"It’s an elegant film, reckoning empathetically with an extremely complex topic" - Little White Lies
“Starts out as an odd couple story but evolves into something more complex and satisfying: a film about tradition, gender roles and family tensions.” - Wendy Ide, Observer
"It is about a world in which women’s lives are disposable and in which the authorities are disapproving of and disgusted by their suffering – and set at a time in which the first world war had normalised the idea of mass murder" – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian.
What a great weekend of films! Over 3000 seats were sold (the best since the pandemic) to watch a choice of over 40 films; even showing some of these twice, the Alhambra Screen One was totally sold out five times, whilst screen Two was filled eight times! There were three Oscar winners picked before the Oscars were even announced (not to mention 'Anora' that was shown at the Club in January) plus an amazing array of International films from all over the world, including Australia, Japan, China, Iran, Palestine, Mexico and even Bhutan, not to mention the UK, Europe and USA.
The audiences came from far and wide too – Scotland, London even Dorset as well as many from Cumbria and Lancashire – and included students from Edinburgh University, Carlisle College and Birkbeck College, whilst there were three film directors and several cast members visiting over the weekend, helping to celebrate alongside several of the stalwart members of the club who had run the festival over the past 25 years.
It is impossible to pick 'the best' film – it will be different for everyone anyway – but the Audience vote gave it to 'The Marching Band' from France, scoring an incredible 93% (This is being shown at Rheged again this Sunday at 2.00pm if anyone wants to see it – I will be there!) closely followed by 'This is Going to be Big' from Australia and 'The Monk and the Gun' from Bhutan. I managed to miss all those; my favourite was the Oscar winning 'Emilia Perez' which was stunning even the second time I saw it and was one of another eight films to score over 80%.
We have to thank Ian Payne, the Festival Director, who has run it so well since 2017, but has now handed on the baton to Julia Vickers who has kindly volunteered to run it next year – "Thank you so much Ian and very good luck, Julia - may it be even better than this year".
Vaughan Ames
This week it's the 25th Keswick Film Festival and one of the biggest programmes we've ever had. It starts on Thursday with Harvey Greenfield Is Running Late which is now sold out but there's an additional screening at 9:15 on Saturday morning. At the time of writing the closing film Cottontail looks like it might sell out as well so we're also showing it in Screen 2. In between there's plenty to see; from award hopefuls like The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez, previews of new films such as Flow, Sister Midnight and Misericordia and a 50th Anniversary screening of Tommy which Mark Kermode just described as "one of the most important and groundbreaking pop movies of all time" in his final Observer column. There are free short film at the Ospreys and showcase from Oska Bright Film Festival, £5 Family Films (which are all really great and not just for kids) and a selection of modern classics and favourites in the new Screen2/Take2 strand. The real question is how to you choose what not to see?