Eisenstein’s 1925 film has earned immense critical acclaim and is considered one of the greatest films ever made. About a 1905 naval mutiny it was revolutionary in both form and content. Battleship Potemkin is renowned for its dynamic composition and frame-perfect editing.
In this 2025 release the Pet Shop Boys score is performed with the Dresdner Sinfoniker and orchestrated by Torsten Rasch. It blends electronic beats with orchestral grandeur in an encompassing score that makes a powerful cinematic experience.
Director Sergei M. Eisenstein. 72 minutes. Silent. Originally screened in 1925. This version with new accompanying soundtrack by the Pet Shop Boys. 2025
Ingrid and Martha became close friends while working together at the same magazine. After years of being out of touch, they meet again in an extreme but strangely sweet situation.
This is Almodovar’s first English language film. It is a powerful exploration of euthanasia, where Ingrid (Tilda Swinton) asks her old childhood friend, Martha (Julianne Moore), to stay with her until Ingrid decides she is ready to die. When she has made that decision, she will close her bedroom door which is next to her friend’s. The repercussions following Martha’s death resonate with the current debate in this country on assisted dying.
This film won the Golden Lion award at the Venice International Film Festival in 2024.
Holy Cow is the feature debut from director Louise Courvoisier. A part time farmer herself, Courvoisier is at home with the reality of rural life in the Jura region of France.
The cast are non professional and take us right into a life that is intrinsically hard. Clément Faveau plays an 18 year old lad whose interests are girls, beer and mopeds. While this doesn’t change, he unexpectedly finds himself alone caring for his 7 year old sister. How do you brush her hair? Get her to school Make money? How indeed? His answer is; learn to make prize winning cheese!
We are making this a special night. High Weald Dairy from Horsted Keynes will visit us. Many of you will know their cheeses in Ditchling and Hassocks as they are brought to our Farmers’ Market by The Sussex Peasant. They will bring tasting samples and cheeses to sell and will talk about cheese making and also their successful and sustainable farming methods.
It will be a convivial evening, and nicely accompanied by a selection of fine wines.
French with English subtitles. 90m. Director Louise Courvoisier. Awards: César Award for Most Promising Actress , César Award for Best First Film , Un Certain Regard Youth Prize .
In the early 1970s, the military dictatorship in Brazil reaches its height. The Paiva family – Rubens, Eunice, and their five children – live in a beachside house in Rio, open to all their friends. One day, Rubens is taken for questioning and does not return.
An intense film based on the true story of Eunice Paiva, a mother and activist coping with the forced disappearance of her husband, the dissident Brazilian politician Rubens Paiva. Despite being the target of an unsuccessful boycott by the Brazilian far-right, within 3 months of its release, the film surpassed 5 million admissions.
A beautiful film that portrays the strength of an individual fighting back; a triumph of humanity over state terror.
Portugese, French with english Subtitles. 135 minutes. Director Walter Salles. Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (2025) . Golden Globe; Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for Fernanda Torres
£7 General Admission / Free for Members
A personal review by guest critic Beth Travers:
I’m Still Here, Walter Salles’ Academy Award winning historical film tells the story of the Paiva family living in 1970s Brazil. The film opens on a beach in Rio, capturing a family full of life and love for one another. I found myself craving a place at their table and in their volley-ball games, lulled into the illusion of a happy-ever-after through the film’s comforting palette of yellow and brown. But things aren’t as they seem; the warmth of this family is swiftly disrupted by Brazil’s far right military, who come into their home and take their father away for questioning.
Mother of five, Eunice Paiva, played by Fernanda Torres, carries us and her children through her family’s period of uncertainty and immense stress, as Rubens Paiva becomes one of Brazil’s best known “Politically Disappeared”. I was captured by Torres’s performance, feeling my heart break at her stifled composure and quiet strength. Her attempt to maintain stability for her children, while relentlessly seeking justice and answers, exposed me to a new kind of female resilience.
This period of Brazil’s history was brand new to me, opening my eyes to a time tainted by its far-right, military dictatorship, and serves as a timely reminder of history repeating itself.
I would have loved to have learnt more about Eunice’s later work as a human rights activist and lawyer, seeking justice for other victims of political oppression. But, overall, Torres’s portrayal was still thoroughly deserving of her Golden Globe for Best Actress.
Mumbai is more than a city. It’s an ever-expanding universe. Night shots of the thronged streets in this exquisite drama.
Having captured the teeming collision of lives, Kapadia gently guides us to follow three nurses. Nurse Prabhais a veteran at the busy urban hospital where all three work; her younger colleague Anu (newly arrived from the south of India, is caught up in the first thrill of romance with her Muslim boyfriend. And Pavartya cook in the hospital kitchen, is facing eviction from a home that is due to be demolished to sate the voracious appetite of gentrification.
These are ordinary lives, with small sadnesses, twinging regrets and sparks of joy. In the second half of the film, when the women leave Mumbai to accompany Pavarty back to her coastal village, the skies lift, the air clears and the picture takes on a lyrical, dreamlike quality.
Primarily Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles. 2h3m Director Payal Kapadia. Cannes Grand Prix 2024.
