Pierre Auguste Renoir is known and loved for his impressionist paintings of Paris which rank among the world’s favourites. Renoir, however, grew tired of this style and changed course.      

This stunning film – based on the remarkable Renoir collection at Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation – explores the artist’s new approach. These later works still provoke extreme reactions – some people are repulsed by them and others seduced.

Two 20th century titans– Picasso and Matisse are intriguingly among the many artists who were clearly influenced by Renoir’s later direction. This film is a new biography of an artistic giant – Renoir – but also uncovers an untold story that identifies him as a significant link between the art world’s old order and the new.

THE MOVIE MAN  introduces us to colorful entrepreneur Keith Stata and his bizarre multiplex set deep in the forest of small-town Ontario, Canada. After 40 years in business, Keith is forced to confront his current limitations, dwindling health, and a global pandemic. The future of his quixotic cinema becomes more and more uncertain as the film unfolds.

Has the pandemic ended movies as we knew them? Is the collective experience of sitting in the cinema quickly fading away?

The film explores Highlands Cinemas and it’s importance to the town of Kinmount as a microcosm of the world facing COVID-19. What happens to a small town when it’s only allure is forced to close? Will 2022 be the last season at Highlands Cinemas?

Keith Stata opened Highlands Cinemas during the summer of 1979. What began as a single screen, transformed into a 5-screen multiplex showing first-run films over the course of it’s 40-year history. Changes in technology, dwindling ticket sales, a popcorn-eating bear, and his 50 cats all contribute to the chaos.

Despite his steadfast passion, we follow Keith as he is beaten down with issues and complications due to COVID-19. With no family and few friends to help, Keith is confronted with insurmountable challenges of keeping his unlikely cinema open for another season.

Screening as part of our year-long season - CINEMA ON SCREEN

THE CRITIC is a deliciously dark and sharp-witted thriller set in 1930s London featuring an all-star British cast including Ian McKellen, Gemma Arterton, Mark Strong, Ben Barnes, Alfred Enoch, Romola Garai and Lesley Manville.

When the most feared and vicious theatre critic in town Jimmy Erskine (McKellen), finds himself suddenly in the cross hairs of the Daily Chronicle’s new owner David Brooke (Strong), he strikes a sinister Faustian pact with struggling actress Nina Land (Arterton) who is desperate to win his favour.

A rare chance to experience this classic of New Hollywood, which pierces straight to the heart of American darkness, on the big screen for its 50th anniversary.

Faye Dunaway and Jack Nicholson smoulder against the backdrop of late 1930s Los Angeles, depicted as a hotbed of corruption in a narrative firmly grounded in historical reality. Robert Towne was a central screenwriter at the heart of the New Hollywood’s sharp socially-alert scripts. He was tuned into the dramatic cultural changes going on in America and could pull together tightly plotted cinematic stories with authentic dialogue.

In the year 1815, Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) finds himself incarcerated within the formidable fortress of the Château d’If for a crime he did not commit. Enduring fourteen years of imprisonment, he eventually engineers his escape, embarking on a meticulously crafted quest for vengeance. Assuming multiple identities – “the Count of Monte Cristo” among them – Dantès first courts his enemies, now highly placed dignitaries, the better to strike them down. But the price of revenge is heavy for one’s soul.

Alexandre Dumas’s epic novel The Count of Monte Cristo comes in a truly lavish adaptation with breathtaking backdrops and a mind-blowing pace, receiving an 11 minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival !

One of the world’s biggest and most successful cults, the Rajneesh movement, had communes in more than 30 countries in the 70s and 80s and was immortalised in the Netflix series ‘Wild Wild Country’. But until now, a central truth about the organisation has remained hidden. Filmmaker Maroesja Perizonius, herself brought up in the Rajneesh communes, has connected with other former commune children and together, they’ve decided to change that. This film tells the barely believable story of the treatment of children within the cult. The organisation still thrives today, profiting from Bhagwan’s teachings, yet no one has yet been called to account for the harm caused to children in its communes across the world. In the course of her unflinching investigation Maroesja unmasks perpetrators and demands answers from the closest members of the Cult’s inner circle.

A section of the film focuses on a commune here in Suffolk called Medina Rajneesh which was operational during the early 1980's.

Based on the novel of the same name by Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre, like many films before it is set in God's Own Country of Yorkshire.

Matt Smith (Dr Who, Last Night in Soho) and Morfydd Clark (St Maud) excel in their roles of a grieving couple stretched to breaking point by an unspeakable tragedy. On the remote family farm of Starve Acre, an archaeologist becomes increasingly fascinated by a local myth that the ancient oak tree that once stood on their land holds the dark powers and the secret to 'Dandelion Jack', whilst his wife Juliette turns to her sister and the local community to find some kind of peace. But sinister forces are unwittingly allowed into their home, offering a disturbing possibility of reconnection