Anora - Sunday 5th January 5pm

 

We hope you have saved some energy after the Christmas break as we start back on Sunday with Anora, the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes and the film voted Number two in the BFI best 50 films of 2024 - "a wild ride" and "absolutely breathless", "one of the films of the year" as Mark Kermode describes it on Kermode and Mayo's Take. If you don’t believe him, how about Deborah Ross in the Spectator – "I know you won’t believe it’s as good as everyone is saying it is until you hear it from me so here you are: yes, it’s as good as everyone is saying it is."

Films for 2025

If Only I Could Hibernate was the last film of the year but don't worry we'll be back on January 5th with the much acclaimed Anora. The programme for the full season is available to view here and the brochure is available to download or pick up from the Alhambra. There's 12 great films to take us through to the end of March and that's not including the 25th Keswick Film Festival.  If you head over the the Festival website you'll see more films added as they are confirmed, it looks like there's already some great ones to choose from. There's also a Films of the Century vote to pick from some of the best films of the last 25 years to show in screen 2 during the Festival. 

We hope you have a good Christmas and we'll see you in the New Year.

If Only I Could Hibernate - Sunday 22nd December 5pm

If Only I Could Hibernate was chosen by members last season, but it was withdrawn by the distributors; it is now available!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

Only The River Flows - Sunday 15th December 5pm

"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

About Dry Grasses - Sunday 8th December 5pm

Running over 3 hours is About Dry Grasses just a pretentious, too-long, art-house movie, or a masterpiece? A lot of critics are leaning towards the latter.

"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