Films Archives - Page 5 of 14 - The David Lean Cinema

THE HUMAN FACTOR

THE HUMAN FACTOR
2019 | Dir Dror Moreh | 108 mins | UK | Israel

The behind-the-scenes story of the Israeli-Arab peace process told from a unique perspective: that of the American mediators – the peacemakers who shuttled between Middle East capitals, spending hours with the region’s political heavyweights – prime ministers, generals, ex-terrorists, diplomats, dictators and presidents, the people that gained intimate knowledge of the individuals and stories which dominated daily news around the world. The negotiators speak candidly about their experiences. Rich and exposing portraits of world leaders are portrayed as we learn what went on behind closed doors in meetings between U.S. presidents, Israeli, Palestinian, and Syrian leaders. What we observe, for the first time, are first-hand impressions of events that shook the world – not from the perspectives of the conflicting parties involved, or that of politicians who care about their legacy, but from senior civil servants, the negotiators. It is their function to observe, relate, maintain neutrality, and convince both sides of the pressing necessity to resolve decades of brutal violence and turmoil.
Today, the need to learn from past mistakes couldn’t be more urgent.

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

“This rigorous and nailbiting documentary examines the US president’s failure to facilitate an agreement between Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s. Bearhugs and murder: Bill Clinton’s Middle East peace deal in gripping detail” – Cath Clarke in The Guardian.

UNDERGODS

Chino Moya’s debut feature Undergods places viewers in a foreign futuristic world, though sadly one that feels more familiar every day. The film’s narrators manoeuvre through a deserted, crumbling, greyish-blue city, gathering bodies as they go and sharing nightmarish stories of a long-abandoned past.

What follows is a series of narratives, overlapping and weaving through time and space with remarkable grace and ease. The threads come together elegantly as stories layer upon each other and crescendo towards a powerful, satisfying conclusion. English throughout.

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: Munro Films – no account required.

“A riptide of surrealism runs through Chino Moya’s ambitious debut feature, a fantasy suite of tales that don’t so much interlock as butt into one another and blurt out alarming, dreamlike correspondences” – Phil Hoad in The Guardian

COWBOYS

COWBOYS
2020 | Dir Anna Kerrigan | 85 mins | USA

Anna Kerrigan’s award-winning debut shows a rare understanding of the
complexities and challenges of modern family life, when a father and his transgender son escape to the mountains of Montana.
Troy (Steve Zahn, Dallas Buyers Club, Lean on Pete) is on a camping trip with his son Joe (Sasha Knight), an 11-year-old with a passion for cowboy yarns and the great outdoors. As they travel through the majestic beauty of the northern Rockies, television news reports emerge claiming that Joe is missing. As detective Faith (Ann Dowd, The Handmaid’s Tale) investigates, we see a bigger picture involving Joe’s conservative mother Sally.

“Cowboys is a film that relaxes into its ideas and themes, and the performances from Sasha Knight, Steve Zahn and Jilliann Bell – with Ann Dowd as the cop on Troy’s trail – are all tremendous” – Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian

THE 8TH

THE 8TH
2020 | Dir Aiden Kane, Lucy Kennedy, Maeve O’Boyle
94 mins | USA | Ireland

The 8^thtraces Ireland’s campaign to remove the Eighth Amendment – a constitutional ban on abortion. It shows a country’s transformation from a conservative state in thrall to the Catholic church to a more liberal secular society.
This includes voices from both sides of the debate, but its primary focus is on the dynamic female leaders of the pro-choice campaign. The film follows the veteran campaigner Ailbhe Smyth and self-described glitter activist Andrea Horan as they chart a bold strategy of grassroots activism and engineer the near impossible. This dramatic story is underscored by a vivid exploration of the wrenching failures that led to this defining moment in Irish history.
An urgent narrative, a cautionary tale and a roadmap for progressive reforms in a modern era where authoritarianism is on the rise, The 8^thshows a country forging a new progressive path at a time when reproductive rights are threatened around the world.
This film contains flickering or flashing lights that may affect those with photosensitive epilepsy.
Distributor : Together Films
Associated Q&A’s are available on various dates, see below…….

Q&As on various associated subjects (free participation) are arranged for the following dates – Click on links below to reserve your place:
Wed 26 May 2021 at 7.30pm – Care and Compassion for Irish Women in Crisis: Celebrating the UK Support Networks
Thu 27 May 2021 at 8.30pm – Activating with Joy and Throwing Glitter on an Issue
Tue 01 June 2021 at 7.30pm – The Power of Protest: What We Can Learn From the Victorious Irish Abortion Campaign
Thu 03 June 2021 at 7.30pm – Global Reproductive Rights Activism: Building Solidarity

THE AUSCHWITZ ESCAPE

THE AUSCHWITZ ESCAPE
2021 | Dir Peter Bebjak | 94 mins | Slovakia | Germany

Slovakia’s Oscar submission for best international film tells the true story of two Auschwitz prisoners (Noel Czuczor and Peter Ondrejicka) who escaped hell and provided a rare first-hand and shocking report of genocide at the camp. After meticulous planning and with the help and resilience of their fellow prisoners, they manage to escape. While the inmates they had left behind courageously stand their ground against the Nazi camp officers, the two men are driven to survive by the hope that their evidence could save lives. Emaciated and hurt, they make their way through the rugged mountains back to Slovakia ready to share their horrific report to the United States Red Cross. Gripping and harrowing at every turn, The Auschwitz Escape honours the power of truth in a world that might not be ready to hear it. English, Czech, Polish, Slovak, German with English subtitles.

The David Lean Cinema receives a share of the ticket price.
Available to watch for 48 hours after purchase.

Distributor: Signature Entertainment – no account required.

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.

“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

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.

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.