A tale of Syrian refugees and asylum seekers set in the summer of 2016, just after the Brexit vote. The Old Oak is the local pub where the landlord is only just hanging on due to deprivation and poverty in the village. Не refuses to get involved in the issues of the refugees. While some in the community have some sympathy with the refugees there is hostility at the apparent benefits the refugees get.
He gradually softens towards the refugees and together with Yara, the young Syrian woman, organises a food kitchen where the community can get together socialise and gradually get to understand each other. It is a complex film with issues such as Brexit, racism, poverty and alienation running throughout.
This documentry film based on Isabella Tree’s best-selling book Wilding tells the story of Knepp, and how a dying landscape is healed against the odds and becomes a place where mussel-diving pigs, storks and butterflies find sanctuary, and where thriving flora and a vast array of animals have taken back the land.
Watch this incredible story of a young couple that set to work with their ground-breaking vision, battling entrenched tradition and daring to place the fate of their farm in the hands of nature, and be inspired by this story of rewilding and ecological regeneration.
Based on a memoir by Amy Liptrot, the film is set in the other worldly Orkney Islands where Rona goes to recover from her life of addiction to drugs and drink in London.
Saoirse Ronan is outstanding in this sometimes painful drama. The cinematography is at times breathtaking and the film is brilliantly directed by Nora Fingscheidt.
(2024) 1h55 min. English. Directed by Nora Fingscheidt.
Based on a novel by Anthony Quinn The Critic is a period thriller drama with wicked humour and a twisty plot not to mention sumptous costumes and an all cast.
lan McKellen is an acerbic, conniving and brutally honest newspaper theatre critic in 1930’s London but as the film progresses it becomes darker and more violent and more of a thriller. One critic has said McKellen’s star quality makes him the only possible casting for this role.
Holdovers is the name given to children in exclusive private boarding schools in America, who are held over in school during Christmas, because they are unable to go home to their families.
The film takes place at the end of 1970, when US troops were still fighting in the Vietnam War and explores the relationship between a hated teacher, the school cook and one of the boys “held over”. It is both funny and tragic, with stunning performances by Paul Giamatti (Sideways), Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa. 2023
