Wicked is the highly anticipated prequel to The Wizard of Oz, based on the hit Broadway musical by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman. This epic fantasy tells the untold story of two iconic figures—Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a misunderstood young woman born with green skin, and Glinda (Ariana Grande), a popular, ambitious student. Set at Shiz University, the film follows their unlikely friendship as they navigate prejudice, power, and the dark political forces in the Land of Oz. While Glinda basks in privilege, Elphaba’s defiance of the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) leads her down a path that transforms her into the Wicked Witch of the West. As their lives take opposing directions, their choices ripple across Oz, forever altering its future. Featuring stunning performances and iconic music, Wicked delivers a reimagined origin story of the witches of Oz, challenging what it truly means to be “Wicked.”

Moana 2 is the thrilling sequel to Disney's beloved 2016 animated musical. This time, Moana, now a seasoned wayfinder, receives an unexpected call from her ancestors that leads her on a daring new adventure beyond the familiar shores of Motunui.

Accompanied by the ever-powerful demigod Maui and a fresh crew of unlikely seafarers, Moana embarks on a journey deep into the far seas of Oceania. Their mission: to break an ancient curse that threatens a long-lost island once vital to her ancestors. Along the way, Moana and her companions must face dangerous waters, hidden islands, and mysterious foes—including a formidable sea monster.

The third instalment brings Paddington's story to Peru as he returns to visit his beloved Aunt Lucy, who now resides at the Home for Retired Bears. With the Brown Family in tow, a thrilling adventure ensues when a mystery plunges them into an unexpected journey through the Amazon rainforest and up to the mountain peaks of Peru.

The incredible ensemble cast includes Hugh Bonneville, Emily Mortimer, Antonio Banderas, Olivia Colman, Julie Walters, Madeleine Harris, Samuel Joslin, Carla Tous and Jim Broadbent. Ben Whishaw and Imelda Staunton both return as the voices of Paddington and Aunt Lucy.

From legendary director Ridley Scott, Gladiator II continues the epic saga of power, intrigue, and vengeance set in Ancient Rome. Years after witnessing the death of the revered hero Maximus at the hands of his uncle, Lucius (Paul Mescal) is forced to enter the Colosseum after his home is conquered by the tyrannical Emperors who now lead Rome with an iron fist. With rage in his heart and the future of the Empire at stake, Lucius must look to his past to find strength and honor to return the glory of Rome to its people.

A celebration of youth, friendship and the everlasting magic of the movies, Cinema Paradiso won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and is considered a classic of world cinema. Restored in 4K.

Giuseppe Tornatore’s loving homage to the cinema tells the story of Salvatore, a successful film director, returning home for the funeral of Alfredo, his old friend who was the projectionist at the local cinema throughout his childhood.

Soon memories of his first love affair with the beautiful Elena and all the highs and lows that shaped his life come flooding back, as Salvatore reconnects with the community he left 30 years earlier.

A homage to the inspirational power of the moving image, played out to a gorgeous score by the maestro Ennio Morricone..

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

The lives of three women intersect and overlap in a haunting drama that sees the city of Mumbai play a central role. Prabha, Anu and Parvaty are employees at a hospital in Mumbai. They grapple daily with the opportunities and hardships of existence in the city. Balancing an immersive verité style with a touch of the surreal, Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning drama captures the many shades of working-class life in Mumbai. The result is a profound and deeply humanist meditation on urban migration and dislocation.

Neil’s Pick of the Month and in his Top 3 films of 2024

Fundraising evening in aid of St Mary's House and Church, Woodbridge - at the heart of the Market Hill!

We are delighted to welcome Griff back to The Riverside stage, join him as he shares more funny observations and comic stories. Griff rambles on the developing national permacrisis. Age. Family. Fraud. Nostalgia. The Tik Tok generation. Crocodile smuggling and noodling in Australia. Travel, dogs, hotels, drink and midnight trains. He takes questions from the audience and lets rip as his associations wander.

Away from the stage, Griff is best known for his countless TV appearances, including as the star of ten series of Smith & Jones and one quarter of the ground breaking Not The Nine O’Clock News, whilst his multiple documentary  series – most recently Griff’s Canadian Adventure (Channel 4) – have been critically acclaimed ratings hits.

The documentary film Oyster Land spends time with the oystermen of Mersea Island, Essex and explores the ancient oyster culture of the city of Colchester. It’s an atmospheric journey of working on the waters of an estuary that has sustained a local trade for thousands of years.

Directors statement

"Throughout the two-and-a-half year production, I have been sincerely touched by the timeless simplicity and dedicated continuation of an ancient way of life. Towards the end of the editing process, I couldn’t help but realise that I’d made a film about the fundamental struggle of survival. It was always important for me not to romanticise the life of the oystermen, for the north sea wind, the ice cold rain, the gruelling dredging and the fear of a bleak future are all daily struggles for the Blackwater oysterman. Similar to how an oyster soaks up all the flavour from the estuary where it grows, I wanted my film to feel like the place it was filmed in. The film needed to capture the alluring atmosphere of Mersea Island, a feeling I find so poignant when crossing the ancient Saxon causeway into this land of the oyster."

We are delighted that the film's director, Matthew Harrison, will be joining us to introduce his film with some live maritime music beforehand and talk about the film after the screening!

For more information visit http://www.eudo-films.co.uk/

Wind, Tide & Oar is a compelling exploration of engineless sailing, shot on 16mm film over three years. The film delves into the experiences of those who travel solely by harnessing the natural elements alone, following a diverse array of traditional boats and uncovering the unique rhythms and motivations of engineless navigation.

Journeying through rivers, coastlines, and open seas, spanning the UK, the Netherlands, and France, Wind, Tide & Oar creates a contemplative space, addressing themes of ecology, heritage, traditional skills, and maritime history. Using a 1960s hand-wound camera, Wahl offers a poetic and intimate perspective on a millennia-old craft, upended by the invention of mechanised power.

Through the film’s reveries, sailing becomes a means to explore our interaction with and responsibility to the environment. It invites deep reflection on our relationship with nature, our understanding of and commitment to sustainability, and our care for the world around us.

The film is shot around Suffolk, Cornwall and Essex.

PREVIEW SCREENING AS THIS WILL NOT BE OFFICIALLY RELEASED UNTIL APRIL 2025

Please note this screening is part of Woodbridge Film Society's 2024/2025 Season and therefore not open to the public. You can read more about the Film Society and how to join here

Two childhood friends meet after years apart and rekindle a deep bond, in Celine Song’s remarkably assured feature debut.

This outstanding first feature by Celine Song is a beautiful, deeply romantic modern love story that embraces destiny, nostalgia and the immigrant experience. Na Young’s family emigrated from Seoul to Canada when she was 12. She left behind and lost contact with her childhood best friend Hae Sung. A decade later, Na Young is now ‘Nora’, an aspiring New York playwright. She becomes curious as to the whereabouts of her playground sweetheart, so searches for him online, only to find him looking for her.

Song’s profound romantic drama is an astonishing debut. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo bring nuance and sensitivity to their portrayal of Na Young and Hae Sung at different points in their lives, drawing out the subtleties of their internal selves. The relationship unfolds against a gorgeously shot backdrop, which is complemented by Daniel Rossen and Christopher Bear’s (Grizzly Bear) elegant score. A divine cinematic experience, this is what we go to the movies for.

"a must-see story of lost loves, childhood crushes and changing identities" - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian - 5 Stars

The film is partly in English and in Korean with English subtitles

The latest film from John Crowley is a poignant British romantic drama, strikingly led by Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.

Rather than a meet-cute, restaurateur Almut and recent divorcee Tobias’s first encounter is quite literally a car crash. After such a memorable meeting, an instant spark forms between the pair, overpowering any disagreements they may have about matrimony and children in their future. However, this romance is far from a fairytale when the cruel realities of mortality creep into Tobias and Almut’s lives, leaving them to reassess what they want from their careers and the life they are building together. Spanning the highs and lows of a decades-long relationship, Crowley’s (Brooklyn) drama is a fresh, funny and deeply moving romance that, thanks to Pugh and Garfield’s incredible chemistry, feels authentic and alive.

Inspired by Chris Marker’s La Jetée and with overtones of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Asif Kapadia delivers an unsettling commentary on the state of the world today… and tomorrow.

Director’s Statement: 2073 is about a feeling of dread at what is happening and being normalised around the world. The film started after seeing Brexit happen through lies and corruption in the UK, I felt I had to make a film to understand why the world seemed to be moving towards lies, authoritarianism, violence. I interviewed journalists around the world, was I going crazy, or was something happening? The journalists agreed, there was a global trend, a democratic recession, technology played a huge part and this was also helping the destruction of the planet's ecosystem. 2073 has come out of those interviews and research. My aim was to connect the dots between many complex issues and countries in a single cinematic film.

Asif Kapadia is an Academy Award, BAFTA, Grierson and Grammy Award winning film director, writer and producer and one of the most influential filmmakers of our generation. Perhaps best known for his acclaimed trilogy of films AMY, SENNA and DIEGO MARADONA, he also directed eps of the MINDHUNTER series for Netflix, series directed and exec produced the critical hit music series 1971: The Year Music Changed Everything (AppleTV+) and he also co directed and exec produced the mental health series THE ME YOU CAN’T SEE (AppleTV+). We are delighted to welcome him back to The RIverside stage to present his new work.

Olivier award-winning director Damiano Michieletto (Carmen, Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci) returns to The Royal Opera for a new production of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Conductor Antonello Manacorda, with whom Michieletto previously collaborated on Carmen, leads Juan Diego Flórez and Leonardo Caimi, who share the role of the poet E.T.A. Hoffmann, Alex Esposito as the Four Villains, Julie Boulianne as Nicklausse and Ermonela Jaho, Olga Pudova and Marina Costa-Jackson as Hoffmann’s unforgettable trio of lovers.

Helsinki, 1945. The end of the war brings a new sense of artistic and social freedom for painter Tove Jansson. Modern art, dizzying parties and an open relationship with a married politician: Her unconventional life puts her at odds with her sculptor father's strict ideals.

Tove's desire for liberty is put to the test when she meets theatre director Vivica Bandler. Her love for Vivica is electric and all-consuming but Tove begins to realise that the love she truly yearns has to be reciprocated. As she struggles with her personal life, her creative endeavours take her in an unexpected direction. While focusing her artistic dreams on her painting, the work that started as a side project, the melancholic, haunting tales she told scared children in bomb shelters, rapidly takes on a life of its own.

The exploits of the Moomins, infused with inspiration from her own life, bring Tove international fame and financial freedom. There's a daily comic strip, a stage play and stories that continue to delight people around the world. But as she begins to find her artistic identity she has to learn to find herself. Her unrequited love for Vivica is preventing her true liberty and only by learning to break away from her can she truly be free.

TOVE is a captivating drama about the creative energy of an iconic talent and her turbulent search for identity, desire and freedom.

In poor health, Maria Callas wanders around a picturesque Paris as she recounts to an adoring journalist the highs of her career and litany of past loves. Angelina Jolie gives a transforming performance, capturing the myriad layers and masks of this legendary singer’s personality, from pithy to heartbreakingly vulnerable, while showing flashes of the personality that saw her idolised as an opera star. Featuring a stellar cast that includes Valeria Golino, Pierfrancesco Favino and Alba Rohrwacher, Maria is a stunning addition to Larraín’s portrait of iconic women subjected to an alarming degree of scrutiny, while the world looked on.

“How do you film the life of an artist as protean, elusive, egomaniacal, imaginative, surprising, and heavily mythologized as Bob Dylan? Haynes’s playful, gutsy biopic, in which six actors take turns embodying one of America’s most legendary musicians, considers that question and swallows it whole. It was in Haynes’s movie that Heath Ledger gave one of his best performances, but the star of the show is Cate Blanchett, who turns Dylan’s rock-star persona into a heroic, electrifying showcase for her own remarkable gifts.”

Screening in preparation for the forthcoming new Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, which screens at The Riverside in early February.

Luca Guadagnino and Challengers writer Justin Kuritzkes transport us to Mexico City in the 1940s with their adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical novel. Daniel Craig dazzles as William Lee, an outcast American expat who becomes infatuated with an elusive younger man while living in Mexico City. He also revels in the city’s nightlife and its colourful, larger-than-life characters. Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville and impressive newcomer Drew Starkey populate Guadagnino’s richly evocative and sensual film, which features a typically immersive score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.