Below are the films shown in 2021-2022, and a description of each film.

Wednesday September 22nd 2021
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UK   2017      93 minutes
Director: Richard Loncraine
Starring: Imelda Staunton, Celia Imrie, Timothy Spall

Sandra, who has just acquired the title of Lady Abbott by means of her husband’s honours, discovers at the celebration party that he is having a long-term affair with her best friend. Furious, she moves out to join her estranged sister Bif, who has a bohemian lifestyle in a modest flat on a London council estate. Eventually, Bif gently persuades Sandra to come to her local dancing classes, where she gradually begins to realise that there is more to life than wealth and a staid, oppressed retirement. Having ‘found her feet’, Sandra finally takes a great leap of faith. A positive, feel-good film, which should lift the spirits after the tedium of Covid.

Wednesday October 13th 2021
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Saudi Arabia   2019     104 minutes
Director: Haifaa Al Mansour
Starring: Mila Al Zahrani, Dae Al Hilali, Nora Al Awad

​Maryam Alsafan is an ambitious young doctor working in an underfunded local A&E clinic, accessed by a poor unpaved road. At the local airport she is denied access to a booked flight to Dubai: as a single woman she needs her father’s assent, and unfortunately he is away from home with a folk music group. Almost by accident she signs up as a candidate in the next local elections, making access to her clinic a stimulus for her campaign. This act of female independence is hardly welcomed by everybody in deeply conservative Saudi Arabia. A fascinating story and insight into life in a country struggling to come to terms with the idea of equal rights for women under the law.

Wednesday November 10th 2021

USA    2018   119 minutes
Director: Emilio Estevez
Starring: Alec Baldwin, Taylor Schilling, Emilio Estevez

‘The Public’ is the affectionate shorthand name for the public library in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. During opening hours, some of the city’s homeless meet there to socialise and use its facilities. One night the temperature plummets to record sub-zero levels, and the chief librarian decides to let the homeless shelter inside, and in effect helps them barricade themselves in. The city authorities interpret this not as an act of charity, but one of civil disobedience. The situation escalates as the media and the police get involved, and the city mayor (who is also a hopeful candidate for the post of district attorney) tries to engineer events for his political advantage.

Wednesday December 8th  2021

Israel/Palestine  2019   97 minutes
Director: Sameh Zoabi
Starring: Yaniv Biton, Kais Nashef, Lubna Azabi

‘Tel Aviv on Fire’ is the title of a popular TV show, produced in an Arabic studio in Ramallah but enjoyed by both Israelis and Palestinians. Salam, originally hired by the studio to advise on local dialects, finds himself responsible for the eagerly awaited twists and turns of the show’s plots. Having to cross the border to get to work, he gets involved with the commander of the border post, who has his own ideas on how the show should proceed. These clash with the ideas of the TV bosses, and the hapless Salam is caught in the cross-fire. To make a comedy out of the tensions in that part of the world might seem an impossible task, but the filmmakers have succeeded brilliantly.

Wednesday January 5th 2022 
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The Lebanon  2017  113 minutes
Director: Ziad  Doueiri
Starring: Adel Karam, Kamel El Basha, Rita Hayek

‘Wajib’ is an Arabic word expressing the feeling of duty and ‘obligation’. In this story we follow a father (Abu) and his estranged son (Shadi) as they drive around the city of Nazareth in the ancient family Volvo. They are fulfilling an old Muslim tradition of personally distributing invitations to the forthcoming wedding of Abu’s daughter. Shadi has briefly returned from Italy to help his father in this task, as Abu’s wife left him some time ago for a new life in America. As they call on relatives and old friends, and argue about politics, life and emigration, we get fascinating and subtle glimpses of what it means to live in a predominantly Muslim town ruled by the Israeli state.

Wednesday February 2nd 2022

Poland  2018     88 minutes
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Starring: Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot

Pawel Pawlikowski dedicated this film to his parents, and although a work of fiction he has apparently captured much of their troubled relationship. Wiktor is a professional musician, touring villages in post-war Poland seeking out talent for a newly formed centre of socialist folk art. He meets Zula, an attractive and strong-willed singer, and the two fall hopelessly in love, despite their wildly different temperaments. The story of their turbulent love affair is told in episodes in several different countries, all also facing rapid change .The film gains much from the beautiful black-and-white photography which distinguished Ida, Pawlikowski’s award-winning earlier film.

Wednesday March 2nd  2022
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UK   2018   120 minutes
Director: Marcus H Rosenmuller
Starring: David Kross, Freyor Mavor, John Henshaw

The unlikely but true story of Bernhard Trautmann, a German soldier captured during the war and sent to a PoW camp in Lancashire. He is seen playing football there by Jack Friar, a shopkeeper and manager of the local football team, who realises that Trautmann’s skills as a goalkeeper would make him a very useful member. He gets Trautmann out of the camp by offering him a day job in his shop, so allowing him to play with St. Helen’s Town team in his spare time. Despite initial hostility at a personal and team level, Trautmann manages to integrate into the community, thanks to the ability of the ’beautiful game’ to heal scars and even perhaps to allow romance to flourish.

Wednesday March 30th  2022

UK/France/Serbia   2019    123 minutes
Director: Ralph Fiennes
Starring: Oleg Ivenko, Ralph Fiennes, Louis Hofmann

The expression ‘a white crow’ is a Russian idiom for someone we would call ‘a black sheep’: standing out from the crowd, but not always for the best reasons. Rudolph Nureyev certainly fitted this description. Born on a train in 1938, and brought up in a poor family, years of hard training in Leningrad in the 1950s saw him become one of Russia’s greatest ballet stars. It was said that his athleticism defied gravity. But his personality was complicated and flamboyant, and his behaviour often difficult. In Paris in 1961 with the Kirov ballet, and under the watchful eye of the KGB, he saw a chance to ‘escape’ to the West. Could he dare to make such a life-changing decision? ​

Wednesday April 20th  2022
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UK   2018  101 minutes
Director: Trevor Nunn
Starring: Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Tom Hughes

Respectable, retired 80 year-old Joan Stanley is suddenly arrested at her home on the unlikely grounds that she is a Russian spy. As she is interrogated, a series of flashbacks show her university days as a physics student, and her later employment in a government research establishment. But this is not an unusual career path for a qualified scientist of her generation. Can she really be a Russian spy? Little by little her views and attitudes over time are explored, as she begins to realise the implications of her work on nuclear fission. A tantalising thriller.