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AND THE BIRDS RAINED DOWN

N/C 15+ AND THE BIRDS RAINED DOWN
2019 | Dir Louise Archambault | 127min | Canada

As acclaimed director Louise Archambault’s elegiac and charming AND THE BIRDS RAINED DOWN opens, we meet three hermits living in cabins in the Quebec countryside, miles from civilization. Tom (Rémy Girard), Charlie (Gilbert Sicotte), and Ted (Kenneth Welsh) fled society years ago, and have eked out a back-to-the-land existence, selling “weed” to the closest locals with help from local hotelier Stephen (Éric Robidoux).
However, their lifestyle is increasingly endangered by nature, infirmity, and age as Ted collapses from a heart attack. Photographer / researcher Ange-Aimee (Eve Landry) threatens to disrupt their lives when she starts looking for survivors of a catastrophic blaze that happened decades ago, most notably Ted, whose actions during the fire have assumed heroic stature.
A poignant meditation on the possibilities of living outside modernity, AND THE BIRDS RAINED DOWN is a tribute to the need to live independently and on one’s own terms — and to those courageous enough to pursue this. (It’s also a cry for respect for people and their choices, regardless of age.) Driven by a cast boasting some of Quebec’s most esteemed performers — including Andrée Lachapelle, whose career stretches back to 1954. French with English subtitles.

As a thank you for supporting us, you will get 25% off each ticket purchase. Just enter DLYS at checkout. You will also be supporting the David Lean Cinema as we get a share of every ticket sold using this promo code.
Watch at home now for £7.49 (using promo code DLYS). Stream available for 48 hours after play started.
Distributor: YourScreen – create account or login.
Film run ends on 28 February 2021.

SUPERNOVA

SUPERNOVA
2019 | Dir Bartosz Kruhlik | 78min | Poland

It was supposed to be a nice, easy Sunday morning. The sun was already up, bright and strong, giving the air its chalky tint. The half-dried grass, the quiet country road, the loud cow – everything in the opening scene of Bartosz Kruhlik’s stellar feature debut, SUPERNOVA screams “bucolic”. But soon, four people show up shattering the peace. In a matter of minutes, events will interweave the destinies of this broken family with that of a politician, (Marcin Hycnar), and of a policeman (Marek Braun), who arrives at the scene. The outcomes are closely observed by the locals, armed with smartphones and with their curiosity, which will soon turn into righteous anger. Everything that follows will seem surprising, shocking, yet inevitable: the narrow road transforms into what looks like a scene from an ancient tragedy, with a cruel deity deciding on the fate of men. Polish with English subtitles.

Watch at home now for £7.49 (with promo code DLYS). Stream available for 48 hours after play started.
Distributor: YourScreen – create account or login.
Film run extended to 14 February 2021.

THE MOLE AGENT

THE MOLE AGENT
2020 | Dir Maite Alberdi | 84min | Chile

Sergio is a Chilean spy. Sort of. At least, he is offered the role of one after a casting session organized by Detective Romulo, a private investigator who needs a credible mole to infiltrate a retirement home. Romulo’s client, the concerned daughter of a resident, suspects her mother is being abused and hires him to find out what is really happening.
However, Sergio is 83, not 007, and not an easy trainee when it comes to technology and spying techniques. But he is a keen student, looking for ways to distract himself after recently losing his wife. What could be a better distraction than some undercover spy action? While gathering intelligence, Sergio grows close to several residents and realizes that the menacing truth beneath the surface is not what anyone had suspected.
Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent is a stylish combination of an observational documentary and a spy movie, with sleek camerawork and wonderfully watchable characters. It’s a unique meditation on compassion and loneliness that will infiltrate your heart and never let go.
Spanish with English subtitles.

The David Lean Cinema shares a proportion of the £9.99 ticket price with the distributor. Watch at home now.
Available in your account for 28 days after purchase and for 48 hours after pressing play.
Distributor: Dogwoof – create account or login.
Film run ends on 02 April 2021.
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Coming Soon

Coming Soon – The Mole Agent

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FALLING

FALLING (+ Q&A)
2020 | Dir Viggo Mortensen | 112min | Canada | UK

John (Viggo Mortensen) lives with his partner, Eric (Terry Chen), and their daughter, Mónica (Gabby Velis), in California, far from the traditional rural life he left behind years ago. John’s father, Willis (Lance Henriksen), a headstrong man from a bygone era, lives alone on the isolated farm where John grew up. Willis is in the early stages of dementia, making running the farm on his own increasingly difficult, so John brings him to stay at his California home so that he and his sister Sarah (Linney) might help him find a place near them to relocate to. Unfortunately, their best intentions ultimately run up against Willis’s adamant refusal to change his way of life in the slightest.
During his stay at John’s California home, tension builds between Willis and the rest of the family. Willis’s abrasive nature, by turns caustic and occasionally funny, is aggravated by his memory loss, bringing past and present into conflict and causing old wounds and years of mutual mistrust between father and sone rise to the surface.

The David Lean Cinema shares a proportion of the ticket price with the distributor when purchased through the link on this page or click here.
Available to watch for 48 hours after purchase.
Distributor: Modern Films – no account required.

Includes Q&A with Viggo Mortensen, Lance Henriksen, Laura Linney and Terry Chen hosted by Edith Bowman.
Film run ends on 31 March 2021

A GIRL FROM MOGADISHU

A GIRL FROM MOGADISHU
Dir Mary McGuckian | 113min | Belgium | Ireland | Morocco

‘A Girl from Mogadishu’ is based on the testimony of Ifrah Ahmed. Fleeing war-torn Somalia in 2006, she is trafficked to Ireland where as an asylum-seeking refugee, she undergoes a traumatic medical examination which reveals the extent of her mutilation as a child. Traumatized by the memory, she turns her experiences into a force for good, emerging as one of the world’s most foremost global activists against Female Genital Mutilation.
‘Silence may be the rust on the razor that threatened to cut my throat, but it was not my tongue they cut.’ Language: English.

Donna Ferguson discusses the film in The Guardian.

Listen to Jane Garvey interviewing Ifrah Ahmed on Woman’s Hour (10 Dec 2020) © BBC

More reading on the subject matter of the film is below.

‘My name is Ifrah Ahmed, I am an Irish Citizen and a survivor of FGM’… This is how the Girl from Mogadishu consistently introduces herself on the world stage, as an international activist against FGM/C and this is her story…
Circumcised at eight years of age. Raped by wandering militiamen at twelve years of age. Fully infibulated again at thirteen years of age and then married off by her grandmother to a fifty-year old man who regularly beat her; Ifrah Ahmed runs away to a place she had once known as home in war torn Mogadishu to find it had become the kind of battleground now known as ‘Black Hawk Down’.
A neighbour, recognizing her as the daughter of a woman whose sister had emigrated from Mogadishu to Minnesota, undertakes to find a way to get her out and sends a message through the Somali grapevine to seek help on her behalf.
Within days, a stranger appears at the door to tell her that he has been sent by her aunt from Minnesota and that she should follow him. She gathers her things into a plastic bag and sets out on the most perilous journey imaginable up through war – torn Somalia into Ethiopia all the way to Addis Ababa Airport in the company of traffickers. Finally landing, not in Minnesota, America – but in Dublin, Ireland.
Not a word of English, no prior education and hardly an item of clothing against the cold, she finds the food bizarre but the welcome hearty in the Irish asylum-seeking system. Her fears begin to subside and her traumatic days, she thinks, are behind her, until a routine medical smear test elicits such looks of horror on the faces of her Irish doctors that she suffers a profound sense of shame.
They say that anger is the flip side of shame. Channelling the feelings on both sides of that coin, she reacts incredibly quickly, learns English at break – neck speed and unearths an enviable technical talent for harnessing social media.
Within months she is campaigning for better conditions for asylum – seekers arriving in Ireland. She galvanizes her fellow refugees into action and sets up the ‘United Youth of Ireland’ to campaign for more understanding of foreign immigrants in Ireland. Joining ‘Amnesty International’ she becomes one of their most effective activists.
She works with a number of other NGOs, including UNICEF on special projects related to FGM. And single-handedly harasses every politician in Ireland right the way up to the president to pass FGM/C criminal justice legislation in Ireland.
As an Irish citizen, she presents her testimony on behalf of Ireland’s MEPs on the occasion of the ratification of the UN Convention against FGM/C at the European Parliament and it is passed unanimously.
Thus commences her now lauded professional career as an international activist.

PAPICHA

PAPICHA
2019 | Dir Mounia Meddour | 105min | France | Algeria

Underground discos thud to the beat of dance music as men and women dress to the nines and slip through checkpoints to party the night away. Meanwhile, fingers on triggers, tensions mount between armed police forces and anti-government guerillas. This is Algiers in the 1990’s, and what headstrong fashion student Nedjma, ‘Papicha’ to her friends, doesn’t know, is that her life is about to change forever…

Lifting the lid on the radical events of the Algerian Civil War, Mounia Meddour’s ‘Papicha’ follows the trials and tribulations of a group ofdetermined young women as they come face to face with a new, dangerous reality. French/Arabic with English subtitles.

Papicha is an Algerian word that refers to a funny, attractive, liberated young woman.

“There is a scattershot emotional rhetoric here – but also idealism, and emotional force.” Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.

Watch at home now from £4.50 (DLC receives a share of ticket price, thanks for supporting us) – Vimeo registration required (free) or login with Vimeo account. Stream available for 72 hours after purchase.
Distributor: Peccadillo Pictures – Vimeo account required

Papicha from Peccadillo Pictures on Vimeo.

SOCRATES

SOCRATES
2019 | Dir Alexandre Moratto | 71min | Brazil

Socrates, a handsome 15-year-old, is not just another underage kid living on the margins of society while working the construction sites of São palo, he has a purpose. Because of the sudden death of his mother Socrates has had to fend for himself, trying desperately to earn the rent to keep his run-down apartment and remain out of the clutches of social services and his estranged father. Portuguese with English subtitles.

SOCRATES is the debut feature film from Brazilian-American director Alexandre Moratto. It is the first feature produced by the Querô Institute in Brazil where it was co-written, produced, and acted by at-risk teenagers with the support of UNICEF.

“With a 71 minute running time, plenty of glossier and more finished films don’t have its beating compassionate heart”. Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.

Socrates from Peccadillo Pictures on Vimeo.

KUESSIPAN

KUESSIPAN
2019 | Dir Dir Myriam Verreault | 117mins | Canada

A deeply-felt drama in which issues of race and class threaten the lifelong best-friendship of two girls growing up in a Quebec Innu community. While Mikuan has a loving family, Shaniss is picking up the pieces of her shattered childhood. As children, they promised each other to stick together no matter what. But as they’re about to turn 17, their friendship is shaken when Mikuan falls for a white boy, and starts dreaming of leaving the reserve that’s now too small for her dreams. English/French with English subtitles.

“The film discusses the unbreakable bond of sisterhood, sure, but it’s also a joyous celebration of culture with heartbreaking reality in between.” – Sara Clements , Exclaim!

Watch at home now for £7.49 (with discount code above). Stream available for 48 hours after play started.

Film run ends on 20 December 2020.