20th Century Flicks, Bristol

A young draughtsman is forced into a shotgun marriage. A landmark in English cinema in terms of social realism, dealing with the lives of ordinary people set against a grim Northern backdrop, it remains keenly observant in detail and rather moving in its very unpretentiousness. find out more...

A SEPARATION (2011)

Certification12 Our Rating

The stand out film of the 2011 Berlin Film Festival and winner of the Golden Bear, A Separation is a suspenseful and intelligent drama detailing the fractures and tensions at the heart of Iranian society, but using the disintegration of a marriage as the pivot by which all turns. When his wife leaves him Nadar hires a maid to help him with his ailing father, but the young woman has many secrets and soon he fin find out more...

ALPHAVILLE (1965)

CertificationPG Our Rating

Godard's bleak sci-fi noir, with the stony-faced gumshoe Lemmy Caution turning inter-galactic agent to re-enact the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice in conquering Alpha 60, the strange automated city where such emotions as love and tenderness are banished. A brilliantly realised and stylish satire on the dehumanising nature of technology. find out more...

BLOODY SUNDAY (2002)

Certification15 Our Rating

A harrowing and necessarily disturbing re-enactment of the terrible events that took place on January 30th 1972, when soldiers of the parachute regiment shot dead 13 unarmed civilians. The exact truth of events is not fully known even today, but the killings, on what would become known as "Bloody Sunday", must bare much responsibility for the escalation of violence in Northern Ireland. A conflict lost in blind hatred, where religious denomination became the focus for morally defunct and murderou find out more...

CENTRAL STATION (1998)

Certification15 Our Rating

Dora is a retired schoolteacher turned conwoman, scratching a living at Rio's swarming railway station by writing never to be posted letters for illiterate passengers. When one of her customers dies, the woman's young son, Josue, is left stranded alone in the big city. Dora takes pity on the child and reluctantly joins him on a cross-country search for his father. A critically acclaimed road movie in the vein of Paris Texas. find out more...

CUL-DE-SAC (1965)

Certification15 Our Rating

Returning to themes he had touched upon in his earlier films Polanski develops the idea of Pinter's "two people in a room and then a third enters" with a couple on a remote island invaded by two on-the-run gangsters. Gradually the power positions shift... underlined with great black humour. find out more...

ELITE SQUAD (2007)

Certification18 Our Rating

An elite battalion of police officers, known as BOPE, are pretty much the only thing that the drug dealers living in the favelas of Rio De Janerio fear - aside from each other. But the man who commands them wants out; the unrelenting brutality of his job is beginning to fracture both his mind and family life. The Captain has one goal: to find a worthy replacement, untainted by the corruption that riddles his fellow colleagues, and the potential shows itself in the form of two very different but find out more...

FIRE AT SEA (2016)

Certification12 Our Rating

Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin Film Festival 2016, Gianfranco Rosi's incisive, poignant and deeply moving portrait of the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa--and the humanitarian crisis occurring in the seas around it--is both a masterly work of documentary filmmaking and a timely call for urgent action.

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GRAND CANYON (1991)

Certification15 Our Rating

A moving and poignant tale of middle-class middle America. An excellent cast, including the superbly OTT Steve Martin enlivens this introspective look at American mores, and the reasons why everything is falling apart. Whilst a little over moral, this is ultimately uplifting and optimistic. find out more...

GRBAVICA (2006)

Certification15 Our Rating

Single mother Esma and her 12-year-old daughter Sara live in Grbavica, a Bosnian quarter of Sarajevo, in the aftermath of the Balkan war. Sara needs the cash for a school trip and Esma goes to work in a nightclub to earn the money, but what Sara can't understand is why she can't get the free trip offered to the children of war heroes. Esma's Secret is a tale of survival and the struggle for normality elevated to the status of a deeply moving and heart rending open letter to the people of Sarajev find out more...