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THE BIKE THIEF

THE BIKE THIEF
2020 | Dir Matt Chambers | 79 mins | UK

This British drama starring Alec Secăreanu (God’s Own Country) is a modern re-imagining of Vittoria de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves.
The Rider (Alec Secăreanu) is an ordinary man, working hard to protect and support his family. He works as a delivery driver while his wife, Elena (Anamaria Marinca, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days), spends her days cleaning grand houses and caring for their two children. When the Rider’s moped is stolen, he must race against time to recover the source of his livelihood. A timely examination of the precarity of London’s working class.
English and Romanian with English subtitles.

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

“A modern update on Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves, Matt Chambers’ feature debut pays the same attention and care to the day-to-day struggles of the urban working class. The refusal to either romanticise or overly dramatise it makes for especially poignant results and the clear-eyed, unsentimental approach renders the characters’ turmoil even more tragic” Phuong Le in The Guardian

ONCE UPON A RIVER

ONCE UPON A RIVER
2019 | Dir Haroula Rose | 92 mins | USA

Based on the best-selling novel by Bonnie Jo Campbell, Once Upon A River is the story of Native American teenager Margo Crane (Kenadi DelaCerna) in 1970s rural Michigan who after enduring a series of traumas and tragedies, sets out on an odyssey on the Stark River in search of her estranged mother.

On the water, Margo encounters friends, foes, wonders, and dangers; navigating life on her own, she comes to understand her potential, all while healing the wounds of her past.

“Kenadi Delkacerna absolutely shines in not only her first feature film but her first leading role as well” – Alan Ng, Film Threat

“A resourceful girl goes in search of her mother in first-time feature director Haroula Rose’s slice of Americana” Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian

THE 8TH QandA

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HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN

HERE ARE THE YOUNG MEN
2021 | Dir Eoin Macken | 96 mins | Ireland USA

Dublin 2003. Aimless teenager Matthew (Dean-Charles Chapman) and his disaffected friends leave school into a social vacuum of drink, drugs and thrill-seeking in one last summer of adolescence. Matthew romantically yearns after his free-spirited friend Jen (Anne Taylor-Joy) and struggles to maintain his increasingly disturbing relationship with the magnetic but sadistic Kearney (Finn Cole). Whilst their precocious friend Rez (Walsh Peelo) has started to succumb to paranoia and depression.
Matthew and the group are soon led by the deranged Kearney into a world of nihilistic violence, falling into shocking acts of transgression that will irrevocably change their lives.

Written and directed by Eoin Macken based on the novel of the same name by Rob Doyle.

TRUMAN TENNESSEE

N/C 12+ TRUMAN & TENNESSEE
2020 | Dir Lisa Immordino Vreeland | 81 mins | USA

Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams – writers, celebrities, geniuses – catapulted to fame in the 1950s, sparking a friendship and rivalry spanning nearly 40 years until their deaths within a year of each other. Inextricably entwined, and fixtures of their age, they were creative powerhouses (and gay men) who dealt with success and its evanescence in vastly different ways. In Truman & Tennessee: An Intimate Conversation, filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Love, Cecil, Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel) brings the two forces together in a unique and fascinating tête-à-tête, comparing and contrasting their trajectories through dueling voices —the writers’ own, culled from archival footage, and the voices of actors Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto (The Boys in the Band) portraying, respectively, Capote and Williams at various stages of their lives.

Available to watch for 28 days after purchase and 48 hours after pressing play.
Distributor: Dogwoof – Create account or login

Includes Q&A with director Lisa Immordino Vreeland hosted by Jason Solomons (32 mins).

Both Truman and Tennessee created rich, imaginary worlds and characters (Blanche DuBois, Holly Golightly) that left indelible marks on the era —and both paid the price of colossal success and fame through alcoholism and periods of artistic stagnation. Immordino Vreeland, whose growing body of work examines the working lives and social impact of 20th-century creative visionaries, adds two more remarkable subjects to her oeuvre, tumultuous compatriots who electrified the culture with words steeped in the nascent forces that shaped them.

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HOMEWARD

N/C 14+ HOMEWARD
2019 | Dir Nariman Aliev | 96 mins | Ukraine

Mustafa (Akhtem Seitablayev) and his college-aged son, Alim (Remzi Bilyalov) have set out to a morgue in Kyiv to recover the body of Alim’s older brother, Nazim, yet another casualty of the war with Russia. Although Nazim had been living in Kyiv with his Orthodox wife, Oleysa, Mustafa is insistent that his son is given a traditional Muslim burial beside his mother’s grave in Crimea, and excludes Oleysa from the road-trip.
Mustafa is a hot-tempered and severe. There is also tension between father and son as city-life has exacerbated the generational gap between Mustafa and Alim. However, one commonality unites them – their shared language of Crimean Tatar. Along the way, they face many obstacles, not least of which is a decomposing cadaver, and Alim is hard-pressed to accept his father’s determination to uphold tradition at all costs. However, the on-going challenges encourage the pair to better understand each other and profoundly impacts their relationship.
Ukrainian, Crimean Tatar and Russian with English subtitles.

“Masterfully shot, this film is simultaneously telling and dialogue-sparse, as the characters switch between four different languages and the even most insignificant objects have a profound narrative purpose”. Maria Muzdybaeva in The Calvert Journal

“An eloquent and deeply felt movie that, dispensing entirely with any music score, conveys a complex of emotions all the more potent for being so starkly and unaffectedly presented.” Philip Kemp, Sight and Sound.

SOFIA

N/C 15+ SOFIA
2018 | Dir Meryem Benm’Barek-Aloïsi | 80 mins | Belgium | Morocco

The breaking of her waters at a family gathering mean that 20-yr-old Sofia, daughter of a well-to-do Casablanca family, can no longer deny, to herself or anyone else, that she is pregnant. This will usher in serious consequences in a country – Morocco – where sex out of wedlock is an imprisonable offence. Whisked away from the party by her cousin, she gives birth in a hospital which admits her on condition that she produce her husband within 24 hours or face the consequences.
Arabic and French with English subtitles.

“It’s rare to leave the cinema wishing a 90-minute film was longer, but Meryem Benm’Barek’s Sofia shows enough promise to demand a more substantial story… Benm’Barek is brilliant at capturing the unspoken body language that communicates so much…” Tom Bond – One Room With A View

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 23 May 2021.

“Meryem Benm’Barek’s smart debut lays bare the scandalous consequences for a Casablanca woman who finds herself single and pregnant.” – Cath Clarke in The Guardian

Author: Roger Dodger

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