Frantz - Sunday 15th October 5pm

This week we're showing Frantz, the latest film from François Ozon. It is 1919, only a few weeks after the war has ended and the inhabitants of Quedlinburg - a small town in Germany - are trying to come to terms with losing the war and losing their loved ones. Anna cannot get over her fiancé, Frantz: she is even still living with his parents. She visits Frantz's grave every day. One day she sees a stranger placing flowers on the grave. He turns out to be Adrien...a Frenchman. What is he doing there? How did he know Frantz?

Aquarius - Sunday 8th October 5pm

We are off to Brazil this Sunday at 5.00 for Aquarius, in the company of Sonya Braga who plays Clara, a retired music critic, more interested in enjoying life than taking the money offered to her by developers who want her to move out of her apartment. The film is more about time; about ageing; about enjoying the place you live your life, than it is about the fight with the developers, taking in corruption in the state along the way ('allegedly' the film and Sonya Braga missed out on Oscar nominations due to the makers protests at Cannes about the former Brazilian president). As Ann Hornaday from the Washington Post puts it,  "Aquarius makes a compelling case for looking up from our ubiquitous distractions to take in the world around us - the one that we live in and, whether we're aware of it or not, lives in us". For us living in such a beautiful place as we do, this should be an easy lesson, but an enjoyable one too.

Land Of Mine - Sunday 1st October 5pm

If we all saw Dunkirk over the summer, here is a different take on World War II based on true events. Towards the end of the war Germany laid thousands of mines on the occupied Danish beaches. When peace came the Allied forces made a group of surrendered German boy soldiers remove them with their own bare hands. The initial understandable hostility of the Danish soldiers and people gradually changes as they get to know these boys. Directed by Martin Zandvliet, Land of Mine (Under Sandet) had its premiere at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Certain Women - Sunday 24th September 5pm

Certain Women is certainly a leading film for women in the cinema; written and directed by a woman (Kelly Reichardt) and starring four women (Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern and Lily Gladstone), it ticks all the boxes for an ‘F-Rated’ movie. Set in the heartland of Montana, the film focuses on the small events in the lives of these four women; there is little or no connection between them - it is the parallels between them that Kelly Reichardt is showing us. As Catherine Wheatley says in Sight & Sound, she does this with the help of some ‘breathtaking cinematography’ and some great acting – "They know to keep their counsel, these women: know the importance of restraint, silence, of knowing when to speak and when to act and when to stay still. So, too, does Reichardt". The result is "Powerful, focused, nervy, lean. Certain Women is a work of art produced by a director in full control of her material. It leaves you reeling". Prepare to be 'reeled'!

The Olive Tree - Sunday 17th September 5pm

The Olive Tree (El olivo) is a gentle and often humorous Spanish and German film about the olive heritage of southern Spain. I was talking to someone after seeing it who had just been in Spain and said that a two hour high speed train journey south from Madrid went past little else but olive trees and the occasional farmhouse for mile after mile. But this is a very special tree, 2000 years old and reluctantly sold by our hero Alma's grandfather in Valencia when he was desperate for cash to a German energy giant. A decade later he is suffering from dementia and Alma (Anna Castillo) thinks getting the tree back might help him. The story of how it is eventually returned to its home touches on corporate greed, what the French might call terroir and the power of social media. In Dusseldorf the tree looks a bit like we now see animals in a circus. How can anyone not like this film about the values that matter?