Birmingham, 1940. Amidst the chaos of WWII, Tommy Shelby is driven back from a self-imposed exile to face his most destructive reckoning yet. With the future of the family and the country at stake, Tommy must face his own demons, and choose whether to confront his legacy, or burn it to the ground. By order of the Peaky Blinders…

Wasteman is a gritty British prison thriller about parolee Taylor (David Jonsson) whose chance at a fresh start is threatened by his volatile new cellmate Dee (Tom Blyth); as their bond deepens, a violent attack forces Taylor to choose between protecting Dee and jeopardizing his own freedom, exploring themes of toxic masculinity and survival inside a brutal system. Directed by Cal McMau, the film gained attention at Toronto and BFI London Film Festivals for its intense performances and unflinching look at prison life.

IT’S NEVER OVER: JEFF BUCKLEY, directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg (DELIVER US FROM EVIL, JANIS: LITTLE GIRL BLUE, WEST OF MEMPHIS), covers the life of the rising young star with an otherworldly voice and boundary-pushing artistry, who left the '90s music world reeling when he died suddenly, at age 30, after the release of his critically acclaimed debut album “Grace.”

Told through never-before-seen footage from Buckley’s archives and intimate accounts from his mother Mary Guibert, former partners Rebecca Moore and Joan Wasser, Jeff’s former bandmates, including Michael Tighe and Parker Kindred, and luminaries like Ben Harper and Aimee Mann, IT’S NEVER OVER, JEFF BUCKLEY illuminates one of modern music’s most influential and enigmatic figures.

Screening as part of our continued Music Monthly strand kindly supported by Decoy Sound Studios, Sundowners DJ's, Old Jet Arts Centre, Stoddart Music, Whizzy Wallop Vinyl and Stephen "Foz" Foster.

A new British comedy-drama from the team behind Finding Your Feet and Fisherman’s Friends.

Directed by Nick Moorcroft, the film is set in a struggling local pub at the heart of a divided community that starts brewing its own beer and enters the Great British Beer Awards.

The cast includes Martin Clunes, Mark Addy, James Buckley, Miles Jupp, Josie Lawrence, Emily Lloyd-Saini, Jonno Davies, Gabriella Wilde, Luke Treadaway, Stephen Leask  and Karl Collins.

In this twisty, stylish crime thriller, Davis (Chris Hemsworth) is an elusive thief whose high-stakes heists have mystified police. He’s planning his biggest ever score — hoping it’ll be his last — when his path collides with Sharon (Halle Berry), a disillusioned insurance executive whom he’s forced to work with, and Orman (Barry Keoghan), a rival thief with far more disturbing methods than Davis's.

As the multi-million dollar heist approaches, relentless detective Lt. Lubesnik (Mark Ruffalo) closes in on the operation, raising the stakes even higher, and the line between hunter and hunted starts to blur. Each of them is soon forced to confront the cost of their respective choices — and the realisation that there's no turning back.

SOUL TO SOUL is a feature length documentary about a historical, once in a lifetime, concert which took place in Black Star Square in Accra on March 6th 1971 where some of the greatest Afro-American musicians of the time performed in front of 100,000 people as part of the 14th anniversary of the country's independence celebrations.  The original concert actually lasted for 14 hours - an hour for each year since Ghana had become the first African country to gain independence from Britain.  Thankfully, SOUL TO SOUL runs for approx 96 minutes.

The concert features Ike & Tina Turner, Wilson Picket, The Staples Singers, Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Santana and Voices Of East Harlem and local performers too creating some of the ground-breaking music that inspired Afro beat and Afrocentricism in America.

Also for those musicians, who were welcomed as royalty, this was cathartic experience - many visiting Africa for the first time.  The film follows them as they spend few days in Ghana, visiting local villages and places before they actually performed the concert - an eye-opening experience for Ike & Tina Turner as they visit a local village or hear the sorrow in Mavis Staples' voice when she visits an old slave castle.

Screening as part of our continued Music Monthly strand kindly supported by Decoy Sound Studios, Sundowners DJ's, Old Jet Arts Centre, Stoddart Music, Whizzy Wallop Vinyl and Stephen "Foz" Foster.

Oliver Laxe’s Cannes winner distils a cinematic reverence for the sacred through a landscape simultaneously scarred and sustained by sound.

Laxe’s hallucinatory journey drifts between road movie, political parable and ritual. Passing through ambiguous, borderless geographies, its hypnotic rhythm reorients our senses. Performances shine, from non-professional nomadic ravers to Sergi López’s grieving father. Both highly tactile and metaphysical, with meaning pulsating beneath its surface, Sirât invites us to trace our own path through the desert mirage.

A lonely Frankenstein (Bale) travels to 1930s Chicago to ask groundbreaking scientist Dr. Euphronious (five-time Oscar nominee Annette Bening) to create a companion for him. The two revive a murdered young woman and The Bride (Buckley) is born. What ensues is beyond what either of them imagined: Murder! Possession! A wild and radical cultural movement! And outlaw lovers in a wild and combustible romance!

Also starring Penélope Cruz and Peter Sarsgaard.

Baz Luhrmann’s extraordinary documentary may be the most poignant account of Elvis Presley’s life and career to date, featuring long-lost footage from his epochal 1970s residency in Las Vegas.

Baz Luhrmann returns to the subject of his most audacious film — 2022’s Elvis — with the extraordinary EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert. Free of contemporary interviews with experts, critics or other stakeholders, the film is propelled by recently discovered archival footage shot at the beginning of the famed performer’s Las Vegas residency. Originally intended to last a few weeks at the International Hotel, the 1969 engagement was shockingly lucrative, and stretched on for over seven years.

Brilliantly compiled with an aficionado’s enthusiasm and sensitivity, the film shifts skilfully between rehearsals, where Presley is cheerful, hard-working, even goofy, and live performances that vary from powerful and grandiose to rushed. There are moments where he can’t keep up with the breakneck arrangements and loses his breath. (He was booked to do at least two shows most days.) Among the standouts are “Polk Salad Annie” and “Burning Love,” a chart-topper he cut in early 1972. There are also cutaways to an army of excited celebrities attending the shows and a nod to Presley’s journey from scandalous hip-shaker to showbiz icon.

Luhrmann’s previous feature stressed Presley manager Colonel Tom Parker’s disastrous impact on his client’s artistic growth and ability to tour internationally. Here, the focus lands on Presley’s musicianship and his interactions with band members and singers. What’s revealed is his deep knowledge of gospel, blues, and country traditions, and his instinctive feel for finding the best arrangements and pace for his songs. This is perhaps the most poignant account of Presley to date.

Kleber Mendonça Filho delivers a stinging portrait of life for an academic on the run in 1970s dictator-ruled Brazil.

Kleber Mendonça Filho navigates Brazil’s painful past to paint a loving portrayal of a place and its people, in this slow burning and hugely entertaining political thriller. It’s Carnival week, 1977, in dictatorship-ruled Brazil. Marcelo, a widower on the run arrives in Recife, hoping to reunite with his young son and flee the country. He finds refuge in a resistance commune run by a charismatic 70-year-old woman, but chaos soon catches up with him. Corrupt forces from his previous life are on his tail and he faces further duplicity in the city – his escape trickier with each turn. Combining political statement with light-hearted sentiment, Bacurau and Aquarius writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s novelistic feature revels in playful genre-bending detours – including a gleefully deranged B-movie inspired sequence – and soulful emotions to deliver a sweaty, sun-drenched and masterfully acted ride that is always grounded in love: for Brazil and for cinema.

Raised by a scheming dwarf and unaware of his true family origins, a young man embarks on an epic journey. Soon, destiny brings him face-to-face with a shattered sword, a fearsome dragon and the cursed ring it guards, and a Valkyrie forced into enchanted slumber...  

Moments of transcendent beauty and heroic triumph sparkle in the third chapter of Wagner’s Ring cycle, brought to life under Barrie Kosky’s inspired eye following his spectacular Das Rheingold (2023) and Die Walküre (2025). Andreas Schager, in his much-anticipated debut with The Royal Opera, stars as Siegfried’s titular hero, alongside Christopher Maltman’s towering Wanderer, Peter Hoare’s treacherous Mime and Elisabet Strid’s radiant Brünnhilde. Antonio Pappano conducts, drawing out the unspoken tensions and ethereal mysticism of Wagner’s dynamic score.

Cast:  

Siegfried ANDREAS SCHAGER

Mime PETER HOARE

Der Wanderer CHRISTOPHER MALTMAN

Brünnhilde ELISABET STRID

Alberich CHRISTOPHER PURVES

Fafner SOLOMAN HOWARD

Erda WIEBKE LEHMKUHL

Woodbird SARAH DUFRESNE

Creatives:

Music RICHARD WAGNER

Conductor ANTONIO PAPPANO

Director BARRIE KOSKY

Set Designer RUFUS DIDWISZUS

Costume Designer VICTORIA BEHR

Lighting Designer ALESSANDRO CARLETTI

Please note that this is a private screening for members of Woodbridge Film Society and not open to the public. If you wish to join the Film Society then please visit their page here

In rural France, 18-year-old Totone must face reality and take responsibility for his younger sister. His solution, to make the best Comté cheese in the region and bag the prize money.

Living a typical, wild life in the Jura region of South Eastern France, Totone deals with rural boredom and frustration, focusing on honing his craft to escape this pent-up isolation.

Working with local non-professionals and embedding herself in this often distrustful community, Holy Cow gives us a raw, unfiltered look at this world. Lead actor Clément Faveau is a poultry farmer in real life and gives a fantastically irate performance.

Winning the Un Certain Regard Youth Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Louise Courvoisier balances her time as a director with working on her family farm. Her lived experience creates this rough, but golden hearted story about rural hooligans and marginalised community.

Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) and Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Hard Truths) feature in a five-star, triumphantly acclaimed new production of Arthur Miller’s classic play, from visionary director Ivo Van Hove (A View from the Bridge).  

One family, the heart of the American dream. When wartime delivers profits for Joe, it comes at a price when his partner is charged with criminal manufacturing deals, and his eldest son goes missing in action. Will peacetime bring peace of mind, or will he be confronted by the consequence of his actions?  

Filmed live from the West End, Paapa Essiedu (I May Destroy You), Tom Glynn-Carney (House of the Dragon), and Hayley Squires (I, Daniel Blake) also feature in this disturbingly prescient play.