An award winning film full of baroque splendour. The talented composer Antonio Salieri found himself in competition with Mozart, a genius, and he couldn't understand why God favored such a vulgar creature to be his instrument. Salieri turned into a hate-filled monster, whose aim in life became to ruin his colleague, but he emerges as a tragic and sympathetic character. He alone could appreciate the perfection of Mozart's music and, perhaps, he speaks up for all of us whose talents fall short of find out more...

Alcatraz, 1938; after 3 years in solitary, a hellish hole in the ground with no heat, light or human contact, petty crook Henri Young emerges as a madman. When he kills another inmate there is only one man - attorney James Stamphill - willing to challenge the barbarity of Alcatraz. Moving and riveting with great performances from all three leads. find out more...

Howard Hughes was an insatiable man, a billionaire whose success within Hollywood and obsession with aviation made him more famous than many of the movie stars his studio employed. This lush dramatisation of Hughes concentrates on the man, as a rebel within the ordered system of big business, charming, glamorous, decadent and ruthlessly focused. We witness the beginning of his fall from grace and decent into reclusive paranoia, but this is more an epic of Hughes glory years and, though lacking t find out more...

Back in 1914 the young Ida Dalsar fell in love with an ardent young socialist, the future Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. She sold her shop to finance his career, possibly married him, had his child, got dumped, but kept coming back for more before being incarcerated in a mental institution. In other words this is the story of a girl who fell for the wrong man (and a country that fell for the wrong politics).
Particularly well received in France this was considered a serious contender fo find out more...