Films showing at 9th Keswick Film Festival

Thursday 10th Apr at 19:30 - Theatre By The Lake

The Orchestra of the Piazza Vittorio

Agostino Ferrente will be joining us on Thursday evening as the North West premiere of his film opens the 9th Keswick Film Festival

Friday 11th Apr at 12:00 - Studio

Libero

Anche libero va bene

This directing debut garnered a number of European awards in 2006 but is only now reaching our shores. A father struggles to bring up his daughter and son in a cramped Rome apartment. Seen from the plaintive point of view of the son (a scintillating performance by 11-year-old Alessandro Morace), the film charts the effects of the mother’s surprise return, the volatility of the father and the delicate changes the boy is undergoing. 'Affecting and quite brilliantly acted…a heartfelt film that lingers in the mind.' (Peter Whittle, Sunday Times)

Thanks to Axiom Films

Friday 11th Apr at 14:15 - Theatre By The Lake

Ahlaam

In 2003, in the aftermath of Iraq's invasion, the patients of a mental hospital escape into the crazed Baghdad world. Medical student Mehdi, trapped in lowly work by his late father's activism against Saddam, gets the help of patriotic soldier (and asylum inmate) Ali to round up the lost patients – among them Ahlaam in her wedding dress, searching hopelessly for her lost fiancé. This is an unflinching story of life pre- and post-Saddam, a rare chance to see an Iraqi point-of-view. The film-makers were kidnapped by insurgents and interrogated by US soldiers during the shoot, yet survived to tell an extraordinary tale. 'That any film should be made under such circumstances is extraordinary in itself, but that the film should also look so good and be so compelling, is nothing short of a miracle.' (Anton Bitel, Channel 4 Film)

Thanks to Winstone Film Distributors

Friday 11th Apr at 15:00 - Alhambra

The Jokers

At the height of the Sixties, Winner's fast-paced directing style combined with the subversive humour of Clement and La Frenais to produce this popular comedy-thriller. Michael Crawford and Oliver Reed are brothers whose love for practical jokes leads them to keep upping the ante until their next project is to steal the crown jewels – just to show it can be done. 'Sight gags and underplayed British throwaway gags are interleaved neatly with the growing suspense over whether the guys will succeed.' (Variety in 1967) 'Oliver Reed is very funny as a weary, wise, heroic-but-modest military man.' (Roger Ebert in 1968, Chicago Sun-Times)

Michael Winner’s own print

Friday 11th Apr at 17:00 - Theatre By The Lake

Silent Light

Stellet Licht

This multiple international award-winner (including the jury prize at Cannes 2007) begins with a lengthy shot of dawn over the north Mexican plains. But this is not everyday Mexico: we are in a Mennonite community that still speaks the Dutch-German dialect of their founders. At the same leisurely pace, there unfolds a stately yet disturbing drama, of the passion of an upright member of the community for a married woman, and the burden this places on the man's wife, who knows of the affair from the outset. Reygadas uses breathtaking camerawork and non-professional actors to convey the strangeness of this world and of his story, a remarkable advance on his previous two films. 'Startling and engaging' (Kate Lloyd, BBCi).

Thanks to Winstone Film Distributors

Friday 11th Apr at 17:00 - Studio

The Class

Klass

Raag was apparently inspired by the Columbine high-school massacre to make this award-winning film. He took a different approach from Gus van Sant's Elephant, however, gathering together a group of inexperienced young actors in workshops out of which the story emerged, with great credit to all involved, and offering an explanation of how such horror comes about. Two 16-year-old school outsiders try to protect each other, but find the bullying of their peers growing in intensity. Soon there seems only one way out. 'Asks a lot of ugly questions about peer pressure, bullying and one's rights to revenge or at least defend oneself…accomplished...' (Boyd van Hoeij, European-films.net)

UK premiere – thanks to Amrion OÜ

Friday 11th Apr at 18:00 - Alhambra

Hannibal Brooks

Oliver Reed plays a zoo-keeping prisoner of war charged with looking after Lucy the elephant when she has to be moved, owing to the small matter of the Second World War going on all around them, from Berlin to Innsbruck. 'Hannibal Brooks, like Lucy, has a kind of slow, tranquilized dignity and a disarming desire to please.' (Vincent Canby, New York Times) Long before Porridge or Auf Wiedersehn Pet, the venerable writing team of Clement and La Frenais penned this quirky and funny romp. ' A novel and picturesque take on the traditional escape-based war movie.' (Graeme Clark, The Spinning Image)

Michael Winner’s own print

Friday 11th Apr at 20:15 - Theatre By The Lake

Private Property

Nue propriété

Isabelle Huppert plays the mother of teenage sons who are possessive and self-centred. When she transgresses their world of secrets, and suggests she sells the house in which they live so she can start anew with her man friend, a family tragedy is set in motion. Powerful acting from Huppert, and from Jérémie Renier alongside his real-life brother as the two sons, combine with restrained but unflinching direction to make this an emotional thriller, a gripping family drama which '...etches the line between love and hate with a savagery that is almost unprecedented' (LA Times).

UK premiere - Thanks to Soda Pictures

Friday 11th Apr at 20:30 - Alhambra

Lars and the Real Girl

Ryan Gosling makes an excellent job of playing Lars - the shy, possibly borderline autistic in this touching comedy of a young man who hits on the delusional idea of taking a life-sized doll along as his girlfriend to enable him to make social contact. Fine supporting acting from Patricia Clarkson as the family doctor, sensitive to the suffering caused by the loss of his parents, advises Lars' remaining relatives (Emily Mortimer and Paul Schneider) to indulge the make-believe for therapeutic reasons. There is fine interaction of the characters in Gillespie's clever direction – even the mail-order fiancée seems to come to life - and serious themes are treated without undermining the engaging comedy of the whole.

Saturday 12th Apr at 12:00 - Theatre By The Lake

Juno

' A fiction with irresistible charm and wit' said Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian in a five-star review. Some have been more cautious, especially since this is the latest in a recent spate of American movies that greet unexpected pregnancy by ducking the abortion issue. Nevertheless most viewers have been charmed and indeed uplifted by Ellen Page's portrayal of a 16-year-old with panache and a snappy gift for dialogue (winning newcomer Diablo Cody the 2008 Oscar for best screenplay), as the young woman meets the uptight potential adoptees of her unborn baby and learns about power, sexuality and the hypocrisies of the adult world. Jason Reitman was close to winning the Best Director Oscar for this a few weeks ago.

Thanks to Film Quest

Saturday 12th Apr at 12:00 - Alhambra

The Italian

Italianetz

A suitable film for children and adults, The Italian tells the story of young Vanya, who, abandoned in an orphanage, faces the possibility of being adopted and taken to Italy – portrayed as warm and welcoming compared to the coldness of Mother Russia. For the first time the boy (a fine child actor, Kolya Spiridonov) begins to wonder about his natural mother. He reads his personal file then sets off across the country with only a distant address and his own resourcefulness to guide him, pursued by the ruthless adoption broker (played by the veteran Mariya Kuznetsova, most recently seen here in Russian Ark). 'A deeply moving experience, alternately funny and sad. Based on a real incident, it has the ring of truth.' (Ruthe Stein, SF Chronicle)

Thanks to Soda Pictures

Saturday 12th Apr at 14:30 - Studio

Beaufort

Bufor

Beaufort explores themes of survival, camaraderie and the futility of war. Cedar was himself in the Israeli army, and his portrayal of an Israeli army unit guarding an old Crusader castle in South Lebanon reeks of authenticity. It won him the Silver Bear at Berlin in 2007 and nomination for the Best Film in a Foreign Language Oscar. The film's take on the conflict with Hezbollah is 'neither guilty nor jingoistic' (New York Times) and its distance from the politics enable it to be reflective and philosophical about its war themes. 'Mesmerizing...memorably claustrophobic and fatalistic, Cedar's film recalls the great war films of Renoir and Kubrick.' (Andrew O'Hehir, salon.com)

Thanks to Trinity Filmed Entertainment

Saturday 12th Apr at 14:30 - Alhambra

Joy Division

A perfect companion-piece to Control, shown at the Festival’s February weekend. This documentary tells how a bunch of lads from Manchester, terribly derivative to start with, went into the studio for six months and emerged, with the help of producer Martin Hannett, as the definitive post-punk band Joy Division. Gee 'has a knack for non-fiction storytelling' (Stephanie Zacharek, salon.com). With access to all the key players – including the words of frontman Ian Curtis’ widow Deborah as well as the presence of Curtis’ then girlfriend – he provides a fascinating account of the band’s achievements, downfall, and how those left behind by Curtis’ suicide recovered to become New Order.

NW England premiere – thanks to The Works International

Saturday 12th Apr at 17:00 - Alhambra

The Edge of Heaven

This won Akin Best Screenplay at Cannes to go with his previous awards, including the Berlin Golden Bear for Head-On (2004). Like the earlier film, the movie shifts between Germany and Turkey, but with far greater complexity as it focuses initially on the lives of father and son, first- and second-generation Turkish immigrants: the father a charming scoundrel, the son a respected professor. Then it daringly leaps to the life of Ayten, a Turkish left-wing activist who escapes to Germany in search of her mother, whom she believes is working in a shoe-shop; actually, a prostitute. The interwoven narratives create rich layers of (justified) coincidence – compared by some to Babel. 'This is a movie rooted in reality that attains great moral and spiritual power...It's wonderfully acted, deeply moving and curiously illuminating.' (Philip French, The Observer)

Thanks to Artificial Eye

Saturday 12th Apr at 17:30 - Theatre By The Lake

Death Wish

Love it or loathe it, the first Death Wish was a stylish, genre-defining movie. A bleeding-heart liberal architect turns vigilante when a client renews his long-festering interest in guns, and his wife and daughter are sexually assaulted and killed. The film turned Charles Bronson from a character actor into a major star; his fans believe this is Bronson's best solo turn, before the later movies in the franchise concentrated on the violence, rather than on the ambiguities of a deranged New Yorker taking the law into his own hands. Nevertheless, there is violence a-plenty. This is the movie Sly Stallone wants to remake for today: watch out. (Or at least enjoy the brilliant Oscar-nominated score by Herbie Hancock)

Thanks to Paramount

Saturday 12th Apr at 17:30 - Studio

Grow Your Own

Written by Carl Hunter and Frank Cottrell Boyce (one of Britain's greatest screenwriters and responsible for most of Michael Winterbottom’s recent successes) this amusing story tells of a traumatised asylum seeker from China who’s given an allotment to help him integrate, in the midst of a group of prejudiced and eccentric Brits – growers trying to sell out to a mobile phone company. This is a subtle look at the changing face of working-class society as it faces up to the phenomenon of ethnic immigration, called by Mark Kermode 'an amiable post-East Is East social comedy that uses the tensions on a Northern allotment as a paradigm for multicultural Britain.'

Saturday 12th Apr at 20:00 - Alhambra

Honeydripper

Veteran writer-director Sayles finds the roots of rock and roll – and a moment of profound change - in small-town Alabama, 1950. A small-time club owner stakes everything on one big gig starring the legendary Guitar Sam. Well, Sam ain’t coming, but who knows what he looks like? And just blown into town is a young musician named Sonny with one of these new-fangled electric guitars and quite a voice on him. Sayles uses stereotypes like Stacy Keach's racist sheriff, then subverts them. The authenticity of the locale and the music (Gary Clark Jr as Sonny really is a rising blues star) resonate against the magic of the tale. 'A musical fable, the film uses [Sayles'] typically robust ensemble performances, crackling dialogue and a boogie-woogie soul.' (Kevin Crust, L A Times)

NW England premiere – thanks to Axiom Films

Saturday 12th Apr at 20:15 - Theatre By The Lake

No Country for Old Men

The Coens' latest, and some say their best (well, just look at the four Oscars it’s garnered), is part-thriller set in a blood-soaked Texas, and part-character study, exquisitely adapting Cormac McCarthy's novel. Tommy Lee Jones is the lawman subtly portraying a vain attempt to bring morality to bear on evil; Josh Brolin is the small-time crook who stumbles on two million dollars, which proves a lot harder to hang on to than to find; and Javier Bardem is the ruthless bounty-hunter with a dark line in cynicism and skill in killing people with a cattle stungun. 'This movie is a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate.' (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)

Thanks to Paramount

Saturday 12th Apr at 22:00 - Alhambra

The Orphanage

El Orfanato

This is a multi-award winner by debut director Bayona, with Pan's Labyrinth's del Toro as producer. Belen Rueda plays Laura, who returns in her 30's to take over the orphanage she was briefly in as a child. But soon her son Simon seems to see imaginary beings that she too sees. What's going on? The minimum of special effects provokes the maximum of fearful anticipation. When the sick boy goes missing, Laura's and her husband's search for the child is also a spooky, skilfully-made journey into the darker recesses of the human imagination. 'A superior ghost story…when [Laura] walks down a dark staircase, or into an unlit corridor or a gloomy room, we're tense and fearful, whether we're experiencing a haunted house or a haunted mind.' (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times)

Sunday 13th Apr at 12:00 - Theatre By The Lake

Earth

Specially chosen for both adults and children to marvel at on the Theatre’s big screen, Earth brings you images such as you have never seen. Concentrating on the movement of a few animals, but meeting plenty of others along the way, we take a journey from North to South Pole over the course of a year, and in the words of BBCi's Ann Kelly, 'No shot is less than dazzling, most are beautiful and many are stunning.'

There is some censorship of the nastier things in nature, but the serious message of the pictures is that the damage mankind is doing to the earth is stark, and, if we are not careful, terminal. In the final analysis though, most critics appear simply stunned at the beauty of this film.

Sunday 13th Apr at 12:00 - Studio

The Orchestra of the Piazza Vittorio

Agostino Ferrente will be joining us on Thursday evening as the North West premiere of his film opens the 9th Keswick Film Festival

Sunday 13th Apr at 12:00 - Alhambra

Water Lilies

La naissance des pieuvres

Sciamma's first feature as writer-director offers a whole new angle on the world of synchronised swimming; or rather, it uses that world to provide insights into the world of teenage girls. Marie, Floriane and Anne fall in and out of love – in one case, with each other – and, as Lisa Nesselson at variety.com assures us, 'Be it pretty lasses or their ordinary-looking peers, male viewers can rest assured that this is an accurate take on distaff disarray.' There are no adults in sight, no male perspectives. Just the young women, their rivalries and affections, their progress to adulthood. 'Probing and impressively assured fest-ready gem is brimming with talent to watch.' Lisa Nesselson, Variety

Thanks to Slingshot Studios

Sunday 13th Apr at 14:30 - Theatre By The Lake

Don't Touch the Axe

Ne touchez pas la hache

Rivette is 79 but still a pioneer of the nouvelle vague. Here he adapts a Balzac novella set in the early nineteenth century. It's a 'subtle and beautifully mounted' (Philip French, The Observer) account of the pursuit by a nobleman of a married woman, who has hidden from his obsessive pursuit in a Mallorca convent. She is played by a vibrant Jeanne Balibar, opposite Gérard Depardieu's lookalike son Guillaume, and who here is the pursuer and who the pursued? The film’s languid camerawork and careful directorial distance make for a treat. 'A nearly impeccable work of art — beautiful, true, profound.' (Manohla Dargis, New York Times)

Thanks to Artificial Eye

Sunday 13th Apr at 14:30 - Studio

I Served the King of England

Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále

Menzel has adapted one of the late Bohumil Hrabal’s novels before: Closely Observed Trains, a seminal film of the 60’s. Amazingly, he’s still directing, and still on form, with this picaresque story of a Czech everyman Jan Dítě (literally John Child). Jan resolves to reach the top of the hotel trade, despite minor problems like the onset of World War II, and his chronic tendency towards bad luck and black humour. The film manages to remain funny, sexy and sensual – with more than a nod towards silent comedy – even as the story deepens and darkens. 'A visual extravaganza. There are beautiful touches of magic realism... and many of the film's flashback moments feel like mini comedy classics in their own right.' (Amber Wilkinson, Eye for Film)

NW England premiere – thanks to Arrow Film Distributors

Sunday 13th Apr at 14:30 - Alhambra

The Savages

It's nearly a decade since Jenkins' debut with The Slums of Beverly Hills. Here she writes and directs what is clearly an autobiographical project that she crafts into a dark comedy. Oscar-nominated Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are thoroughly convincing as middle-aged siblings unexpectedly and unwontedly thrown together by the increasing dementia of their father (Philip Bosco). It's a rare film that provokes reviewers to wish there had been more exposition, but just whatever happened to the missing Mom? Watch and decide. Otherwise, the combination of laughter and pain lift this well clear of worthiness into good entertainment. 'With the help of acting giants, Jenkins turns The Savages into a twisted, bittersweet pleasure.' (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone)

Thanks to Film Quest

Sunday 13th Apr at 17:00 - Alhambra

Children of Glory

Szabadság, szerelem

A pampered sports star, a water-polo player, falls for a student activist. This is Hungary in the 1950's, where the parents of scriptwriter Joe Esterhasz (Jagged Edge, Basic Instinct) emigrated from. And so the movie – made in Hungary by a Hungarian crew - moves gradually towards its twin climaxes: the unsuccessful revolution of 1956, and the Olympic water polo match in the same year, between Hungary and the USSR, in which there was 'blood in the water'. 'The film has been given the polished Hollywood treatment, but its feel is no less authentic for that…for me [the characters] are symbols of the tragedy that befell my country' (Monica Porter, daughter of Hungarian revolutionaries and reviewer for The Times).

Thanks to Lionsgate Films

Sunday 13th Apr at 17:30 - Theatre By The Lake

Caramel

Sukkar Banat

Labaki directs, co-writes and leads this crackling ensemble piece set in Beirut. She plays Layale, a beauty-shop owner with a settled relationship at the centre of a medley of women with problems. But all is not as it seems: here 'caramel' is not just sweet, but a painful depilatory. And in the movie her settled relationship turns out to be with a man married to someone else. The friendship of the group of women is complicated by sectarian division - yet still manages to survive and thrive in such a cosmopolitan city. Even lesbianism, albeit subtly treated, has its moments. 'Effortlessly empathetic' (Kenneth Turan, LA Times).

NW England premiere – thanks to Momentum Pictures

Sunday 13th Apr at 20:00 - Theatre By The Lake

The Unknown Woman

La Sconosciuta

It’s 20 years since Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso won the best foreign-language Oscar. Nowadays he’s on a seemingly endless project to complete Sergio Leone's film-work about the Leningrad siege. But here he takes a break to make for himself a multi-award-winning dark thriller that's also a moving melodrama with an Ennio Morricone score. Russian actress Ksenia Rappoport plays a Ukrainian immigrant to Italy. Her seemingly quiet country life in her 30's gradually turns out to be not what it seems, as the horrors of her past life lead up to a violent present - where Michele Placido features as a particularly convincing Mafia sadist and Rappoport sustains our sympathy for her in spite of everything. 'As haunting and beautiful as it is disturbing' Montage

NW England premiere – thanks to Transmedia Releasing

Sunday 13th Apr at 20:00 - Alhambra

There Will Be Blood

Anderson's latest succeeds in being both miniature and epic in its story of early oilman Plainview, played with fanatical absorption by Daniel Day-Lewis (winning the Oscar for best actor), and his confrontation with preacher Eli Sunday. The director takes tremendous risks, for instance casting Paul Dano unrealistically as both Sunday and Sunday’s own brother, or letting the camera drift over scenes languidly, or allowing Jonny Greenwood's score to soar over the soundtrack. The story is both relevant – to today's battles over oil and religion – yet timeless. Some even claim it has 'overshot the runway of movie modernity with something thrillingly, dangerously new.' (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)

Thanks to Buena Vista International