Second New Films for our 2024/2025 Season

Here are details of the films we will be showing in the second half of our 2024/2025 season. The titles of each film are linked to the Internet Movie Database, and there is a link to a trailer where available. A printable PDF version will be available shortly.

We Have Never Been Modern
Tuesday January 14th 2025 at 19.45

We Have Never Been Modern was the well-deserved winner of the Jury Prize at the recent Cheltenham International Film Festival. This stylish and multilayered period film set in 1937 gives a glimpse of a pre-war Czechoslovakia.

In the developing new town of Svit, factory manager Alois and his wife, the factory nurse, Helena, are expecting a visit from the owner and also, imminently, their first baby. They are happy and excited for the future and all is going well until the body of an intersex baby is found on the site. Alois rushes to cover up the discovery; an unsuccessful visit will undermine the future of the factory and town. Helena worries that the deformity might be caused by the environment and affect her own baby. They both begin to investigate, going down very different paths. The film is led by an assured performance by Czech actress, Eliška Křenková as Helena; trans actor Richard Langdon gives authentic support. This tense, thought-provoking drama explores complex and sensitive themes which give it a very contemporary relevance.

Content note: graphic medical images and discussion of hermaphroditism.

Perfect Days
Tuesday January 28th 2025 at 19.45

Perfect Days tells a story celebrating the hidden joys and minutiae of Japanese culture. Hirayama is a contemplative middle-aged man, who lives a life of modesty and serenity, spending his days balancing his job as a dutiful caretaker of Tokyo’s numerous public toilets with his passion for music, literature and photography. As we join him on his structured daily routine, a series of unexpected encounters gradually begin to force him to connect to a hidden past that lies behind his otherwise content and harmonious life. Combining a fascinatingly unusual depiction of the Japanese capital with a wonderful soundtrack, this is a subtle and ultimately life-affirming reflection on finding beauty in the everyday world around us.

The Night of the 12th
Tuesday February 4th 2025 at 19.45

The Night of the 12th is a police thriller with a difference which starts with a spoiler but is gripping throughout. Although transposed to a rural setting the film is based on a shocking real murder case which is graphically shown.

Detective Yohan Vives has only just taken over as head of the detective bureau of the local police department when he is assigned to the horrific murder of a young woman in a quiet mountain village. But what starts as a meticulous investigation into the victim’s life soon turns into a dogged obsession for ‘Chief’ Yohan and his team as the killer continues to remain at large. The intelligent screenplay follows an unconventional route as the police uncover the sad underbelly of a small community where the victim is thought to be in some way to blame for her own tragedy. Winner of six César awards, The Night of the 12th is an engaging and superior crime thriller from acclaimed French director Dominik Moll.

Content note: Graphic images of the murder and body

Joyland
Tuesday February 11th 2025 at 19.45

A film from Pakistan which has much to say about the cultural values of its country of origin. A beautifully observed human drama focusing on Haider and Mumtaz, who live with their well-to-do extended family in Lahore where traditional patriarchal assumptions are taken for granted. The expectations of family and culture drive the plot. We first see Haider helping around the house, looking after the family’s children. He is unemployed. His wife, Mumtaz, enjoys her work as a beauty therapist. Pressed to find a job Haider finds a role as a dancer in an erotic burlesque show – something he tries hard to conceal from his family – while Mumtaz is forced by her father-in-law to stop work to fulfil the family’s care needs. Haider soon becomes infatuated with Biba, the trans woman who runs the show and begins to find peace in a world where he feels he belongs. Mumtaz becomes increasingly depressed and frustrated and the family starts to disintegrate. There are touches of humour, sadness and poignancy, and dancing! A brave and passionate plea for understanding.

The Zone of Interest
Tuesday February 25th 2025 at 19.45

Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig strive to build a dream life for their family. But where their garden wall ends there is a much taller wall, with barbed wire … they live immediately next door in their tidy and well-maintained house and lovingly tended garden. Hedwig shows off her house and garden to friends and family as would any German hausfrau of the time. Rudolf regards the deaths in the killing factory beyond the wall as just quotas and statistics, concerned only with numbers and efficiency.

Avoiding explicit holocaust imagery, the imagery created by Jonathan Glazer stays with you – plumes of smoke in the background, ash in the river when the family go fishing, Höss’ bloody boots – evoking the concept of ‘the banality of evil’. The sound design and the dissonant score by Mica Levi, emphasise the frightening psychology of Höss and those driven by such a malign ideology. In his rigorous and unsentimental version of history Glazer provokes us to comprehend what inhumanities our sheltered everyday lives enable us to suppress or ignore. A powerful exploration of inhumanity and a brilliant work of cinema, simultaneously chilling and compelling.

Content note: Conveys the atrocities of the Holocaust without directly showing them. Disturbing scenes.

La Chimera
Tuesday March 25th 2025 at 19.45

A period drama, adventure, comedy, fantasy, romance? With its inventive storytelling, it really is all of these! Picaresque characters abound in this eccentric and beguiling film from director, Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro, also shown at CFS); her trademark magic realism elevating this fascinatingly chaotic story.

Disgraced archaeologist Arthur, recently released from prison, reluctantly reunites with his gang of tombaroli (tomb robbers). They use his mysterious divination skills to locate ancient tombs and plunder Etruscan artefacts which are sold on to a dealer and ultimately end up in the hands of the world’s wealthiest collectors. Opportunities to make money are few in this crushingly poor region of rural Italy but Arthur’s reason is much more opaque. He is haunted by past memories of his lost love, Beniamina; in his dreams he follows a ‘mythical’ thread of her red dress unravelling. His loss takes him back to a remote mansion in Tuscany where her mother still lives. Influenced by the best of Italian cinema, 1980s Italy is beautifully realised by the production design and wonderful cinematography. A captivating story with a great cast, notably an impressive performance by Josh O’Connor as Arthur. Despite the melancholy, there is beauty here and it is full of life; enhanced by an excellent use of music and songs.

Content note: Although some dialogue is in English, by far the most is in Italian. Josh O’Connor grew up and went to school in Cheltenham and went on to train at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Prayers for the Stolen
Tuesday April 8th 2025 at 19.45

A first fiction film for documentarian, Tatiana Huezo. A subtle, tender story of a young girl’s upbringing in a village menaced by the drug cartels and people traffickers. With its visual beauty, poetry and honesty this film is immersive and powerful. Set In Jalisco in Mexico, poverty, corruption and the ongoing drug war have produced a hostile environment. Most of the men have fled or been killed. Left behind are the women and girls who are at the mercy of the cartel; and violence, although not explicitly seen, is destroying their lives. Following Ana from girl to young teen, this is her ‘coming of age’ story. Through Ana’s eyes and experiences her story gives us an extraordinary look at the slow poisoning of childhood innocence. With its quality of realism immersing us in Ana’s world, this beautiful film says more than any documentary ever could.

The Taste of Things
Tuesday April 15th 2025 at 19.45

An autumn romance set very much in the kitchen and around the preparation of French cuisine back in 1889. Juliette Binoche excels as the experienced cook Eugénie who, for twenty years, has worked for the celebrated gourmet Dodin Bouffant. The gourmet and the cook enjoy one another’s company as well as sharing a love of food, and their romance has undoubtedly developed, slowly and subtly, over a long period. The relationship reaches a critical point as preparations are made for a dinner where a prince will be the guest of honour. Sumptuous and precise filmmaking. The Taste of Things was chosen over Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall for France’s 2024 International Feature Oscar submission and Tran was named Best Director at Cannes last year for this film.

Content note: The director of the film was actually born in Vietnam, but moved to France, aged twelve, following the fall of Saigon in 1975.

The Teachers’ Lounge
Tuesday April 29th 2025 at 19.45

What happens in the teachers’ lounge stays in the teachers’ lounge, or does it?

Dedicated young teacher, Carla Nowak has just started work in her first job in a middle school when a series of petty thefts occur. The faculty follows procedure and holds an investigation where the two student representatives are pressured into identifying those they believe to be guilty. One of Carla’s students is suspected, based on little more than his ethnicity. She believes he has been falsely accused and decides to take the matter into her own hands to find the thief and exonerate him. Her actions result in a series of unexpected consequences leading to accusations and mistrust among parents and colleagues. Carla is caught in the middle as it spirals out of control.

This taut and cleverly plotted Oscar-nominated International Feature drama plays out like a thriller, asking troubling questions and provoking many conflicting opinions and ideas. There is plenty to talk about afterwards!

We Have Never Been Modern Tuesday January 14th 2025 at 19.45

Perfect Days Tuesday January 28th 2025 at 19.45

The Night of the 12th Tuesday February 4th 2025 at 19.45

Joyland Tuesday February 11th 2025 at 19.45

The Zone of Interest Tuesday February 25th 2025 at 19.45

La Chimera Tuesday March 25th 2025 at 19.45

Prayers for the Stolen Tuesday April 8th 2025 at 19.45

The Taste of Things Tuesday April 15th 2025 at 19.45

The Teachers’ Lounge Tuesday April 29th 2025 at 19.45