Wimbledon Film Club

Synopsis

Widely regarded as a masterpiece of French and humanist cinema, Jean Renoir’s 1937 tale of French POWs during the Great War deals with themes of class and social value as well as chivalry and resistance, reflecting the tensions in French society as another war approached.

“The “grand illusion” of Jean Renoir’s great film referred originally to the British author Norman Angell’s belief that the supposed financial advantage of war is a falsehood. For Renoir this illusion evolves into something more complex and various, and so does its tragic and ironic grandeur.” Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian.

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Location

Wimbledon Film Club, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

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Synopsis

A coming-of-age tale set in a remote North Macedonian village, the film centres on the protagonist Ahmet who seeks comfort in music as he tries to mollify his angry father and protect his younger brother. The film won numerous international awards, notably at the Sundance Film Festival.

“Modernity frequently seeps into tradition in Unkovski’s tender feature debut, which smartly dissects the rigidity of this ultra-religious, heavily gendered society without ever cruelly scrutinising the people whose lives have been hermetically sealed by convention.” Rafa Sales Ross – Sight and Sound

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Location

Wimbledon Film Club, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Booking Link

This is an external website; My Community Cinema take no responsibility for the content of this page.

Tickets

Synopsis

A young woman, freshly released from prison, tries to regain custody of her two children.

“Molly is volatile, reckless, self-sabotaging; constantly breaking her promises to toe the line, much to her daughter’s distress. A chance encounter with childhood friend Amina offers succour, but it’s unclear whether Molly can escape the shadow of her own childhood trauma.” Catherine Wheatley – Sight and Sound.

“It’s an impassioned, humane and urgently performed drama, a vivid look at what it’s like to be reduced to screaming anguish by the system – as well as what it’s like to work for the system, and to be the brick wall getting screamed at.” Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian.

Additional Info

Location

Wimbledon Film Club, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Booking Link

This is an external website; My Community Cinema take no responsibility for the content of this page.

Tickets

Synopsis

An introverted girl finds herself challenged when she joins a school choir on a retreat to a convent in Slovenia. The film is notable for its use of music and its intense emotional feeling. This is a symphonic work that leads to a powerful crescendo and an optimistic coda.

“This elegant and mysterious debut from Slovenian director Urška Djukić, with its superb musical score and sound design, reinvents the cliched idea of a Catholic girl’s sexual awakening. … This is an utterly absorbing and outstandingly acted film.” Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian.

Additional Info

Location

Wimbledon Film Club, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Booking Link

This is an external website; My Community Cinema take no responsibility for the content of this page.

Tickets

Synopsis

“Sumptuous, sensual and impossibly handsome” Observer

Benoit Magimel and Juliette Binoche (formerly a couple in real life) star as a wealthy gourmet & his sous-chef, living and working together in late 19thC rural France. This lavish gastromance won the Cannes Best Director Award, and was France’s submission to the Oscars.

“If Tran Anh Hung’s luminous period romance had been released in 1985, it would have played for six months straight at your local arthouse cinema …blissfully restorative, a movie that gives you back something you didn’t realize you’d lost” Time Magazine.

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Location

The Taste of Things, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“emotionally searing but ultimately uplifting epic” Hollywood Reporter

Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone’s gripping and visually extravagant epic follows two endearing Senegalese teenagers, undertaking a perilous journey across Africa to make a new life in Europe. Nominated for the Best International Film Oscar & Golden Globe.

“real-life testimonies dramatised with youthful verve and extravagant flights of fancy … a true adventure” Irish Times

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Location

Io Capitano, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“one of Nicholson’s finest performances … a succession of dazzling scenes” Observer

Jack Nicholson announced himself as a leading man with his iconic portrayal of flawed American anti-hero Bobby Dupea: torn between his cultured upper-class background, and the blue-collar world he has adopted. Easy Rider producer Bob Rafelson’s influential and critically acclaimed drama is regarded as a touchstone movie of the ‘New Hollywood’ era of the early 1970s.

“It’s a movie made by a gang of film lovers … borne out of their collective love of the kinds of movies that it seemed no one in Hollywood wanted to make. Until they did.” Variety

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Location

Five Easy Pieces, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“A quietly captivating experience” Sight & Sound.

Adaptation of John McGahern’s award-winning novel: an author and his wife relocate from 1980s England to the Irish village in which he grew up. This affecting and visually stunning chronicle of the beauty found in everyday life has been a hit in community cinemas across the UK.

“A profound experience, a wonderful film.… Beautiful, incredibly moving” Irish Times.

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Location

That They May Face The Rising Sun, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“beautifully shot and superbly acted” London Evening Standard

An incident involving a troubled schoolboy has ramifications for the wider community. Shape-shifting mystery drama from distinguished Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters), featuring a score by the late great Ryuichi Sakamoto. Winner Cannes Best Screenplay Award.

“the narrative peels away the diversionary misapprehensions until it arrives at its emotional kernel of truth … a film created with a great moral intelligence and humanity.” Guardian

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Location

Monster, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“Consistently hilarious” Empire

The star (Paul Giamatti) and director (Alexander Payne) of Sideways reunite, in this funny and bittersweet comedy-drama about staff and pupils of a New England boarding school ‘held over’ to reluctantly spend the holidays together. This Oscar and Golden Globe-winner has been acclaimed as an instant new Christmas classic.

“the most charming Yuletide movie for an age … a highly skilled, sharply intelligent comic drama “ Financial Times

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Location

The Holdovers, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“A raw and potent piece of storytelling that grabs you by the heart and doesn’t let go.” Wendy Ide, Observer

A moving meditation on love, loneliness and the nature of family starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell & Claire Foy. Winner of 7 British Independent Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Screenplay.

“A film so personal, emotional and resonant, yet also so satisfying within its place in a genre.” Edgar Wright, filmmaker.

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Location

All of Us Strangers, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“The movie uplifted me in the ways only good cinema can.” John Thomason, Boca Magazine

In her first starring role at the age of 94, June Squibb plays a doting grandmother who is scammed out of $10,000. With the police offering no help, she decides to track down the scammers and recover her money.

“The journey, a Tom Cruise-inspired action arc if the obstacles were stairs and the gadgets hearing aids, is a delight to behold.” Adrian Horton, Guardian

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Location

Thelma, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“This is a gentle, sensual gem of a film.” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

A drolly amusing Georgian comedy-drama that tackles the way life can take a sharp turn in middle-age. As the taciturn shopkeeper who rebels against her lot after a near-death experience, Eka Chavleishvili is both sympathetic and constantly surprising.

“A most unusual feminist heroine, one experiencing the mischievous, rarely seen triumph of a woman coming into bloom just as those around her are beginning to fade.” Jessica Kiang, Variety

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Location

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“This ravishing and witty spectacle invades the mind through eyes that are dazzled without ever being anesthetised.” Vincent Canby, New York Times

Sally Potter’s 1992 film, already regarded as a classic of British cinema, stars Tilda Swinton in a clever, visually-arresting adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel. Restored in 4K and re-released in 2022 to mark its 30th anniversary.

“Rarely have source material, director, and leading actress been more in alignment.” Matthew Connolly, Slant Magazine

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Location

Orlando, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“One of Bergman’s very best films and perhaps his most influential.” Richard Brody, New Yorker

A young couple flee Stockholm in a boat to spend an idyllic summer on an island. A key work by writer and director Ingmar Bergman, the film was initially notorious for a nude scene that helped establish Sweden’s reputation as sexually liberal.

“Like so many women or men her age, [Monika] hasn’t quite found her place in the world, or realized the long-term effects of her behavior.” Q.V. Hough, rogerebert.com

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Location

Summer With Monika, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“The film shows the two conflicting forces: the escape impetus and the loyalty impetus.” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

A Mongolian-set drama about a teenager who must balance the demands of his dysfunctional family and the possibilities opened up by academic success.

“[The film] brings an earthy, lived-in authenticity to a premise that, in other hands, could feel like a piece of ethnographic voyeurism.” Wendy Ide, Observer

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Location

If Only I Could Hibernate, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“Seeing life through Hirayama’s eyes you are reminded of how important it is to look around you and see the beauty in the everyday.” Dominic Hayes, Mancunion

Hirayama, played by Koji Yakusho, a middle-aged toilet cleaner in Tokyo, enjoys a rich interior life through reading, photography and classic rock cassette tapes. Wim Wenders’ film artfully mixes the simple enjoyment of the world with the tribulations of human engagement.

“It’s magnificent works like this that keep me so in love with cinema. Film, in and of itself, helps me cherish life.” Andreas Babiolakis, Films Fatale

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Location

Perfect Days (members' choice), Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“[A] haunting, peculiar and often expressly queer story of social isolation and outsider survival.” Guy Lodge, Variety

A rootless mother and teenage son struggle to get by in an inhospitable society, drifting from one Moroccan town to another, bound by a shameful secret and forced by circumstance into selling themselves.

“The story fills with careens of fate and shifting personal dynamics. The title is borrowed from a 1950 Joan Crawford movie, but the film has the punch of an earlier Crawford landmark, Mildred Pierce.” Danny Leigh, Financial Times

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Location

The Damned Don't Cry, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“a rom-com with heart, wit and style” (LA Times)

Two twenty-somethings connect over the course of an eventful day in South London. Raine Allen-Miller’s refreshing take on the meet cute romcom received 2 BAFTA nominations.

“will leave you with a smile on your face, a spring in your step and, hopefully, a renewed confidence in next wave British film making” (Observer)

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Location

Rye Lane (members’ choice), Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“chalk-snappingly tense watch” (Telegraph)

A petty theft in a secondary school leads to a chain-reaction of events in this nail-biting thriller. Writer-director Ilker Catak’s drama won four German Film Awards and was nominated for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.

“far more than a conventional whodunit, though it does build a nice head of suspense as it grapples with themes of justice, doubt and bias.” (Washington Post)

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Location

The Teachers' Lounge (members' choice), Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“exquisite – a vital ensemble drama that’s suffused with joy and love.” (Observer)

This tender, lyrical and often joyous film follows a family gathering over the course of one day, to celebrate the birthday of a terminally ill family member. Mexican writer-director Lila Aviles‘ second feature won an award at the prestigious Berlin International Film Award. 

“the solemn is wreathed with the festive … the surprising thing about this film, given its potential for devastation, is how funny it can be.” (New Yorker)

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Location

Tótem, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“The film can be heisty, larky and madcap. It also comes wrapped up with metaphysics, economics and grief.” (Financial Times)

A haunting film, with a strong vein of anarchic comedy, about our connections to the past and how the living feed off the dead, financially and emotionally. It combines Italian neorealism and the Gothic in a manner distinctive of Alice Rohrwacher’s cinema.

“La Chimera is a film that utterly occupies its own fictional space; it expresses its eccentric romance in its own fluent movie dialect. I was utterly captivated by this sad, lovelorn adventure.” (Guardian)

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Location

La Chimera, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“brims with genuine feeling” (NY Times)

Two Danish sisters take a coach trip to Paris – one of whom, Rose (Scandi noir icon Sofie Grabol), has schizophrenia. This compassionate and often very funny comedy-drama, based on the experiences of writer-director Niels Arden Oplev’s sister, was a big hit at the Danish box office.

“Sofie Grabol shines in a moving drama about mental illness, intolerance and the healing power of family” (Times)

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Location

Rose, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“lovely and bittersweet comedy of moments seized in the autumn of life” (Financial Times”

A septuagenarian widow, living a lonely and humdrum life in Tehran, seeks another chance at romance. Filmmakers Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s tender, humane romantic comedy won two awards at the Berlin International Film Festival.

“radical and heartwarming … a reminder that in a world where everyone is scrutinised and judged, pure love remains timeless.” Time Out

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Location

My Favourite Cake, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“A masterpiece” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

In honour of their late grandmother, two mismatched cousins embark on a tour of Poland in this funny, intelligent road trip comedy. Writer-director-star Jesse Eisenberg won the Best Original Screenplay BAFTA; while a scene-stealing Kieran Culkin swept the awards season board, winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

“A real treat, a tender, funny treatise on family jealousies and our relationship to the past” Ian Freer, Empire Magazine

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Location

A Real Pain, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“gorgeous celebration of female camaraderie and second chances” Wendy Ide, Observer

Crowd-pleasing romantic comedy-drama set against the unlikely backdrop of a chicken-packing factory in industrial North Wales, aided by a heart-swelling musical soundtrack. Welsh writer-director Janis Pugh’s engaging debut feature has been critically acclaimed; we are delighted to welcome her to WFC for a post-screening Q&A.

“There is a terrific warmth and emotional generosity to this romantic comedy-drama … a lot of inventive entertainment with quasi-musical sequences” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

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Location

Chuck Chuck Baby, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“remarkable, raw-boned and ravishing” Jessica Kiang, Variety

Everyday life in a remote Alpine village during WW2 is profoundly disrupted by the arrival of a Sicilian stranger. This painterly rural drama from Maura Delpero won the Venice Silver Lion, and was Italy’s submission to the Academy Awards.

“Vermiglio is exquisite. There’s a rough, earthy tenderness to the picture and a kinship with other recent examples of Italian folk cinema.” Wendy Ide, Observer

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Location

Vermiglio, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“gives new life to John Keats” Liz Moody, Empire Magazine

London 1818: Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) is increasingly drawn to the handsome but aloof poet John Keats (a young Ben Whishaw). Writer-director Jane Campion (The Piano) received a Palme d’Or nomination for her understated yet deeply romantic literary drama.

“Bright Star deals with the sonnets and the bonnets with wit and restraint, and proves that a chaste romance needn’t lack for passion, or poetry.” Anthony Quinn, The Independent

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Location

Bright Star, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“sincere and uplifting tale” Linda Marric, The Sun

An internationally renowned orchestra conductor discovers he has unexpected ties in a French mining community and its marching band. Emmanuel Courcol’s engaging, entertaining underdog drama was a big box office hit in France, and received seven Cesar nominations.

“Warm and sure-footed, the film has the feel of a richly satisfying meal in an excellent neighbourhood bistro. Old world pleasures of character and story are generously apportioned.” Danny Leigh, Financial Times

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Location

The Marching Band, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“powerfully dreamlike” Danny Leigh, Financial Times

The buried secrets of a middle-class Zambian family are brought to light at the funeral of a family member. This powerful yet surreal drama won Welsh-Zambian writer-director Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not a Witch) a Cannes Un Certain Regard directing award; and has cemented her reputation as a rising star.

“Rungano Nyoni is one of the most exciting voices in cinema today and On Becoming a Guinea Fowl is abject proof: a disquieting, blistering examination of a family where social status trumps blood ties.” Kambole Campbell, Empire Magazine

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Location

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

“The film-making style of Aki Kaurismaki – gentle, charming, quirky and utterly unique – could hardly be seen to better effect than in this deadpan comedy.” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian.

A man travelling to Helsinki is assaulted, taken to hospital and pronounced dead. This marks the start of a tale with biblical echoes – of Lazarus, Job and the Good Samaritan – but which is shot through with Kaurismaki’s wry humour and eye for the everyday absurd. Winner of 4 prizes at Cannes, including the Palme Dog, this is widely regarded as one of the Finnish auteur’s finest works.

“[Kaurismäki] perfects his trademark formula of deadpan humor and arctic circle pathos in this brilliantly ironic 2002 comedy.” Barbara Scharres, Chicago Reader.

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Location

The Man Without a Past, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

Based on the 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock is both a mystery on the scale of geological time and the product of a specific moment in the flowering of Australian cinema in the 1970s.

Australia’s New Wave combined historical drama, Gothic horror and a new appreciation of the country’s physical and social complexity in films as varied as Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), George Miller’s Mad Max and Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career (both 1979), but it unquestionably reached a peak in this entirely fictional tale of a group of schoolgirls who disappear on a trip to an extinct volcano: a real location in Victoria, often used for rock concerts.

The sensual and troubling atmosphere that Weir skillfully evokes has proved a lasting influence not only on other filmmakers but on forms as diverse as fashion photography and music videos. The film’s sense of languor and mystery is helped by a soundtrack that includes both classical music and the haunting airs of Romanian pan-pipes.

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Location

Picnic at Hanging Rock, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

Part time farmer Louise Courvoisiers’ debut film, Holy Cow, is centred on a family of struggling farmers in the remote Jura region. Being France, cheese is never far away.

Teenage Totone’s (Clément Faveau) carefree drinking and cavorting ways are challenged when he suddenly has to provide for his young sister. The family farm is failing and he manages to get a job in the local dairy, however, that is no way to make ends meet. Can he do so by producing an award winning cheese and so win a competition prize?

Maïwene Barthelemy’s performance is wonderful, as the teenage farmer with whom Totone falls in love. Forcing him to grow up, she challenges his swagger and underlying insecurities.

The stunning countryside of the hills and verdant fields of the Jura is juxtapositioned with hard scrabble rural working class poverty.

The cheesemaking scenes are almost handled with reverence, certainly a great respect for the small-scale artisanal way of life.

It’s a warm hearted coming of age drama with a non professional cast.

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Location

Holy Cow, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

Sandhya Suri’s feature debut, Santosh, is a muscular Hindi-language police procedural set in rural north India. Elegantly scripted by the British-Indian former documentary maker, the film combines gripping storytelling with a sharp awareness of modern India’s darker realities: police corruption and brutality, entrenched sexism, caste prejudice and anti-Muslim sentiment.

The film follows its newly widowed protagonist, Santosh (Shahana Goswami), who is offered her late husband’s police job through a government scheme. The role grants her independence from her oppressive in-laws and fosters a growing sense of self-worth. Calm, diligent and serious, she proves naturally suited to the work.

When the murder of a Dalit girl threatens to inflame local tensions, veteran officer Geeta (Sunita Rajwar) recruits Santosh as her deputy. It soon becomes clear this promotion is a dubious honour. Geeta’s charisma and ruthlessness command respect, but her methods and motives are troublingly opaque. Through Goswami’s quietly intelligent performance, the film suggests that a case being closed does not necessarily mean justice has been served.

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Location

Santosh, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

Wong Kar-wai originally envisaged a three-part anthology but was so taken with the individual stories that he expanded them to the point where it made more sense to separate them into two films. The second film is Fallen Angels (1995), a more hard-boiled crime thriller but with the same distinctive visual style and directorial panache.

As the director explained, “The main characters of Chungking Express are not Faye Wong or Takeshi Kaneshiro, but the city itself, the night and day of Hong Kong. Chungking Express and Fallen Angels together are the bright and dark of Hong Kong.”

The two stories in Chungking Express both concern policemen who have just been left by their girlfriends and who retreat into obsessive and maudlin behaviour to deal with the breakup. In each case they encounter very different women, more practical and philosophical, who help them resurface. The two stories have deliberate echoes of each other, giving the feel of a series of variations on a theme, which in turn highlights the important role of music and motifs, such as food and airplanes.

Among the director’s body of work, the film is notable for its wry humour. Where it is more typical of his style is in the saturated colours and kinetic cinematography made famous by his 2000 film, In The Mood for Love.

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Location

Chungking Express, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

Superficially a melodrama that owes more to Mills & Boon than German Expressionism, the Hamburg-born Douglas Sirk’s second film with the pairing of Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson, after 1954’s Magnificent Obsession, has proved remarkably influential, inspiring films as diverse as Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven (2002).

Flipping the conventions of the May-September romance by having an older woman fall for a younger man, All That Heaven Allows is a film about social non-conformism that prefigures many of the themes of the 1960s despite its strait-laced appearance. Hudson’s character Ron is not only an arborist at ease with nature, but an avid reader of the philosopher Henry David Thoreau who introduces Wyman’s character Cary to a more culturally and emotionally diverse, even Bohemian, circle.

Subsequent readings of the film have emphasised the queer subtext (at one point, Cary asks Ron if he would like her as a man), the saturated colours and symbolism of the visuals, and the subtle irony at work. The over-riding theme is captured in Ron’s quotation of Shakespeare: “To thine own self be true.”

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Location

All That Heaven Allows, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

Souleymane, a Paris food delivery cyclist and asylum seeker has two days to prepare his story for a make-or-break interview to secure legal residency.

Ben Nicholson in Sight and Sound said “As the script teases out the details of what he’s been through, it acutely humanises this young single male who has come to Europe in a boat. The effect is profound”.

Sam Leigh, Financial Times film critic said, “the movie comes to rest with a closing scene that is impossible to shake”.

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Location

Souleymane's Story, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

Two World War One veterans meet in a Yorkshire village in 1920 where they are employed on archaeological and conservation work.

Based on J. L. Carr’s 1980 novel and with a screenplay by the playwright Simon Gray, the film explores the loss of spirituality after the war and themes of happiness, melancholy and nostalgia as the men seek to integrate into village life and simultaneously confront their past traumas and current disappointments.

The film is notable for early career parts for Colin Firth, Kenneth Branagh and Natasha Richardson.

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Location

A Month in the Country, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

A teenage girl in Corsica, initially disappointed to be dragged into her father’s orbit, seeks to establish a firmer relationship with him as a gang war erupts and both find themselves in danger. A stylish thriller that owes a debt to The Godfather, Julien Colonna’s film features a cast composed largely of first-time local actors.

“There are fierce and overwhelmingly authentic performances here from first-timers in Julien Colonna’s terrific mob drama. … intensely atmospheric, absorbing and exciting.” Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian

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Location

The Kingdom, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE

Synopsis

A rich widower separately invites a former folk duo, now estranged, to his island to play a special concert. Written by the actors Tim Key and Tom Basden, this comic tale possesses both charm and a wry sense of the absurdities of a career in music.

“The wordplay is fun. What you also don’t anticipate is how poignant it all gets — a melancholy farce with an oddly pure soul.” Danny Leigh – Financial Times

“The film bewitches you with its seemingly spontaneous humor, a cadre of original soulful folk tunes, and its adoration of the breathtaking surroundings.” Roger Daniels – rogerebert.com

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Location

The Ballad of Wallis Island, Curzon Cinema, Second Floor, 23 The Broadway, London, SW19 1RE