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Free Solo
Outstanding Oscar-winning documentary of climber Alex Honnold’s solo, ropeless ascent of sheer 3000 feet El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. We watch the meticulous preparations and planning, the false starts and setbacks in a study of courage, skill and the single-mindedness of striving to achieve what no one else has. This crowd-pleasing doc with stunning…
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Jellyfish
Life is tough for 15 year-old Sarah, (Liv Hill in a terrific performance), mum is a bipolar, younger twin sisters are a handful and no one else is trying to hold things together. Sarah needs to earn money so there’s not much time for friendships at school. What if she could start earning money in…
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Red Joan
A film of non-linear story-telling as pensioner Joan (Judi Dench) remembers her time at Cambridge, its communist circles that drew her in and what followed. Could this unassuming old lady have been a spy sending classified information to the Soviet Union? Red Joan wonderfully realises 1930s Cambridge and Britain at war, while Sophie Cookson’s shy,…
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Boyz n the Hood
WFC celebrates Black History Month with the iconic debut of John Singleton, who died in April aged 51. A 22-year old screenwriting graduate when he started making the film (the screenplay was based on his thesis) he was the first African-American filmmaker, and remains the youngest person ever, nominated for a Best Director Oscar. Three…
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Shoplifters
It’s current day Japan, three generations of the Shibata family living together in a tumbledown shack in suburban Tokyo are finding it difficult to make ends meet. They resort to shoplifting, pooling their illicit gains. Things get more complicated when they take in a vulnerable young girl found shivering in the cold. This Palme d’Or…
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Faces Places
Unlikely couple 88 year-old director Agnes Varda and photographer and muralist JR (33) create a visual essay on the French in this quirkiest of road movies. Travelling throughout France with a box truck equipped with a portable photo booth and printing facility, they take photographs of the people they meet and places they see, and…
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Ninotchka
Garbo stars in a comedy romance, yes, this is the film where she laughs for the first time on screen. Gone is any trace of the tragic actor as Garbo plays a serious Russian sent to Paris on official business. Inculcated with loathing for Western values, she meets a roué out to charm her, played…
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Pond Life
Entrancing 1990s coming of age drama adapted by Richard Cameron from his own play, follows a group of young people (Trevor (Tom Varey), Pogo (Esme Creed-Miles) and Malcolm (Angus Imrie) over one summer as a legendary carp focuses their attention in a South Yorkshire mining village. Riveting realism & poetry enhanced by Richard Hawley’s haunting…
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The Pawnbroker
Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront, Dr Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night) launched a stellar career as a serious actor with his Oscar-nominated performance as an embittered concentration camp survivor running a pawnshop in 1960s Harlem. A powerful drama from director Sidney Lumet, who made some of Hollywood’s most visionary political/social dramas (12 Angry…
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Monos
High on a mountain in South America, eight teenage guerrillas guard a woman hostage and, almost as valuable, a milk cow called Shakira. The curious life of the regimented girls and boys is revealed against a surreal landscape of abandoned industrial buildings and panoramic views. Power plays and clashes spiral spectacularly when the teenagers are…