting at 6pm.  There will be a 20-minute interval during which we’ll serve wine and a nibble. Total running time including the interval is 3 hours and 35 minutes.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others, 2006) returns with an Oscar and Golden Globe-nominated drama about individuals caught up in the sweep of German history. Loosely based on the formative years of the world-renowned painter Gerhard Richter, Never Look Away is an intergenerational tale of love, sorrow, art and politics from Nazism through to the Cold War.

In 1937, at the Nazi Party notorious “degenerate art” exhibition in Dresden, a small boy named Kurt’s passion for art is ignited. Years later, in Communist East Germany, Kurt enters art college where he falls in love with fashion student Ellie, unaware that her father has a devastating secret and is determined to end their relationship.

Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography, 2019

Golden Globe nominee, Best Foreign Language Motion Picture, 2019

Click here for official website.

Click here for The New Yorker magazine interview with the director.

An ambitious, compelling film.The Independent ★★★★★

An undeniably enjoyable, absurdly long potboiler gets by on delicious sweep and epic voluptuousness. – The Irish Times

Germany, 2018 | Language: German | 189 minutes plus 20 minute interval | Cert: CLUB

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Cast: Tom Schilling, Sebastian Koch, Paula Beer, Saskia Rosendahl

ONLY YOU [U.K.], THU 17 OCTOBER, 8PM

By archive, Season 21 films

A couple in Glasgow discover that falling in love was the easy part.  This engrossing drama pierces the heart of a relationship with wit, honesty and emotional intimacy.

Elena, 35, and Jake, 26, meet by chance on New Year’s Eve in Glasgow, fighting for the same taxi. But instead of going their separate ways after a shared ride, they start a passionate relationship. Within weeks they are living together, and not long after they talk about starting a family. But as the seasons pass, reality catches up with them. Falling in love was the easy part, but can they remain in love when life doesn’t give them everything they hoped for?

A terrifically engrossing drama about two wholly believable characters, made with the kind of wit, honesty and raw emotional intimacy that pierces right to the heart of their relationship. Vividly rendered, and filled with tangible yearning, it strikes a balance between romantic passion and mundane domesticity, as the skin-prickling attraction of new love is tested by the day-to-day tribulations of real life. A perfectly realised story of love and longing.The Guardian ★★★★★

A sensual drama chronicles a couple’s desperate race against the biological clock… two powerful performances are at the heart of the film.The Irish Times ★★★★

The characters’ freshness and the film’s attention to mood and atmosphere reveal plenty of talent in Hary Wootliff, making her debut as a feature director. – The Sunday Times

100% from Rotten Tomatoes

U.K., 2018 | Language: English | 119 minutes | Cert: 15A

Director: Harry Wootliff

Cast: Laia Costa, Josh O’Connor, Natalie Arle-Toyne, Isabelle Barth, Tam Dean Burn

EVERYBODY KNOWS [TODOS LO SABEN – SPAIN], THU 24 OCTOBER, 8PM

By archive, Season 21 films

Oscar-winning filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s (A Separation) intimately painful and powerfully acted drama centres on a shocking crime that interrupts a family wedding.  Starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem.

Laura (Cruz) returns to Spain with her children for her sister’s wedding. There she is reunited with her former lover Paco (Bardem) now happily married and running a successful vineyard on land once owned by Laura’s family. Whilst Laura’s husband, Alejandro (Ricardo Darín) stayed behind in Argentina, an old rumour of her jilting Paco reignites. Moreover, within Laura’s family, resentment simmers over the manner in which Paco acquired the vineyard.

A seething mystery unfurls as secrets, lies and unhealed wounds spanning generations are brought to light. Everybody Knows is an unforgettable portrait of love, loss, and betrayal.

This is Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi’s eighth feature and his first in Spanish.

Explores the unhealed wound at the heart of a Spanish family with pitiless efficiency and sheer muscular flair…the performances are so intelligent, mature and yet uninhibited…Farhadi’s storytelling has overpowering force.The Guardian  ★★★★

The characters, observations and performances make this film shine.The Independent ★★★★★

Spain, 2018 | Language: Spanish | 133 minutes | Cert: 15A

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Cast: Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Ricardo Darín

LETO [SUMMER – RUSSIA], THU 14 NOVEMBER, 8PM

By archive, Season 21 films

A snapshot of youthful rebellion in the Russian underground music scene set during one summer in 1980s Leningrad. The provocative director was recently released after 20 months under house arrest.

Director Kirill Serebrennikov charts the rise to fame of the late Soviet rock pioneer Viktor Tsoi (played by Teo Yoo) in Leto [Summer], a freewheeling snapshot of youthful rebellion in the underground scene of 1980s Leningrad. Set to a soundtrack of classics from David Bowie to The Sex Pistols, and filmed in stunning black-and-white, Leto is a rock n’ roll musical like no other.

With Serebrennikov until recently detained under house arrest in Moscow, it is a comment on Russian state censorship of the arts that could not be more timely.

The New York Times on 8 April 2019:  Russia Frees Director After Nearly 20 Months of House Arrest  ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — A renowned Russian director was released on Monday by a court in Moscow after nearly 20 months of house arrest, in a financial fraud case that is widely seen by Russia’s intelligentsia as a test for artistic freedom…Kirill Serebrennikov, one of Russia’s leading stage and film directors, had been imprisoned in his apartment since August, 2017, after Russian investigators accused him of conspiring with three of his colleagues to embezzle 133 million rubles, or around $2 million, of government funds allocated to a theater festival…For many in Russia’s arts community, the charges were politically motivated and meant to punish Mr. Serebrennikov for his provocative work. The director is known for taboo-breaking productions that sit awkwardly with the traditional family values Russia’s government promotes, and which often make thinly veiled criticisms of life under President Vladimir V. Putin…Supporters saw the case against him as an attack on freedom of expression that signaled Mr. Putin’s determination to bring the arts to heel. – Click here to read the entire New York Times article.

A look back at Leningrad’s underground garage-rock scene is one gorgeous, grungy, achingly sad memory piece…The fact that Serebrennikov has made such an intoxicating, invigorating movie about freedom percolating under a past toxic regime while having his own rights trampled upon in the present makes the look back that much more ironic. But it doesn’t dilute the joy of experiencing it, one three-chords-and-the-truth number at a time.Rolling Stone ★★★★

A vibrant portrait of Leningrad’s underground ’80s rock scene… lovely, wistful, sometimes confusing and often captivating memory piece.The Los Angeles Times

Russia, 2018 | Language: Russian, English | 126 minutes | Cert: CLUB

Director: Kirill Serebrennikov

Cast: Teo Yoo, Irina Starshenbaum, Roman Bilyk

BIRDS OF PASSAGE [PÁJAROS DE VERANO – COLOMBIA], THU 21 NOVEMBER, 8PM

By archive, Season 21 films

An epic drama about marijuana trafficking in Colombia that digs deep into the culture of the indigenous people involved. Critics call it ‘a masterpiece…absolutely extraordinary…a genuine knock-out’.

From the creators of the Oscar-nominated Embrace of the Serpent, Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s astounding Birds of Passage is an epic, visually exquisite story about the origin of the Colombian drug trade, told through the perspective of a proud indigenous family.  It is the first Colombian film to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

Guajira, Northern Colombia, 1970s. Wayuu tribe-member Zaida has come of age, leaving formidable matriarch Ursula with the important task of finding a suitable match. Her instincts warn her against young Rapayet, an ambitious man with strong links outside of the clan, but the word of a respected uncle carries weight, so she succeeds, setting an outrageous dowry. The seed sown, Rapayet stumbles onto a plan with two flamboyant friends to sell marijuana to a visiting American. It is the beginning of a profitable new enterprise.

As the family rises to prominence, Ursula becomes increasingly complicit in her son-in-law’s business dealings, insisting traditional honour codes are respected and observed. But the trappings of wealth and power soon incite a war that threatens to tear them and their ancient traditions apart.

Once in the bluest of moons, we encounter a freshly minted classic that feels as if it has been around forever…An epic work of folk, gangster and other-worldly cinema.The Irish Times ★★★★★

Startling and intriguing, it grafts quasi-ethnographic docudrama on to drug lord turf war epic. This is film-making that pushes the limits of storytelling and generic templates, and it’s brimming with images and ideas. – The Guardian ★★★★

An extraordinary, visually stunning crime drama.The Independent ★★★★★

Colombia, 2018 | Language: Spanish | 125 minutes | Cert: 15A

Directors:  Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra

Cast:  Carmiña Martínez, José Acosta, Natalia Reyes, Jhon Narváez, Greider Meza, José Vicente Cote

FÉLICITÉ [FRANCE, BELGIUM, SENEGAL], THU 1 FEBRUARY, 8PM

By archive, Season 18 films

A heroic central performance from the Congolese actress Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu is reason alone to see this gripping drama.

Franco-Senegalese film-maker Alain Gomis has created a film portrait in an ambient social-realist style, showing us a woman called Félicité: a bar singer in the tough streets of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Gomis leaves it up to us to determine the precise level of irony in her name.

Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu is a formidable presence as Félicité, a single mum of a tearaway teen boy Samo (Gaetan Claudia), for whom she must stay strong. She is scratching a living with her music, evidently bruised and humbled by the reverses of her life, drifting into a relationship with Tabu (Papi Mpaka), the boozy, unreliable guy who once came to repair her fridge.

Then her son has a motorbike accident and the hospital needs a million Congolese francs (about £500) before surgery can be carried out. Félicité must now go around to the people in her life asking variously for loans, or the money that she is owed – a process that exposes the fault lines in her own life. This is interspersed with scenes of her singing with her band and also, mysteriously but arrestingly, the Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra playing pieces by Arvo Pärt.

Cinematographer Céline Bozon contrives tremendous streetscape scenes around Kinshasa itself. It’s a film with seriousness and compassion, though a little lengthy and diffuse. Dramatic storm clouds gather and pass overhead without ever quite bursting into rain. – Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian

Click here to read the New York Times Critic’s Pick review.

96% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes.

Click here for official website.

France, Belgium, Senegal, Germany, Lebanon, 2017 |Language: Lingala, French | 123 minutes | Cert: CLUB

Director:  Alain Gomis 

Cast:  Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu, Gaetan Claudia, Papi Mpaka

 

GOLDSTONE [AUSTRALIA], THU 8 FEBRUARY, 8PM

By archive, Season 18 films

A masterpiece of outback noir that packs a political punch.

Rugged, Indigenous Australian detective Jay Swan is arrested for drunk-driving by rookie local policeman Josh on the desolate road into the mining town of Goldstone. Jay is investigating the disappearance of a Chinese migrant worker, and while Josh is initially reluctant to help on the case, when it becomes apparent that something more sinister is happening in the area, the two men must overcome their differences and work together.

Australian director Ivan Sen’s follow-up to 2013’s Mystery Road is a complex, stylish and tense western that explores Australia’s history, whilst dealing with key contemporary issues. Like its predecessor, Goldstone is intelligent and thought-provoking cinema.

Writer/director Ivan Sen has combined two genres uncommon to Australia, to deliver one classic film no Australian should miss. ★★★★★ – The Guardian

Sen’s unique accomplishment, unequalled in contemporary Aussie cinema, is his daringly idealistic intention and crystal clear success at balancing the demands of contemporary genre filmmaking with, in this case, the ongoing hot-button issues of Aboriginal relations (Sen is himself of mixed Indigenous/European heritage), human trafficking, the human greed behind corporate corruption and cultural destruction. – read the complete Variety review

Click here to read The Australian review.

Australia, 2016 |Language: English | 110 minutes | Cert: CLUB

Director: Ivan Sen

Cast: Aaron Pedersen, Alex Russell, Pei Pei Cheng, David Gulpilil, David Wenham, Jacki Weaver

Please note there is no film on 15 February.

ROSALIE BLUM [FRANCE], THU 22 FEBRUARY, 8PM

By archive, Season 18 films

A sweet but never saccharine French comedy about three misfits who bring out the best in each other.

Julien Rappeneau’s enchanting directorial debut is a warm, witty and impeccably performed comedy about a random encounter that has unexpected and far-reaching consequences. Thirty-something Vincent Machot is a hairdresser whose life rotates around work, his overbearing mother and a womanising cousin constantly trying to set him up. But one morning Vincent experiences a powerful déjà-vu when he meets the gaze of a grocery store clerk, Rosalie Blum.

And so begins a search to uncover the truth behind their connection. With its themes of altruism, forgiveness and the value of compassion, Rosalie Blum is a timely reminder of the best that French cinema has to offer.

Based on the graphic-novel trilogy by French artist Camille Jourdy.

Presented with the support of the French Embassy and the Institut Français. 
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A joy! Fresh and engaging.  A feel-good film which combines humour and eccentric touches with surges of genuine emotion. Light and life-affirming.Hollywood Reporter

Click here for official website.

France, 2016 | Language: French | 95 minutes | Cert: CLUB

Director:  Julien Rappeneau

Cast:  Noémie Lvovsky, Kyan Khojandi, Alice Isaaz, Sara Giraudeau

A short Irish film, Nice Night For It, will be shown before the feature.