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Unmissable reportage from the frontlines of the Arab Spring by passionate participants rather than detached observers. Arriving in Cairo on assignment, acclaimed documentary film-maker Omar Shargawi could not have predicted that the streets would erupt in one of the most important revolutions of this century. Shargawi and friends captured the reality of the revolution that [...]
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The impeccable new drama from the great Xiaoshuai Wang (Drifters, Shanghai Dreams) is a politically sharp tale set in the rural province of Ghizhou during the dying days of the Cultural Revolution. The vivid story unfolds through the eyes of eleven year old Wang Han, whose life is shaken up after a confrontation with a [...]
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The zombie genre has enjoyed unprecedented popularity with mainstream audiences thanks to the success of films like Dawn of the Dead and Frank Darabont’s hit TV series The Walking Dead. But 13 Eerie is a fresh take on a genre that’s literally decomposing. This epic battle of the undead follows the story of six ambitious [...]
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[Please note this screening will end at approximately 11pm] You haven’t really seen 2001: A Space Odyssey until you’ve seen it on the big screen, and in the stunning setting of Leeds Town Hall, this special presentation on a new digital print is going to be a very special occasion. Kubrick’s visionary sci-fi classic is [...]
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A rare chance to see a much overlooked example of director Yasujiro Ozu and star Kinuyo Tanaka at their absolute finest. Awaiting her husband’s return from the war, Tokiko (Tanaka) struggles to support herself and their young child Hiroshi, a situation which reaches a crisis point when Hiroshi falls ill and requires life-saving treatment. Left [...]
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Steve and his bride-to-be Tina are having a weekend away so that they can spend some time with Steve’s sister and her husband, who are to be their maid of honour and best man, respectively. While the boys are planning a weekend of drinking, bridezilla Tina has other plans – organising the wedding and making [...]
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Ivan Turgenev’s classic novel is brought to life with luscious cinematography and set design in Andrei Konchalovsky’s third feature A Nest of Gentlefolk. Disenchanted with the superficial glitter of Parisian society and with his frivolous wife, Fyodor Lavretsky returns to his long neglected estate in Russia in the decadent days of the aristocracy shortly before [...]
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A Town Called Panic is a wonder to behold – a giddy, wildly inventive, surreal and laugh out loud film with an exhilarating and infectious energy that bursts off the screen. In order to recover their house Horse, Cowboy and Indian go on a journey of epic proportions, travelling to the centre of the earth [...]
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A festival favourite from 2004 and screening on 35mm, Aaltra is a hilarious wheelchair road movie, a wonderfully deadpan and irreverent comedy scattered liberally with ingenious sight and sound gags. The story follows two feuding neighbours who seem to live only to torment one another. When they come to blows over an item of agricultural [...]
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A stark and beautiful rotoscope animation from the Czech Republic, Alois Nebel builds on the recent trend in animation to relate nuanced stories of political sophistication and psychological depth. Alois Nebel works as a train dispatcher at a small railway station in the Sudetenland. He is a loner who finds the loneliness of the station [...]
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A mysterious underground outfit known as Alps has developed a bizarre new trade: for a small fee, they inhabit the role of people’s dearly departed, adopting their mannerisms and wearing their clothes until the bereaved can finally obtain some measure of acceptance and closure. Strangely enough, business is booming, until one of the group, who [...]
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From the director of Hidden and The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke’s extraordinary new drama Amour is announced as the Closing Gala of the Official Selection. Amour is the Austrian writer / director’s second Palme d’Or winner at Cannes where the film was hailed as a masterpiece after its world premiere. Georges (Jean- Louis Trintignant) and [...]
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The hugely popular Fanomenon Anime Day returns to LIFF this year on Sunday 11th November, also presented on the first day of the Thought Bubble Festival 2012 and in partnership with Scotland Loves Animation. Starting at 12 noon in the superb setting of the Victoria Hall at Leeds Town Hall, the Fanomenon Anime Day will [...]
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‘Brandon Cronenberg’s striking body-horror debut is a chilling vision of our cultural obsession with celebrity. In a dystopian future world, Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works at the Lucas Clinic, which has an unusual and highly profitable line of business: deliberately infecting paying customers with diseases harvested from top celebrities, thus providing a ‘biological communion’ [...]
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Ben Affleck directs and stars in his widely-acclaimed comic thriller based on a remarkable true story about a CIA ‘exfiltration’ expert who concocts an outlandish plan to get a group of stranded Americans out of Iran. On November 4, 1979, a group of Islamist militants took control of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held [...]
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Mid-15th century Japan. Flood, drought and famine have transformed the landscape of the capital of Kyoto into a barren wasteland. More than 80,000 have perished in the three years between 1459 and 1461. This desolate state served as the backdrop to the beginning of the country’s greatest civil war. The victims of this dark period [...]
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The passionate, atmospheric Asya’s Happiness is the greatest of Andrei Konchalovsky’s early films, but it was banned by the Soviet authorities and barely seen for 20 years. Otherwise it would surely have stood as a landmark of 60s Soviet cinema. Asya is a lame young woman who works as a cook in a remote Russian [...]
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After serving time under house arrest, ageing club promoter and former ‘80s party-boy Janne reunites with his former business partner Klas. They plan to open a new elite club named after a Roxy Music hit in a wealthy Swedish coastal town. The good times seem to be returning, but Janne’s hedonistic recklessness ruins his latest [...]
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With clarity and a deep respect for his subjects, filmmaker Petr Lom follows five stories of ordinary Egyptians who have suffered injustice at the hands of the State in the first year of the revolution’s aftermath. Shot in an intimate vérité style, the film takes us into hidden corners of Egyptian lives, far from the [...]
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Stanley Kubrick’s epic costume drama is a must-see on the big screen, an unusually expansive evocation of period detail with magnificent production design and every shot fastidiously framed with the beauty of a Gainsborough painting. Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal) is forced to leave home after becoming involved in a duel. He gets lost in various [...]
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Imagine everything you ever did was possessed of spectacular artistic inspiration. That’s not far from the truth of how designer, painter, puppeteer, sculptor and musician Wayne White lives his life. You may recognise his art from the set of legendary 80s kids TV show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Beauty is Embarrassing portrays White as a multi-talented family [...]
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When Alex and Meg (played by director Dominic Brunt and real-life wife Joanne Mitchell) head off to a remote cottage for the weekend to try and patch up their struggling relationship, neither of them expect to be attacked by marauding zombies. As things get worse Meg is about to find out just how deep her [...]
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Behind the Screen casts a formidable glance behind the facade of the electronics industry where 7 computers are produced a second. Behind the Screen reveals the people behind the important electronic product and thereby illustrates the links of our decentralized economic system, which are difficult to grasp based on real life processes. Behind the Screen [...]
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The Berserk anime is set in a foreboding, medieval Europeaninspired world, where a hundred year war rages on. Lone mercenary Guts travels the land, cutting down his opponents with unrivalled swordsmanship. His ferocity and strength attracts the attention of Griffith, leader of the mercenary group The Band of the Hawk.
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An orphaned drifter, Guts is appropriately [...] -

Despite things having gone a little awry towards the end of the first film, we return to the fray to find that things are still on the up and up for Griffith and his Band of the Hawks as they prove themselves to be ever more invaluable to Midland and their quest to regain land [...]
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Jeffrey Catherine Jones is one of the most revered comic book and fantasy artists of all time and a complex character with an unusual life, an ideal subject for an insightful and captivating documentary. Tracing the early history as part of The Studio with fellow artists Bernie Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith and Michael William Kaluta through [...]
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Cult psychedelic sci-fi odyssey Beyond the Black Rainbow has divided critics and audiences, attracting outspoken champions and derisive naysayers in roughly equal numbers. Sufficed to say it is quite unlike anything else featuring eye catching retro-futurist production design, a pulsating analogue synth soundtrack and trippy visuals that make 2001 seem like The King’s Speech. Deep [...]
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Roland Vranik made his feature debut with the inspired, absurdist comedy drama Black Brush filmed in gorgeous widescreen monochrome. Channelling Jim Jarmusch’s Down by Law through a deadpan Hungarian sensibility, the film takes place on the roofs of Budapest and recounts the adventures of four young slackers posing as chimney sweeps. Their priorities are avoiding [...]
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João Canijo’s Blood of My Blood is one of the key features marking the Portuguese hotspot in new world cinema. Honing a superbly original style of complex, cross-cutting shots and dialogue, he skilfully blends gritty urban cinema with larger than life psychodrama. In the suburbs of Lisbon, single mother Márcia lives with her sister and [...]
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Channelling the frustrations of life in contemporary Athens in an idiosyncratic style contrasting with the current wave of absurdist Greek cinema, Boy Eating the Bird’s Food is a stunning debut feature by Ektoras Lygizos.
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The spectre of the current Greek economic crisis looms large in this astonishing feature that sees realism and allegory sit side-by-side. An [...] -

This is a new programme in the festival created just to celebrate the variety of great and strange animated films we have received from UK animators this year. A vivid mash-up of films ranging from one minute long attention grabbers to more considered and delightful narratives, the programme gives us a chance to show off [...]
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No man is an island but Britain certainly is and by gosh it’s chock full of talented directors, actors, writers making this year’s Best of British Programme a corker. It includes beautiful stop motion animation I am Tom Moody about the delicate ego of a young musician finding his voice, tender drama Dylan’s Room about [...]
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It’s fair to say that drama is one of the things we do best in this country. From the grand tradition of Shakespeare’s theatre to that oh so concise of things, the dramatic short film. This year’s dramatic short film panorama includes the blackly comic BAFTA Award winning short Pitch Black Heist starring Michael Fassbender, [...]
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Soul music is always most rewarding when it’s sung by someone who’s paid their dues and, oh boy, has Charles Bradley. Charles Bradley: Soul of America documents the singer’s belated breakthrough, releasing his debut album at the age of 62 and playing to sold out audiences after close to half a century spent struggling as [...]
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A dynamic introduction to black and white 16mm filmmaking at its most accessible! We will lay small objects on the raw 16mm film stock and expose it to light, creating ‘rayograms’ on the filmstrip and then processing it in a bucket using highcontrast developer. We will then examine the film to see what we have [...]
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A 16mm filmmaking session on how to create a colour film without a camera, using the DIY ‘flat printing’ method – colour filmmaking in a nutshell! By laying filmstrips, objects, and colour gels over the raw 16mm stock, using glass to press them down and then flashing it with light, we will create a collaborative [...]
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A very popular hands-on Super 8 workshop where you’ll learn how to shoot and hand-process your very own colour Super 8 film! As well as adding colour to the films with inks and pens we will consider alternative image-making techniques such as burying and bleaching film, which film stocks are available, and how to cross-process [...]
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Millions enjoy coffee every morning, but did you know that you can actually develop cine film in it? Coffee, washing soda and vitamin C are the ingredients of ‘Caffenol’ – it works an absolute treat and is about as eco as film processing gets! After shooting one film between two with a Super 8 camera, [...]
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On the day that Tommy and his pregnant wife are due to leave their squalid tenement building (the Citadel of the title) for a new council house, she is brutally attacked by a gang of feral youths. in front of him. Twelve months on and Tommy is suffering from agraphobia (an incredible performance from actor [...]
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As the Cottage Road Cinema in Headingley marks its 100th anniversary and the Hyde Park Picture House reaches its centenary in 2014, Leeds is home to two of the oldest cinemas in the country. Leeds International Film Festival invites you to join in the 100th anniversary events at the Cottage Cinema with a night of [...]
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Crazy and Thief are two young children whose fantasy world exists within the streets of the real New York. Where adults see only advertising hoardings, refuse and everyday people, our two young heroes see magical starcharts, time machines, a cyclops and a giant. We join the two adventurers as they embark on a quest to [...]
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After the release of Japan’s first avant-garde feature film, A Page of Madness (Kurutta ippeiji, 1926), director Teinosuke Kinugasa retreated to safer ground with commercial jidai-geki films before his next attempt at raising the nation’s cinema art. Set in Tokyo’s Yoshiwara pleasure district, Crossways was described by its director as a “chambara without swordfights” and [...]
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Determined to give its loyal genre fans something unique, Fanomenon’s Day of the Dead delivers four UK premieres this year as well as some amazing short films and very special guests. The films include creepy folklore tale Thale from Norway, ghostly J-horror style hauntings in Germany’s Room 205 of Fear; Modus Anomali, a terrifying lost-in-the-woods [...]
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A real time, high concept, webcam farce from Serbia, Death of a Man in the Balkans is clever, original and by turns wickedly funny and thought provoking.A lonely composer commits suicide in front of his webcam.The entire film unfolds from the eye of his computer as a neighbour Aca arrives. As first witness he stays [...]
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Leeds Film Quarter – Christmas Screening
Dir. John McTiernan, USA 1988, 131 mins
“Yippee kai yay!” – it’s only the most explosive action movie of all time, which also happens to be a Christmas film! The seminal 1988 thriller made Bruce Willis a star and also stars velvet-voiced baddie Alan Rickman. When terrorists take control of a [...]
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One of the greatest Spaghetti Westerns, and without a doubt the most influential, Sergio Corbucci’s iconic masterpiece Django was originally banned in several countries, made an international star of Franco Nero and spawned over 50 sequels. On foot and dragging a coffin behind him, a mysterious drifter arrives in a bleak, mud-drenched town near the [...]
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Django Kill is a surreal, gothic vision starring Tomas Milian as The Stranger, a half-breed bandit left for dead by his doublecrossing gang members. Rising from the grave, he sets about seeking revenge, aided by a pair of mystic Native Americans and armed only with a pistol and a supply of golden bullets. His quest [...]
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Lars, once the young darling of the art scene, is slipping away fast into the land of has-beens: he has hit the proverbial creative brick wall. Up till now, his creativity has come at too high a cost: inspiration could only come in the form of carnage – blood, guts and limbs – and he’s [...]
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Comic shop caper Electric Man is a twisty comedy thriller inspired in equal parts by Clerks and The Maltese Falcon. Jazz and Wolf run Deadhead Comics. They owe their landlord £5,000 and the shop is doomed until Issue No 1 of Electric Man mysteriously appears. Worth £100,000, the comic is being sought by a number [...]
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Ernest and Celestine is a heart-warming, wonderfully-animated family adventure based on the best-selling children’s books by Belgian writer and illustrator Gabrielle Vincent, and brought to the screen by the cult animation team behind the hilarious A Town Called Panic (also showing at LIFF this year). Giant bears and tiny mice don’t tend to socialise much, [...]
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Pauline (an unrecognisable AnnaLynne McCord from 90210) is the school misfit with delusions of becoming a successful surgeon so that she can save her terminally ill sister. In between reading medical textbooks and dissecting small animals she spends her time planning her first sexual encounter, questioning God’s existence and fantasising about necrophilia (in the film’s [...]
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For the first time Fanomenon is presenting a special shorts package, with five films from across the world. While each film is unique, all five share a common theme – a shock ending!
Familiar Dir. Richard Powell, Canada, 2012, 20 mins
A hen-pecked man battling with his inner demons has plans to escape his humdrum life.Matriarch Dir. [...]
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The infamous Night of the Dead wouldn’t be the same without the usual selection of horror short films from around the world to accompany the feature films. For 2012 we have a fantastic line up of some of the scariest, nastiest, goriest and strangest films you are likely to see anywhere on the planet (or [...]
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Arts and Minds present another selection of short films about mental health and learning disability featuring dramas and documentaries from a variety of individuals and organisations across the region. Some of the films have been made by the Arts & Minds film group, filmmakers who have personal experience of mental health issues. Others are from [...]
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A fascinating, enlightening and almost unbearably intimate document of the Palestinian struggle from self-taught cameraman Emad Burnat, from the village of Bil’in. When his fourth son, Gibreel, is born in 2005, he gets his first camera. At the same time a separation barrier is being built and the villagers begin to resist this decision. For [...]
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French short filmmaking is an incredibly rich and fascinating world of mini dramas, comedies, and fantasies. Every year the French Panorama presents a film selection box of delicious treats. In the colourful musical Attack of the Giant Brainsucker Monster From Outer Space (pictured), a monster from an old Hollywood movie arrives in a small town [...]
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A fresh, street-wise indie debut from Adam Leon. Malcolm and Sofia, two Bronx teens, are the ultimate graffiti-writers. When a rival gang buffs their latest masterpiece, they must hatch a plan to get revenge by tagging an iconic NYC landmark, but they need to raise $500. Over two whirlwind, sun-soaked summer days, Malcolm and Sofia [...]
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Set in the time following the 1958 criminalisation of prostitution in Japan, Girls of Dark charts the attempts of Kuniko (Hisako Hara) to reintegrate herself into legitimate society. In turns comical and harrowing, the film is Tanaka’s most direct engagement as a director with the world of prostitution which she so frequently visited as an [...]
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Golden Slumbers is a poignant and fascinating documentary that resurrects the myths and legends of a lost cinema. Cambodian films flourished in the 1960s, drawing huge crowds to theatres around the country, until the industry was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. Of the 400 films produced, only 30 remain today. Almost all the actors were [...]
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Rookie Garda officer Lisa Nolan has chosen the wrong time to come to Erin Island, a tiny remote community off the coast of Ireland. A storm is coming in and a squidlike alien creature has just landed on the island and is busy snacking its way through the locals. Soon it becomes apparent that the [...]
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Mixing Super 8 and 16mm film in a cut and paste, homemade aesthetic, Grandma Lo-Fi pays tribute to Icelandic hometaping legend, Sigríður Níelsdóttir. At the tender age of 70 she started recording and releasing her own music straight from the living room. Seven years later she had made 59 albums, crafting an endless array of [...]
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During a family picnic, teenage son, Adolfo, and daughter, Sara, go off to investigate a cave while their parents enjoy a spot of lovemaking. Following a nap they go looking for their children, but they are nowhere to be found. Adolfo and Sara reappear the following morning, but both seem changed somehow, quiet, withdrawn and [...]
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A troubled Catholic priest, Father James, finds his faith crushed when a young girl he promises to protect commits suicide. Months after her death, he is forced to return to his old parish and to the scene of her suicide, a derelict mansion house. Trapped in the house overnight James becomes convinced that he is [...]
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Isabelle Huppert stars in cult Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo’s unconventional and often very funny romantic comedy. At the seaside in Mohang, a young writer works on an idea about a charming French visitor to the town called Anne whose experiences of the local characters and landscapes we share through three versions of the story. In [...]
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Michael Morpurgo has enchanted a whole generation of children with his writing. Now with the adaptation of his novel War Horse for the stage and screen he has become a household name for all ages. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear him talk about his fascinating life, his award-winning work, and the arrival of his [...]
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Outstanding Leeds based producers Human Film return with a deeply moving and insightful documentary, directed by Mohamed Al Daradji (Ahlaam, Son of Babylon) alongside his brother Atia.
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Husham works tirelessly to build the hopes, dreams and prospects of the 32 damaged children of war, under his care at a small orphanage in Baghdad’s most dangerous district. [...] -

A visionary new documentary about the hugely influential musician, composer, musicologist, outsider artist and all round eccentric, John Fahey, known as the father of American Primitive Guitar. Fahey’s music stretches the boundaries of past musical traditions, creating a complex musical dialogue primarily with his steel stringed solo guitar, transcending Delta influences to include bluegrass, classical, [...]
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Germain is a French teacher who is frustrated with the work of his students, with the exception of shy Claude and his almost voyeuristic writing gifts. Both disturbed and fascinated by Claude’s essays about secretly entering the home of his classmate Raphael, Germain encourages his star student’s storytelling and the assignments steer increasingly out of [...]
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Leeds Film Quarter – Christmas Screening
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Dir. Frank Capra, USA 1946, 130 mins
Frank Capra’s perennial Christmas favourite is a bona fide Hollywood classic, featuring magical storytelling and iconic performances from James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who attempts suicide on Christmas Eve, Henry Travers as his Guardian angel Clarence Odbody and a whole raft of great Hollywood studio character [...] -

Anand Patwardhan’s passionate, lyrical documentary was shot over 14 years and is immersed in the culture of India’s Dalits, dehumanized in the traditional caste system as ‘untouchables’ until the scholar and emancipator Bhimrao Ambedkar broke the taboo. In 1997 his statue in Mumbai was desecrated and police opened fire on angry residents, killing 10. Vilas [...]
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In 1989, 20-year-old guitar virtuoso Jason Becker was on the brink of global success. He’d just landed himself a gig playing lead guitar for Van Halen’s David Lee Roth when he was struck down with ALS, the aggressive degenerative disease Professor Stephen Hawking suffers from. Despite his debilitation, Jason continues to compose music using complex [...]
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Glam rock helped define the 1970s, a decade in which sexual attitudes where changing rapidly – although not rapidly enough for Jobriath. Elektra Records spent vast sums on launching the talented, and first openly gay, pop singer as the US Bowie, but it was not to be. Jobriath A.D. is a sensitive, remarkable and sometimes [...]
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In an interview with a reporter (the brilliant Paul Giamatti) Dave explains how he and his friend John came to try the new drug Soy Sauce that allows users to access alternate dimensions and slip through time. While under the influence John and Dave discover that the world is on the brink of invasion from [...]
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Jörg Buttgereit is an independent filmmaker who courted controversy in his early career in the 80s with his underground films Nekromantik and The Death King which have not screened in the UK since 1990. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Nekromantik we are presenting both these films in a partnership with Hyde Park Picture House’s [...]
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He is a Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese writer, living in exile in Spain, an atheist, a communist, and in his eighties. She is a Castilian journalist, a feminist, a translator, and in her fifties. They are José Saramago (1922-2010) and Pilar del Río, for whom intersecting streets are named in José’s home town of Azinhaga in [...]
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Last Shop Standing inspired by the book of the same name by Graham Jones takes you behind the counter to discover why nearly 2000 record shops have already disappeared across the UK. The film charts the rapid rise of record shops in the 60,70 and 80’s, the influence of the chart, the underhand deals, the [...]
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One of two classic Japanese movies screening in Fanomenon this year, presented in association with Zipangu Festival and featuring rarely screened archive 35mm prints. King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) sees the world’s two most monumental monsters go head-to-head, slugging it out in their first ever colour widescreen outing. Produced to celebrate Toho studio’s 30th anniversary, [...]
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A hugely entertaining documentary profile of Ralf König, Germany‘s most successful cartoonist. Wittily playing with queer clichés and providing a razor sharp critique of modern society’s conflicted relationships with gay culture, he also reaches a wide heterosexual audience. König became famous with his comic book The Most Desired Man that was made into a film [...]
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To coincide with LIFF’s retrospective of actress and pioneering filmmaker Kinuyo Tanaka, the Centre for World Cinemas (University of Leeds) and Mixed Cinema Network are delighted to host a half-day workshop focusing on her work. The event will feature several presentations from Japanese film experts and will conclude with a rare screening of The Eternal [...]
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The third feature already from 23 year-old Montreal filmmaker Xavier Dolan (Heartbeats) is an epic romance about an untenable love affair.The defiantly exclusive relationship of a young bohemian couple is sent spiralling out of control when the man, Laurence, confesses he believes he’s a woman trapped inside his male body.‘Shot in a kind of hyper-florid [...]
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LIFF celebrates the great Leeds-based Leaf record label with an evening of music and film highlighting a brand new improvised soundtrack to Luis Bunuel’s surrealist classic Un Chien Andalou by the innovative pianist, Matthew Bourne. Leaf Label boss Tony Morley will also be providing a DJ set to accompany the classic French short The Red [...]
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From this year onwards the winning film of the annual Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition will be eligible for consideration for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. In this year’s exciting competition, more than 30 short films from across the world will be presented to the public and a jury in [...]
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From this year onwards the winning film of the annual Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition will be eligible for consideration for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. In this year’s exciting competition, more than 30 short films from across the world will be presented to the public and a jury in [...]
Click to read more » -

From this year onwards the winning film of the annual Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition will be eligible for consideration for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. In this year’s exciting competition, more than 30 short films from across the world will be presented to the public and a jury in [...]
Click to read more » -

From this year onwards the winning film of the annual Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition will be eligible for consideration for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. In this year’s exciting competition, more than 30 short films from across the world will be presented to the public and a jury in [...]
Click to read more » -

From this year onwards the winning film of the annual Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition will be eligible for consideration for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. In this year’s exciting competition, more than 30 short films from across the world will be presented to the public and a jury in [...]
Click to read more » -

From this year onwards the winning film of the annual Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition will be eligible for consideration for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. In this year’s exciting competition, more than 30 short films from across the world will be presented to the public and a jury in [...]
Click to read more » -

From this year onwards the winning film of the annual Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition will be eligible for consideration for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film. In this year’s exciting competition, more than 30 short films from across the world will be presented to the public and a jury in [...]
Click to read more » -

Michael Palm’s philosophical essay film is a razor sharp critique of surveillance culture and its entrenchment in high tech modern life. He uses offscreen dialogue by scientists and intellectuals of various disciplines (neurology to media sciences to theology) set against a mosaic of CCTV footage: unreal, grainy images of everyday scenes. They reflect on the [...]
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Join us for this special free event, a glass of fine Sicilian wine included! Magma – Mostra di Cinema Breve is an international short film festival which takes place in Acireale, a baroque town situated in the Eastern part of Sicily (Italy). LIFF26 is delighted to welcome Magma to Leeds to present a special selection [...]
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Elijah Wood plays Frank, a disturbed young man suffering from childhood trauma and abuse at the hands of his mother. Now the owner of a mannequin store his world is turned upside down when he meets Anna, a young artist who asks for his help with her new exhibition. Their friendship unleashes the killer inside [...]
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Matango, Fungus of Terror is a hallucinogenic horror adapted from the 1907 short story The Voice in the Night by the English author William Hope Hodgson. A yacht full of privileged Tokyo-ites are forced to face their primordial selves after they are washed up on a deserted tropical island festooned with clumps of fungus. Ishiro [...]
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Leeds International Film Festival and Fanomenon are the UK affiliated member of the European Fantastic Film Festivals Federation (EFFFF) which organises the Méliès competition to champion European genre films throughout the world. Each of the ten affiliated members hold a Méliès d’Argent competition, which is judged by a jury of film professionals. The winning film [...]
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A young reporter is meeting his cameraman to cover a political demonstration in a small Russian town when it suddenly starts to snow. In July (which apparently is very odd, even for Russia). The snow brings with it an outbreak of zombies who immediately devour most of the locals. As one reporter teams up with [...]
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A riveting documentary from British filmmaker Michael Radford about the extraordinary life of French jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (1962 – 1999). Born with glass bone disease, and standing just three feet tall as an adult, Petrucciani overcame extraordinary obstacles to become an internationally acclaimed jazz artist, driven by an insatiable and all- consuming hunger for [...]
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Leeds Film Quarter – Christmas Screening
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Dir. George Seaton, USA 1947, 96 mins
The quintessential festive movie, Miracle on 34th Street is an irresistible Hollywood fairytale, a multiple Oscar winner and an essential fixture of the holiday season. Edmund Gwenn plays Kris Kringle, hired as Macy’s department store Santa following the Thanksgiving Parade. He proves to be the embodiment of [...] -

John awakes from a shallow grave, disoriented and unable to remember who he is or how he got there. Piecing together the events of the last few hours from clues he finds in the forest he discovers that his wife has apparently been murdered, his children are missing and he is being stalked by a [...]
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Fanomenon and Thought Bubble present Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, a documentary exploring the amazing cultural phenomenon that is Comic-Con, by following the lives of five attendees as they descend upon the ultimate geek mecca. Directed by Morgan Spurlock (The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, Super Size Me), it’s a colourful celebration of one of [...]
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Mikio Naruse once said that ‘From the youngest age, I have thought that the world betrays us’, (Anderson and Richie, 1982: 364). Widely considered to be one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers, Naruse is particularly celebrated for his sympathetic treatment of women and it was through his portrayals of female suffering that he best enunciated his [...]
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My Island is a defiantly independent film portrait of one man’s defiant pursuit of independence. Christopher Ellis has lived for the past six years as the only inhabitant of an isolated Scottish island. Every Christmas he walks back to his home town of Leeds and works in a large Italian restaurant.
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I had always had a [...] -

Director Eric Rohmer and cinematographer Nestor Almendros’s breakthrough film is a classic of modern French cinema, cerebral, sexy and stylish in equal measure with expressive performances by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Francoise Fabian. Chaste and conservative Jean-Louis sees a woman that he believes will be his perfect match whilst attending church. But when he unwittingly spends [...]
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Portuguese master Pedro Costa’s most recent film is a mesmerising, hybrid documentary fixated on French actress/singer Jeanne Balibar. We witness her rehearsing, recording, performing and practicing with a singing coach for an opera. Costa himself is a friend of Balibar’s and did all the camera work himself, utilising his trademark long, static shots to extraordinary [...]
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Robert works for a crew who clean up after grisly accidents, which gives him the chance to feed his odd hobby by stealing body parts. Following one accident he brings home a full corpse for him and his girlfriend, Betty, to enjoy. Unfortunately Betty prefers her new lover to Robert and leaves with the corpse. [...]
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Twelve years on and Night of the Dead has become an important date on the UK’s genre calendar. More than just the sum of its films, fans of the event come because they know they are going to get a fantastic night of gory entertainment. This year the line-up includes three UK premieres and the [...]
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International pressure forces the plebiscite, or referendum, on Pinochet’s presidency, and the chief challenge for the ‘No’ underdogs is to sway the undecided, educating the ignorant young and roping in the complacent old. Conventional wisdom says to use the typical scare tactics, publicly broadcasting horrors and statistics (33,000 killed; 200,000 tortured), but the irrepressible René [...]
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A delectable treat for foodie film fans everywhere, Now Forager is a fresh take on the American indie and a labour of love for filmmakers Jason Cortlund and Julia Halperin. Lucien and Regina are foragers – they gather wild mushrooms and sell them to posh New York restaurants.Their lifestyle is simple, their income unstable.As Regina [...]
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Pedro Costa’s transformative drama is the first part of a trilogy of films set in the Fountainhas slums, and is one of the most radical innovations in cinematic narrative technique in recent years. Ossos is a tale of young lives torn apart by desperation. After a suicidal teenage girl gives birth, she misguidedly entrusts her [...]
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Before the excellent Tabu, Miguel Gomes made the intricate, uncategorizable Our Beloved Month of August, emerging as a leading talent in the currently flourishing Portuguese cinema. A tantalizing mix of documentary and fiction, it is an intoxicating love song to rural Portugal. In the mountains, the month of August is abuzz with people and activity. [...]
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Wim Wenders’ bittersweet, Euro-centric hymn to modern America is one of the great arthouse films of the 80s. Featuring iconic performances by Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski, mesmerising widescreen cinematography from Robby Müller and a hypnotic soundtrack by Ry Cooder, the film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1984. The story follows an [...]
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Carl Dreyer’s silent masterpiece has been described by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum as ‘the pinnacle of silent cinema – and perhaps of the cinema itself’. Featuring an iconic and emotive central performance by Maria Falconetti and luminous cinematography by Rudolph Maté. The story follows a rigorous interrogation by a jury of clerics, attempting to force [...]
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LIFF presents a collaboration between Leeds City Art Gallery and Pavilion. Lucy Skaer’s Film for an Abandoned Projector (Pavilion, 2011) is a removed look at the once animated mechanisms of analogue film. Pavilion is exploring this alternate, uncomprehending and analytical look, as a phenomenon amidst current practices.
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Lucy Skaer’s artwork Film for an Abandoned Projector (Pavilion, [...] -

The Tiger’s Mind is an abstract crime thriller set against the backdrop of a brutalist villa. Six characters, the set, the music, the foley, the special effects, the narrator and the author battle one another for control of the film as it unfolds on screen. The film explores the relationships between these characters as they [...]
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Striving to make the greatest animated film of all time, visionary animator Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) toiled for more than a quarter of a century on his masterpiece only to have it torn from his hands. Filmmaker Kevin Schreck has woven together mind-blowing animation, rare archival footage, and exclusive interviews with artists who [...]
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The most original collaboration between the great Ingmar Bergman and his long-term cinematographer Sven Nykvist is one of the landmark films of the 1960s. After a bravura, experimental opening sequence, Persona introduces standout roles for two of his regular leads. While convalescing on the coast from an illness which robs her of speech, famous actress [...]
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Enfant terrible of the Nouvelle Vague Jean-Luc Godard and his equally influential cinematographer Raoul Coutard peaked with the colourful, iconoclastic Pierrot le Fou. Challenging and celebrating film conventions at every turn, Godard incorporates his customary homage to American genre films and an increased radical sensibility. The story follows Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) and Marianne (Anna Karina), [...]
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A special Short Film City focus on contemporary Portuguese short filmmaking to accompany LIFF’s selection of new and recent outstanding features this year: Blood of My Blood, José and Pilar, My Beloved Month of August, Ne Change Rien,Ossos, and Tabu. The culture of short filmmaking in Portugal is very strong and this selection will feature [...]
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Maverick director Carlos Reygadas (Japón, Silent Light) has created one of the most challenging and indelible films of the year. Post Tenebras Lux (‘After Darkness, Light’) is a disorienting, kaleidoscopic and stunningly-filmed vision of a family torn between tenderness and violence that won the filmmaker Best Director at Cannes.
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Carlos Reygadas introduces the experience of watching [...] -

Dustin Hoffman steps behind the camera for the first time with this classy, charming adaptation of Ronald Harwood’s eponymous play. Quartet tells the story of retired opera singers and lifelong friends Wilf (Billy Connolly) and Reggie (Tom Courtenay), residents of the Beecham House residence for musical retirees. Each year on Giuseppe Verdi’s birthday, the residents [...]
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In 1963, one man radically transformed the FM dial. Radio Unnameable tells the story of the groundbreaking New York disc jockey Bob Fass and his innovative use of the airwaves to inform, entertain and encourage dialogue amongst listeners. His program is entirely free form, there’s no telling what might happen next. It is a place [...]
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Luciano is a Neapolitan fishmonger who supplements his modest income by pulling off little scams together with his wife, Maria. A likeable, entertaining guy, Luciano never misses an opportunity to perform for his customers and countless relatives. One day his family urge him to try out for a reality TV show. As his perception of [...]
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When Frank and Freddy, two bumbling medical supply warehouse employees, accidentally break the seal on an old military canister in the basement they release a deadly gas that brings the dead back to life. With the help of a local nursing home owner they try to dispose of the reanimated bodies, only to make the [...]
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Set some time in the future, Robot & Frank is a delightful dramatic comedy, a buddy picture, and, for good measure, a heist film. Curmudgeonly old Frank (Frank Langella) lives alone. His children are concerned about his well-being and buy him a caretaker robot. Initially resistant to the idea, Frank soon appreciates the benefits – [...]
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Katrine is excited to be moving into her own dorm room at university, leaving her over-protected father and the memory of her breakdown behind her. Enjoying her new found freedom things soon turn ugly though as she falls foul of the local ‘in’ crowd, who start to bully her. Katrine discovers that this group were [...]
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Room 237 is the story of The Shining — not the film, but rather, five different critics’ and enthusiasts’ ideas about the film. To one, it’s a metaphor for the genocide of the American Indian; for another, a metaphor for the Holocaust. To another, it’s Kubrick apologizing, in the form of a hidden code, for [...]
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One of the biggest box office hits of the year in France and a sensation at Cannes, Rust and Bone is the new film from the director of A Prophet, a powerful and emotionally raw love story starring Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose / The Dark Knight Rises) and acclaimed Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts. [...]
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An epic retelling of an ancient folktale, Sansho the Bailiff is the story of a family separated by the injustices of Japanese feudal society. After the governor Masauji is exiled to a distant land for defending the rights of farmers, his wife Tamaki (Tanaka) and their children are kidnapped by bandits, who sell Tamaki into [...]
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Martin McDonagh, writer-director of In Bruges, returns with an escalation of his twisted dark comic visions in Seven Psychopaths.A screenwriter (Colin Farrell) struggling to write a serial-killer script gets more real-life inspiration than he can handle when a dognapping scheme goes badly wrong and brings a galaxy of crazies to his doorstep.A top-notch cult- movie [...]
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Shadows of Liberty is a perceptive and passionate critique of the disintegrating freedoms within U.S. media and government. Highly revealing interviews and insider accounts from the likes of Julian Assange, David Simon and a raft of CBS news anchors reveal a system where journalists are prevented from pursuing controversial news stories and people are censored [...]
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Shock Head Soul is a fascinating docufiction about Daniel Paul Schreber who, in 1903, published the most celebrated autobiography of madness ‘from the inside’ ever written. Director Simon Pummell interleaves documentary-style talking heads with hallucinatory CGI animation and an intense reconstructive drama. Schreber was a successful lawyer who, in 1893, started to receive messages from [...]
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Andrei Konchalovsky’s epic, sweeping tale of one Siberian village through the turbulent twentieth century is one of his greatest achievements. Following the varying fortunes of two families, the wealthy Solomins and the poor Ustyuzhanins as the Soviet republic evolves from forests to oil rigs, the film is a symbolic tale that reveals individuals as the [...]
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One of the funniest films of the year, the superb black comedy Sightseers is directed by Kill List’s Ben Wheatley, produced by Shaun of the Dead’s Edgar Wright, and based on characters created by lead actors Alice Lowe and Steve Oram. Loved-up couple Tina and Chris set out on an erotic odyssey in a caravan [...]
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A super rare presentation of a Japanese / North Korean martial arts movie imported to the UK by the Zipangu Festival. During a series of peasant uprisings against the decadent ruling overlords of the Koryo dynasty (918- 1392) in what is now Korea, the parents of a young girl, Somi, are ruthlessly slain by a [...]
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Stormland is the tragicomic story of lone rebel Boddi Steingrimsson who lives in a small town in Northern Iceland. Boddi hates materialistic modern society in its entirety and on his blog-page he comically criticizes everything and everyone. Before long he has become an outlaw in his own hometown, just like his viking hero, Grettir. After [...]
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To celebrate Fish’s release from prison, crime lord Duke (Candyman’s Tony Todd) throws him a party, centred around a lavish meal of sushi, served off the body of a naked woman. But there are scores to be settled and Duke and the other thieves want to know what happened to their missing diamonds from the [...]
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This stunning film, entirely shot on gorgeous black and white cine film in Portugal and Mozambique, is a deeply poetic rendering of an old woman’s melancholic nostalgia for a powerful love affair of her past. This is beautifully mirrored by director Miguel Gomes’ modern-day take on the silent film era, where the passionate second half [...]
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When two accident scene cleaners stumble across a secret underground room during a routine assignment they are amazed to find a beautiful young woman being held captive inside. Soon however, it becomes apparent that this is no ordinary girl and their lives may be in danger from the mysterious woodland creatures that want her back. [...]
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What happens when a very white European man buys a diplomatic title which turns him into an African diplomat overnight – right in the middle of one of Central Africa’s most failed nation states?
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A strange, enigmatic and decadent white European with diplomatic credentials arrives in The Car to head a diplomatic mission representing Liberia. Officially [...] -

A big audience favourite from LIFF24, the hilarious The Art of Negative Thinking returns for Fanomenon’s mini retro of anarchic European black comedies.
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The Art of Negative Thinking is a burlesque drama about 33-year-old Geirr, who has become severely handicapped in a traffic accident. In an attempt to show everyone how terrible he feels, he has [...] -

Ann, a reclusive elegant lady, with an obsession for butterflies, is surprisingly befriended by the eerily beautiful young Alice. Using her seductive innocence, Alice establishes a disturbing mother daughter relationship with Ann. Lured into her twisted world, Ann soon discovers that she is not the only recipient of the girl’s affections.
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Confronted by Alice’s other lady [...] -

The most effective collaboration between director Bernardo Bertolucci and cinematographer Vittorio Storraro is a master piece of suspenseful political drama. A riveting exploration of Italy’s Fascist past, The Conformist features a beautifully understated performance by Jean-Louis Trintignant as Marcello Clerici, a repressed young man desperate to appear normal to the outside world, who joins the [...]
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Presented in seven episodes, each taking place on a different day of the week, on the theme of suicide and death. In each story, seemingly unconnected characters take their lives in different ways, from poisoning to shooting, while each vignette is linked by the gradual decomposition of a human body. Buttgereit’s follow up to the [...]
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Based on the life of tanka poet Fumiko Nakajo, Tanaka’s film is an unflinching, deeply moving account of a modern-minded woman afflicted with breast cancer. Fumiko (Yumeji Tsukioka) is refreshingly presented as an imperfect, often selfish character and Tanaka’s handling of the film as a whole is tinged with the same even-handed humanity as she [...]
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Andrei Konchalovsky’s debut feature combines lurid folk tale and penetrative political history with a vivid evocation of life in the remote Russian steppes at the advent of the Soviet era. The film is based on Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel of the same name. It is set in Kyrgyzstan during the first years of Soviet era, not [...]
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Three sly and inventive shorts directed by three iconoclastic directors combine to assemble The Fourth Dimension. Harmony Korine (Gummo,Trash Humpers) directs Val Kilmer in an off the wall, improvised performance as a demented motivational speaker in The Lotus Community Workshop. Russia’s Aleksei Fedorchenko (Silent Souls) submits a mind-bending fable of time travel in Chronoeye and [...]
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Paul Wegener’s German expressionist horror classic is presented in a free screening in the magnificent surroundings of Leeds Town Hall with dramatic live organ accompaniment by Leeds city organist Simon Lindley. The Golem is based on a Jewish legend and adapted from the 1915 novel by Gustave Meyrick.
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One of most important contributions to German Expressionism, [...] -

Innovative filmmaker Bill Morrison has teamed up with composer/guitarist Bill Frisell to create a powerful portrait of a seminal moment in American history. Using minimal text and no dialogue and utilising some extraordinary archive footage, the film tells the story of the Mississippi River Flood of 1927, the most destructive river flood in American history.
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In [...] -

General Trius (or Bill as he’s now known), an alien from the dying planet Hondo, sets out on a mission to destroy the human race and prepare Earth for colonization. However, upon landing, he’s enchanted by a strange and mystical human invention known as ‘music’. No other species in any other galaxy knows of music, [...]
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Danish filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg’s best film since Festen, The Hunt is a gripping, provocative and devastating drama about a respected member of a close-knit Danish community whose life is destroyed when a young girl accuses him, falsely, of abuse. Winner of Best Actor in Cannes, Mads Mikkelsen plays Lucas, a 40-year-old, good-natured primary school teacher [...]
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A vibrant and hugely entertaining documentary about the Kuikuro tribe, a traditional native people from the Brazilian Amazon. Far from a dry ethnographic document, The Hyperwomen works like a bawdy musical comedy as the powerful local women prepare for the Jamurikumalu, the main women’s ritual of the Upper Xingu.
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Because he fears that his spouse does [...] -

South Korea’s very first animated film to screen at Cannes, The King Of Pigs is a time-tripping, soul-shattering mystery about the scars that make us, and the secrets we bleed to keep. Kyung-Min has just killed his wife, but it didn’t make him feel any better. His business is failing and he can’t stop thinking [...]
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A radical reinvention of The Legend of Kaspar Hauser about the appearance of a young man who has been held captive throughout his life, very different from Werner Herzog’s famous 1974 version. Davide Manuli’s cult reboot is a surreal sci-fi western odyssey set on a remote Mediterranean Island with a throbbing techno soundtrack and a [...]
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Pertti Kurikan Nimipäivät are a punk group from Finland made up of Pertti, Kari, Toni and Sami, four mentally handicapped men who live together in a group home. Together, they make raw and uncompromising music about the challenges they face, from going to the pedicurist to the preconceptions of mainstream society. The Punk Syndrome is [...]
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The Rise And Fall Of The Clash bucks the recent trend of punk nostalgia by focusing on the later years of punk’s greatest success story. Featuring previously unseen footage of the band at work and at play, interviews with band members and those close to them, director Danny Garcia traces the downward trajectory of one [...]
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Co-directors Rainer Frimmel and Tizza Covi follow up their wonderful debut La Pivellina (LIFF Golden Owl winner 2009) with another warm and understated human drama featuring moving performances from two contrasting leads. Phillip Hochmair is a young, successful theatre actor. His life is marked by learning lines, rehearsals, and performances, thus gradually losing contact with [...]
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See Stanley Kubrick’s horror masterpiece at Leeds Town Hall, a venue with a gothic, haunted opulence you’d never get in the multiplex. The brand new digital transfer is the US version never released in the UK, at 144 minutes, it runs 24 minutes longer than the European version. Based on Stephen King’s bestselling novel, this [...]
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The Woodsman and the Rain is an oddball laid-back comedy starring the great Japanese actor Koji Yakusho as Katsu, a 60 year-old lumberjack who lives in a small, tranquil mountain village. When a film crew suddenly arrives to shoot a zombie movie, Katsu finds himself unwittingly roped into assisting the production.
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‘The English translation of the [...] -

No British punk group had ever toured China until 2009, when Sham 69 received an email from a young promoter who wanted to bring them to his country. The iconic ‘77 punk group, known for anthems like Borstal Breakout and If the Kids are United then embarked on a journey both socially calamitous and culturally [...]
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Dominga Sotomayor‘s remarkable feature debut is an insightful, dysfunctional family road movie set in the vast open spaces of rural Chile.Told from the point of view of the two kids, Lucía (10) and Manuel (5), what seems like a regular family holiday gradually reveals a growing rift between their parents. Beautifully shot on Super 16mm [...]
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In an alternate New York, the hugely popular ‘Hero TV’ broadcasts the daring feats of the city’s most famous superheroes, rating their achievements and awarding points until an annual King of Heroes is crowned. Known for careless property damage in the line of duty, unpopular veteran Wild Tiger is assigned a new partner by his [...]
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Leeds Film Quarter – Christmas Screening
Dir. John Landis, USA 1983, 116 mins
Side-splitting festive comedy starring Dan Akyroyd and Eddie Murphy – when two bored, millionaire brothers make a wager on whether two people from opposite ends of the social spectrum can adjust if they trade places, they get far more than they bargained for. Eddie [...]
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Recently reclaimed from the archives, Turksib is a jawdropping Soviet documentary depicting the heroic efforts to build a railway through the desolate desert landscapes of Turkestan and Siberia. Featuring breathtaking cinematography and the innovative montage style of the Soviet propaganda film, Victor Turin’s rarely seen classic was a huge influence on John Grierson and the [...]
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Working both as a serious social issue film and a gripping thriller, Lucy Mulloy’s exuberant Havana set debut boasts winning performances from a trio of young newcomers. Raul dreams of escaping to Miami and begs his best friend, Elio, to abandon everything and help him but his friend is torn between protecting his sister and [...]
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A special free screening of Nick Broomfield’s powerful, highly acclaimed 2006 drama Ghosts accompanied by a Skype interview with the director, presented in collaboration with Unchosen. Unchosen seeks to raise awareness about human trafficking through the medium of film and aims to make people aware of how trafficking impacts all our lives, and to give [...]
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Andrei Konchalovsky’s Uncle Vanya surely has the greatest claim as the best screen adaptation of a Chekhov play. Featuring brooding and articulate performances, especially from Sergei Bondarchuk as Doctor Astrov and gorgeous cinematography that shifts from sepia to autumnal colours, the film has an elegaic and bittersweet atmosphere. The setting is a crumbling country estate [...]
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A mysterious collector hires a gang of petty criminals to break into a desolate house in the country to steal a rare VHS tape. Once inside the house the thieves discover a dead body in front of a bank of TV screens, surrounded by a huge collection of tapes. As they try to find the [...]
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Lukas is a scientist chosen to take part in an experiment in which he enters the mind of a comatose girl. In her surreal subconscious world he meets and falls obsessively in love with her. Rather than sharing his results, he tells the research team very little so that they will plug him in again. [...]
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A haunting sociopolitical drama blending fiction and documentary to elucidate the turbulent history of a Kurdish family. Mehmet (co-director Zeynel Dogan) lives with his pregnant wife in Diyarbakir, eastern Turkey. His father was fatally injured while working in Saudi Arabia and all he has left is an audio tape letter. Now he is to become [...]
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Garnering a string of festival prizes and glowing reviews, War Witch is a Sub-Saharan love story between two young souls caught in a violent world. Komona, a 14 year old girl, tells her unborn child the story of how she became a rebel. It all began when she was 12; kidnapped by the rebel army, [...]
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A beautifully shot documentary that celebrates the traditions of African storytelling by following an old Kenyan fisherman called Mashoud. His stories paint a picture of a world of fantasy where the sea has a spirit, men can talk to fish, and seahorses dance on the waves. The one Mashoud prefers is about his inexorable destiny [...]
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Young runaway and petty thief Lena gets more than she bargained for when she falls in with three sexy vampires, Louise, Charlotte and Nora, who have just arrived in Berlin. Louise thinks Lena is the reincarnation of her long lost love and soon turns her into another vampire and the four enojy a hedonistic lifestyle [...]
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Yorkshire, 1974. Britain is in recession and the oil crisis brings unexpected power cuts. However the Maynard family are happy as they are moving into their dream home. But when strange things start happening to their daughter Sally (an impressive debut from newcomer Tasha Connor) it is clear that the house is haunted by a [...]
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A gentle and poetic documentary portrait of two shepherds and their winter migration through the idyllic Swiss countryside, sometimes incongrously skirting the suburbs. Carole, 28, joins Pascal, 53, three donkeys, four dogs and a flock of a thousand sheep. They defy the cold, rain and snow, savouring the sun when it shines and sleep in [...]
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The wither is a type of underground-dwelling mythological creature common in Nordic folklore. Elves, dwarves and jotnar are withers, and they all live underground, are invisible most of the time and rarely meddle in human affairs. However, when enraged by people not respecting them properly, they are fearsome. Wither is similar to a zombie film [...]
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Wolf Children is the long-awaited new anime from Mamoru Hosoda, director of LIFF favourite Summer Wars. When Hana falls in love, it feels like a fairy tale. She starts a family and has two beautiful children – Yuki (Snow), a girl, and Ame (Rain), a boy. But the family harbours a secret: their father is [...]
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A truly global look at the last year in animated short film, The World Animation Competition screens some of the best new films from the International film festival circuit. With 30 selected films over three days, it is an experience that always delights and provokes in equal measure.
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See all three animation competition programmes for just [...] -

A truly global look at the last year in animated short film, The World Animation Competition screens some of the best new films from the International film festival circuit. With 30 selected films over three days, it is an experience that always delights and provokes in equal measure.
Click to read more »
See all three animation competition programmes for just [...] -

A truly global look at the last year in animated short film, The World Animation Competition screens some of the best new films from the International film festival circuit. With 30 selected films over three days, it is an experience that always delights and provokes in equal measure.
Click to read more »
See all three animation competition programmes for just [...] -

A truly global look at the last year in animated short film, The World Animation Competition screens some of the best new films from the International film festival circuit. With 30 selected films over three days, it is an experience that always delights and provokes in equal measure. Don’t miss the chance to see award [...]
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Wrinkles is a wonderfully comic, irreverent and moving animated tale of friendship, resistance and survival in a retirement home, based on the acclaimed comic Arrugas by Spanish artist Paco Roca. Increasingly lost in his own memories, as well as a growing burden to his son, Emilio finds himself set adrift in the new world of [...]
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The collaboration between LIFF and Leeds very own folk roots label, Yadig? Records returns with a special screening of filmmaker and musician (The Legendary Shack Shakers) Colonel J.D. Wilkes’ documentary, Seven Signs: Music, Myth and the American South. Seven Signs is a celebration of Southern culture conceived without a note of condescension, letting the artists [...]
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A special screening of Beyond Time a journey into the life, work and times of iconic British artist William Turnbull co-directed by his son Alex Turnbull and filmmaker Pete Stern.
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Join Alex Turnbull as he introduces Beyond Time, which reevaluates the legacy of the Scottish-born artist William Turnbull. Not only is Beyond Time a fascinating account [...] -

Ever the celebration of the bold and beautiful talent (and landscape) of our fair county this year’s programme includes stark drama The Farmer’s Wife about a woman who yearns for an old way of life as the modern world encroaches, The Minds Wood which is a magical example of low budget creativity at its best [...]
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