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Love Affair
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and then… Often cited, most famously in Sleepless in Seattle, this instant hit was twice remade: in 1957 with Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Cathleen Nesbitt; and in 1994 with Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Katherine Hepburn. McCarey, who directed the first two, was a key figure in 1930’s Hollywood, mainly
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The Farewell
In 2013, Chinese-American director Lulu Wang was told that her grandmother (‘Nai Nai’ in Chinese) had Stage 4 lung cancer with three months to live. The family decided not to tell Nai Nai of the diagnosis and devised a ruse — a fast-tracked wedding in her hometown Changchun —for everyone to see her one last
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Queen & Slim
A Tinder date gone wrong is the springboard for a tense yet romantic road-trip evoking Bonnie & Clyde, set against the backdrop of contemporary racial injustices in the USA. It stars two Brits: Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya, born in London of Ugandan parents, who won the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2018; and Jodie
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Bait
Named by critic Mark Kermode as the best film of the last decade and holder of the record of most ever votes received in a WFC Members’ Choice vote, this quirky drama wowed critics who hailed it as an instant masterpiece. The culture / class clash between locals and well-heeled outsiders forms the heart of
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The Personal History of David Copperfield
Dickens’ works tend to be adapted as serials, which is how he wrote them; the last cinema version of David Copperfield appeared over 50 years ago. The format imposes difficult choices: what to include, compress or omit? how to handle the novel’s first-person narrative and autobiographic perspective? Blackwell and Iannucci are both Dickens enthusiasts, and
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Birds of Passage
The origins of the Colombian drug trade, as seen through the eyes of an indigenous family from the matrilineal Wayúu tribe, residing in the remote northern desert region of Guajira, who become involved in the booming business of selling marijuana to American youth in the 1970s. Birds of Passage embraces the Wayúu language, traditions, rituals and
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The Big Heat
Police Sergeant Bannion is investigating the apparent suicide of a policeman, when he is suddenly ordered to stop. Bent coppers and systemic corruption drive this classic Hollywood noir, incisively directed by emigré Fritz Lang, visionary creator of the dystopian Metropolis and disturbing M. Essentially a 1950s B movie, The Big Heat has since attained enduring
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Honeyland
This surprise Sundance triple winner accompanies Hatidze Muratova, the last in a long line of wild beekeepers in northern Macedonia. The first film ever to be nominated for Oscars as both best documentary and best international feature film. Hatidze and her mother are the last inhabitants of an abandoned village in North Macedonia, where she
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Saint Maud
A private nurse for palliative care is convinced that God has a special purpose in store for her. Her new client is a terminally ill choreographer whose cynical bohemianism jars and spars with her own ecstatic asceticism. 31-year old National Film & Television School graduate Rose Glass, who was working five years ago as an
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Rocks
Teenage Shola, Rocks to her classmates, battles to care for herself and her younger brother after they are abandoned by their single mother. Director Sarah Gavron and writers Theresa Ikoko and Claire Wilson forsake the usual hierarchies of the film-making process and empower their cast to tell their story in their own words and way.










