If Only I Could Hibernate was chosen by members last season, but it was withdrawn by the distributors; it is now available! It was the first Mongolian film to be shown at Cannes Film Festival. It follows the daily life of Ulzii, a young 15-year-old boy, who is torn between personal ambition and family loyalty.
"Brings an earthy, lived-in authenticity to a premise that, in other hands, could feel like a piece of ethnographic voyeurism." - Wendy Ide, Observer
"Detective Ma Zhe wanders through the frames of Wei Shujun's period noir Only the River Flows, smoking cigarettes like carbon monoxide is actually his oxygen, almost always bedecked in his leather coat. These are the trademark symbols of a weary cop who has worked too long and seen too much" - Andy Crump, Paste Magazine.
"Fittingly, as pure cinema, Only The River Flows is a knockout: eerie and dreamlike" - Danny Leigh, Financial Times
"One of the best movies of this or any other year."- Bilge Ebiri New York, Magazine/Vulture
"There isn’t a boring frame in the film." - Josh Larsen, LarsenOnFilm
"It would be a waste to see About Dry Grasses anywhere other than on the largest screen, in the darkest cinema. It not only repays the time, it makes a change of pace nothing less than a moral recalibration." - David Sexton, New Statesman
This thriller-cum-political drama takes place in the Green Border - the space between Belarus and Poland where hopeful refugees wait the next stage of their journey into Europe…
"'Green Border' strikes me as the best and most important film to be released in the U.S. so far this year." - Godfrey Cheshire, RogerEbert.com
This week's film Here is not the new Tom Hanks film of the same name but a much better received film from Belgian director Bas Devos.
"[This] gentle, delicate and quietly beguiling movie, a prize winner last year in Berlin, is about love and fate. It crept up on me at its own measured walking pace" - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian.
"Brought to life by an electrifying cast fronted by Derbez and an ensemble of young actors already at the top of their game, while 'Radical' might feel like familiar territory, it is energized with so much heart and compassion that it feels almost impossible not to fall for its myriad charms." - Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, AWFJ
The Outrun starts in London where we meet Rona who is spiralling to the bottom of her alcoholic life, pushing her loving partner Daynin away on her way downwards. She decides to run for cover to the place of her youth, Orkney. Not out of the woods yet - her family there cause her more heartaches - but she gradually finds peace and tranquility in the remote and windswept Scottish Islands
Rona is played by Saoirse Ronan in another potentially award winning performance:
"When it comes to disappearing into emotionally and physically demanding roles, there are a few actors out there as gifted and committed" - Tomris Laffly, Harper's Bazaar.
Another Members' Choice this week with La Chimera. Josh O'Connor, who can do no wrong, stars in 'his best performance to date'; Alice Rohrwacher directs her 'best film to date'. How good can it get? The critics loved it.
"Not just great, but expansive: it shows new ways a movie can be." - Esmé Holden, Little White Lies
"Bracingly shot and edited, with impressive performances from the cast, the film is packed with powerfully intense moments." - Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall
In Hounds local mobster Dib's prized dog loses a fight, so he gets a couple of cheap goons , Hassan and Issam, to kidnap his rival. What could possibly go wrong? Just about everything as it turns out. We follow Hassan and Issam in almost real time through the surroundings of Casablanca as they try to recover from their initial mistake, only to get into more and more problems...
"A tense journey through the underbelly of Morocco’s largest city where a father and son walk a knife edge between life and death, right and wrong, reality and a spirit netherworld." - Lee Marshall, Screen International
"A very watchable, offbeat slice of period drama." - Leslie Felperin, Hollywood Reporter
"If you enjoy films that explain it all for you, then let me do you a kindness and say that 'Kinds of Kindness' is not for you. But if you like the kind of challenge that exasperates as often as it entertains, then this mesmerizing mindbender is just the provocation you need. It's your choice" -Peter Travers, ABC News.
"There's a real sense of fury behind this film... The problem at its core is systemic but [director] Jung makes a strong case to the effect that it must be addressed with the same vigour as one would expect if individuals were causing equivalent harm. Sohee is broken to the point where she cannot see any hope. Oh likewise makes some bleak discoveries, but her attitude – as someone older with a stronger sense of possibility – is very different. Next Sohee speaks for people who do not have a voice, and it does so eloquently". Jennie Kermode, Eye For Film
Our opening night starts with free drinks from 4.30pm, so do get there nice and early to see your friends. We start with Rose from Denmark.
The story of two sisters, Inger and Ellen, and how their relationship is challenged on a highly anticipated coach trip to Paris. When Inger announces her struggles with mental health to the group, the sisters are faced with pity from some and discrimination from others. On arrival in Paris, it soon becomes clear that Inger has a hidden agenda. ROSE is a film about love and care for each other, in spite of our differences, as much as it is a film about not judging a book by its cover.
"Gråbøl is superb throughout, recognising Inger as a complicated individual who has a lot more going on than just her illness." - Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film
And so our 25th Year comes to an end; we do hope you have enjoyed it! By the look of the votes most films seem to have gone down well, and more of you came to see them than last year so let's hope the Covid effect is wearing off; wouldn't it be great if next year sees our audiences reach the numbers they did before the pandemic!
We would like to thank all those who helped run the films this year, both for the club nights and the festival; the committee decision to try to involve more people seems to have been popular and successful - thank you all very much! Watch this space over the summer for requests for help next season; there might be a few more jobs for you to enjoy!
All that remains for us to do is to wish you all a great summer and to say we will be back in September (probably Sunday 8 September), and to remind you that it will be the Festival's 25th Birthday next year - Ian Payne, the Festival Director, has some great ideas to hep us celebrate! Put the dates in your diary now - 25th Keswick Film Festival - Thursday 6 March to Sunday 9 March.
"Comer’s vulnerability and idealism are authentic as are her determination and a dash of real ruthlessness... She carries everything with unselfconscious strength and style." - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"One of the most masterful debuts of a filmmaker that I've seen in a long time." - Claudia Puig, FilmWeek
The Festival may be over but we still have some great films coming up on Sunday evenings. This week it's Alexander Payne's The Holdovers starring Paul Giamatti which has been nominated for nearly 200 awards (including 5 Oscars) and had already won more than 100.
"Nothing about 'The Holdovers' sounds particularly special, and yet it's one of director Alexander Payne's best films – very funny, occasionally touching and a sterling example of the bonds that can be forged by an unlikely family. Set in a stiff New England private school in 1970, it passes the 'should see' test with flying colours" - Brian Lowry, CNN.
This Thursday sees the start of the 2024 Film Festival with the sold out European Première of Between The Lights (there are still some tickets available for the Saturday screening). From there our cinematic world tour takes in Malaysia, Mexico, Tunisia, Georgia, Japan, Iran and the USA. Recent BAFTA winners The Zone Of Interest and American Fiction are showing at the Alhambra on Sunday. The Osprey Short Film Awards are a free event at the Theatre By The Lake on Saturday featuring 9 new Cumbrian short films. The big screen at Rheged is in use once again for Samsara, The Taste Of Things, Tótem, Four Daughters and The New Boy. On Friday evening we'll be joined by co-directors Ali Catterall and Jane Giles for their riotous new doc Scala!!! (or to give the film its full title: Scala!!! Or, the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World's Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits). There are 24 feature films over the long weekend including award favourites, critically acclaimed selections and previews of films not yet on release in the UK.
Tickets and passes are available from the Alhambra, we hope to see you there.
This week you can see Emma Stone's BAFTA winning performance in Poor Things, the latest from the strangely brilliant director Yorgos Lanthimos. The film was nominated for 11 BAFTAS and also won for production design, make up and hair, costume and special visual effects.
Emma Stone stars as Bella, the 'Frankengirl' brought back to life by Doctor Baxter (Willem Defoe). Rather than becoming a monster, however, Bella gets more and more complete as she discovers first how to move and talk, then the pleasures of the flesh (with sleazy, caddish Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). But to Wedderburn's disgust, she then turns to reading and before you know it, she is out-thinking and outsmarting the men.
"Everything in it – every frame, every image, every joke, every performance – gets a gasp of excitement… And his leading lady is someone who takes it to the next career level, or the level beyond the next level" - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
We are having our normal very brief AGM before Love Life, please come for 4.30 onwards to enjoy a free drink while we make decisions for the coming year.
We have moved our AGM back in the calendar to allow time for the accounts to be audited, so this meeting will cover 18 months (but will still not take long as all the info you need is on our website, please try to read it before the meeting). The election of officers and Trustees is essential so do please come along or we will not be able to continue.
In a film strangely reminiscent of 'Past Lives', but with a very different feel, 'Love Life' explores Love and Life as past loves come back to haunt the lives of a Japanese couple.
In a wonderful, chaotic family, "The delicate domestic balance shared by Taeko and her second husband, Jiro, is upended when a tragedy strikes the family, in this wrenching Japanese melodrama from Kôji Fukada.
"An enormously poignant melodrama told at the volume of a broken whisper" - David Ehrlich, indieWire
“A disconcertingly beautiful picture about the ugliness of humanity.” - Wendy Ide, The Observer
To go with the MINT Chinese Film Festival taking place at the Alhambra from this Thursday 1st to Sunday 4th, this week we're showing Lost In The Stars, a cracking, Hitchcockian, twisty thriller.
A Chinese couple go away to an island for a weekend to celebrate their wedding anniversary, but the wife goes missing and then the twists and turns continue; definitely a thriller 'like they used to be'...
“This family drama masquerading as a murder-mystery touches on universal marital tensions; it is both enigmatic and very human.” - Laura Venning, Empire Magazine
A beautiful, gentle film about family, identity and so much more, which won its star, Sofia Otero the Best Actress award at the Berlin Festival… not bad for an 8 year old. Sofia plays Cocó, the youngest son of Ane, who is having problems with her marriage. When Ane takes her family to visit her own mother Lita in Spain, her own identity as a sculptor is thrown into doubt by Lita. Coco meanwhile is more and more sure he is a girl in a boy's body; the only person to accept this is her great aunt Lordes, who is happy with her bees, and with calling her Lucía. So...Pretty well the whole family have identity problems of their own.
With this gentle, empathic picture, [director] Urresola joins a conversation that usually plays out as a screaming match, and tones it down to a murmur. It turns out that you hear a lot more that way" - Wendy Ide, Guardian.
We hesitated about showing this documentary, but the constantly great reviews (100% on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.7 on IMDb) and the number of members who voted for it, persuaded us it should be seen: An inside view of the Russian occupation of this Ukrainian city is not going to be an easy watch, but probably one we all should see.
"A brave, visceral, merciless masterpiece... Feels like a cinematic siege of the soul." - Ed Vulliamy, The Guardian
