- Dissecting one traumatic event with incredible cinematic invention, Koen Mortier’s 22nd of May ricochets from realist drama to taut thriller to dreamlike surreal fantasy. One seemingly ordinary day turns to disaster in a single moment for shopping centre security agent Sam as a bomb explodes in his workplace. Shellshocked and disorientated, he encounters victims and [...]Click to read more »
- A nail-biting crime drama featuring a captivating performance by Toni Servillo (Consequences of Love, Il Divo). Servillo plays chef, Rosario, an Italian restaurant owner just turned fifty who has lived in Germany for the last twelve years with his wife Renate and their young son. But one day in February everything changes. A sudden visit [...]Click to read more »
- Challenging expectations on the borderlines of documentary, fiction and experimental cinema, José María de Orbe’s Father is a beautiful meditation on history, identity and a sense of place. It’s a ghostly story about the soul of a former Basque fortress from the 13th century unexpectedly incorporating silent projections of old Basque films against the walls [...]Click to read more »
- Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking genre mash-up of horror and sci-fi returns to the big screen (the Town Hall’s very big screen!) where it belongs. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the crew of the Nostromo awake from hypersleep to investigate a signal coming from a nearby planet where a hive of mysterious eggs resides. After one hatches and [...]Click to read more »
- Like LIFF25, James Cameron’s action-packed sci-fi classic is turning 25 this year. Often hailed as one of the best sequels of all time, join us to celebrate our joint birthdays with a special anniversary screening in the splendour of Leeds Town Hall on our giant screen. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) returns after the horror of her [...]Click to read more »
- Architects of Harmonic Rooms & Records-Moving Image present a selection of video documents from their archives that reveal a world of ingenious, underground musicians and artists. This includes a video collaboration with Harappian Night Recordings celebrating the rich psychedelic world of obscure 1960s/70s Asian horror movies, a video profile of the renowned John Fahey/Robbie Basho [...]Click to read more »
- Awake My Soul explores the history, music, and traditions of Sacred Harp singing; a haunting, powerful form of American spiritual music that has its roots in the deep South. Sung almost exclusively in large groups, Sacred Harp emphasises participation and community, singing together rousing songs of beauty and sorrow, of life and death; songs that [...]Click to read more »
- Beats, Rhymes & Life follows one of the most influential and groundbreaking musical groups in hip-hop history. A Tribe Called Quest’s sudden break-up in 1998 shocked the industry and saddened the scores of fans, whose appetite for the group’s innovative musical stylings never seems to diminish. A hard-core fan himself, Rapaport sets out on tour [...]Click to read more »
- A cult slice of American indie cinema with a macho sci-fi edge about friendship, flamethrowers, Mad Max, and getting your ass kicked by love. Two best friends, obsessed with modifying their car the Medusa and roaming the desert with flamethrowers ‘when the apocalypse comes’ are thrown into chaos when Woodrow falls in love with the [...]Click to read more »
- Continuing the creative boom of the recent Romanian ‘new wave’, Adrian Sitaru’s Best Intentions is a beautifully observed and understated drama of universally recognisable family neuroses. When thirty-something Alex’s mother is hospitalized with a stroke, the caring son’s life gets off track. At the hospital he finds himself in a burlesque kind of human zoo [...]Click to read more »
- First screened in 2007, Hitoshi Matsumoto’s brilliant Big Man Japan makes a welcome return to Leeds for this year’s Planet Japan celebration; and don’t miss our first screening of Matsumoto’s sublime Symbol from 2009. What happens when a has-been superhero becomes a victim of stronger baddies and falling TV news ratings? Dai Sato’s days seem [...]Click to read more »
- If you’ve never been to a Spanish launderette down a dark alley at 3 o’clock in the morning… you sure won’t be going now! Half chlaustrophobic stalker horror, half something else entirely, Blind Alley is trashy, chlaustrophobic, trippy, sometimes wonderfully bizarre and at other times a tense thriller that will make you wonder where it’s [...]Click to read more »
- Breathing is a brilliantly nuanced portrayal of youthful rebellion and the struggle to build a constructive future from a disadvantaged start in life. 18-year-old Roman is serving time in a juvenile detention center and attempting to find gainful employment that could earn him release on probation. His chances are poor as he doesn’t have family [...]Click to read more »
- This year’s British Competition programme is a microcosm of contemporary cinema. The selection includes: Fixing Luka, a beautiful stop motion animation looking at autism through the eyes of a loving sister; Long Distance Information, a black comedy that explores the strained relationship between fathers and sons starring Peter Mullan (Tyrannosaur); and the UK Premiere of [...]Click to read more »
- Presented in partnership with Together for Peace with a discussion on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle for peace. Budrus is an award-winning documentary about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. [...]Click to read more »
- The eagerly-awaited new anime adventure from Makoto Shinkai, director of the much-admired 5 Centimetres Per Second. Asuna is a young girl who has been forced to grow up fast after the death of her father. While walking home one evening she is attacked by a strange, fearsome monster. A mysterious boy called Shun rescues her [...]Click to read more »
- Discover Devil’s Tower all over again in Steven Spielberg’s science fiction classic. Richard Dreyfuss stars as typical everyman Roy Neary who experiences, with a small group of others, a close encounter of the first kind. As Roy attempts to fathom out the haunting visions that plague him, we see just the right amount of sentimentality [...]Click to read more »
- Winner of Japan’s top animation prize, Colorful is a tender story about rebirth based on a 1998 novel by Eto Mori. After reaching a purgatory-like state after death, a dejected soul is placed in the body of a boy who has just committed suicide. The soul must figure out what his greatest mistake in his [...]Click to read more »
- Convento is a poetic documentary, introducing an eccentric family of Dutch artists who live in a converted 400-year-old Portuguese Monastery, Sao Francisco. Christiaan Zwanikken is a kinetic artist who reanimates skeletal parts and deceased wildlife with servomotors and robotics. His parents, ex-ballet dancer Geraldine and her late husband Kees, a successful photographer, came to Portugal [...]Click to read more »
- Morphine were one of the great underground American bands of the 90s, led by the charismatic singer songwriter Mark Sandman who tragically died onstage in Italy in 1999 aged only 47. Cure for Pain examines his life and work from his troubled family background to his rise through various bands in his youth to the [...]Click to read more »
- A subtle, intimate documentary portraying family life, Daughters of Malakeh transcends its gentle subject to create an insightful expose of gender politics in Iranian life. In public, Maryam wears a headscarf and obeys the rules of the state. But in the privacy of her own home, she’s the breadwinner who runs the show, along with [...]Click to read more »
- Take the opportunity to see two episodes of director Krzysztof Kieslowski and writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz’s masterpiece on the big screen in conjunction with the University’s presentation on the duo’s work. Originally made for Polish television at the end of the communist era in 1988, this extraordinary series of films loosely based on the ten commandments [...]Click to read more »
- Can the electronic stutters, crashes, errors and glitches that we encounter with technology in our day-to-day lives be considered beautiful in their own right? This programme of extraordinary video work showcases contemporary artists who exploit and explore the imperfections hidden in the signal/ data structures of moving image technology to striking effect. Recalling early video [...]Click to read more »
- An audience favourite in LIFF 2008, DMC returns this year for our Planet Japan celebration. The world’s first death metal romantic musical comedy, DMC brings a hit Japanese manga to hilarious life. Witness songs about cheese tarts and sex on the River Styx and guest cameos from Gene Simmons and the Power Rangers. Death Note [...]Click to read more »
- It’s fair to say that the UK loves good drama and does good drama. From Shakespeare to Eastenders, drama is in our blood and Drama Queens is a glorious celebration of this fact. This year we’ve got for you Departure, a terrific little sci-fi short about two astronauts dreaming of the home they may not [...]Click to read more »
- Eco-Pirate profiles the controversial environmental crusader Captain Paul Watson, a man on a mission to save the planet and its oceans. He repeatedly flouts the law to apprehend what he sees as the more serious law-breakers, the illegal poachers of the world. Featuring gripping verité sequences shot aboard his ship, the film interrogates his personal [...]Click to read more »
- A claustrophobic and disturbing documentary, brilliantly executed (excuse the morbid pun) and shot entirely in a motel room on the US/Mexican border. El Sicario Room 164 is a feature length conversation with a masked Juarez hit man: he has killed hundreds of people, is an expert in torture and kidnapping, and even received some training [...]Click to read more »
- Given the plethora of zombie films that exist it’s hard to find one that has a new take on the undead apocalypse, so this year we were delighted to find not one, but two films that breathe new life into this genre. Alongside Juan of the Dead, Cuba’s first zombie film, we have Exit Humanity, [...]Click to read more »
- Ken Loach’s rarely seen early drama adapted from David Mercer’s TV play In Two Minds, is a characteristically powerful slice of social realism and a bitter indictment of the British mental health system in the early 70s. 19-year-old Janice is an increasing worry for her overbearing suburban parents as she has become increasingly withdrawn and [...]Click to read more »
- For LIFF25, Day of the Dead returns to the old-school glory of the newly reopened City Varieties. The darker twin sister of Night of the Dead showcases three UK premieres and the true variety to be found in horror, as zombies slouch on screen from as far afield as Cuba (Juan of the Dead) and [...]Click to read more »
- Some things about LIFF never change! It’s back, and it’s trashier, gorier, and downright more horrific than ever. Night of the Dead is once again taking over Hyde Park Picture House for eight hours of gore, trash, shocks, laughs, scares, and the downright bizarre. The ever popular short films and games are back to add [...]Click to read more »
- Accompanying the amazing feature film line up in Night of the Dead XI kicking off at midnight on Saturday 5 November, there will also be a fantastic selection of short films from around the world to celebrate horror in all its glory. The full line up of horror shorts is: Banana Motherf**kerDir. Fernando Alle, Portugal, 2011, [...]Click to read more »
- Father is one of the great films of leading Hungarian director István Szabó, combining humour and poetic nostalgia to underscore a symbolic tale of identity crisis. The father of the title was killed in the Second World War and the film centres on his son Tako in the post-war years, who concocts a fantasy ideal [...]Click to read more »
- A selection of the best short films about mental health. Includes work from the Arts & Minds Film Production Group, a Leeds based project that encourages people with personal experience of mental health issues to make films. Films include ‘Diagnosis Psychosis’, a humorous look at Hollywood cliché and “The Bus Stop” the story of one [...]Click to read more »
- At times both very funny and deeply strange, Finisterrae is the highly original film debut by Sergio Caballero, co-director of the famous Sónar Music Festival in Barcelona. It’s an oddball, phantasmagoric fantasy following the wanderings of two ghosts through the Camino of Santiago to Finisterre, the end of the world. They encounter speaking animals and [...]Click to read more »
- A dynamic new approach to political drama, Flowers of Evil brilliantly utilises internet footage of the Iranian election protests in 2009 to underpin a youthful Parisian love story in troubled times. Anahita, a young woman from Tehran’s high society is sent to Paris by her parents during political unrest in their home town. She meets [...]Click to read more »
- Ambitious and ambiguous, Benedict Fliegauf’s Forest is a singular film, weaving together a loosely connected, only partially explicated series of dramatic vignettes to create an unsettling, uncategorizable whole. Most of the scenes build towards some kind of uncomfortable confrontation, but the viewer is not always given enough information to interpret exactly what’s going on: two [...]Click to read more »
- A highly acclaimed experimental filmmaker in his own right, Pip Chodorov has crafted a highly accessible and infectiously enthusiastic history of the artists and poets of experimental cinema. His’free radicals’ are crazy about filmmaking and pushing the artform in radical new directions, trapped in a no man’s land, excluded both from the art world and [...]Click to read more »
- In a fascinating, cryptic psychological drama, Mattias Sandström assembles a probing meditation on grief, intimacy and identity. Young Swede Jesper holidays alone in the Canary Islands, surfing, clubbing and drinking at the bar, clearly preoccupied with some emotional burden. When he fixates on the hotel housekeeper Maite it becomes clear she strongly resembles someone from [...]Click to read more »
- Apparently disparate sequences of a real estate trade show, a street market and masterpieces of world art cohere into a razor sharp critique of commercialism and spirituality in Mercedes Alvarez’s Futures Market. With a superb sense of composition, the film follows different stages in the lives of objects from the sales pitches of realtors for [...]Click to read more »
- A surreal masterpiece, newly restored and subtitled, and Japan’s first feature-length underground film. One of the leading figures of Japan’s 60s avant-garde art scene, Adachi co-founded the communal living space and artist’s lab VAN Film Science Research Centre, was scriptwriter for Koji Wakamatsu and Nagisa Oshima, and joined the Palestinian liberation movement in the early [...]Click to read more »
- The incredible rise of Jon Gnarr, iconoclastic comedian turned Reykjavik mayoral candidate and his controversial Best Party, which began as a parody and turned into a spectacular if controversial success story. No country epitomizes the boom and bust absurdities of capitalism better than Iceland since its sudden crash from economic success story to national bankrupcy. [...]Click to read more »
- Grant Morrison is one of the most influential and acclaimed writers currently working in the medium of comics; able to produce character defining reinterpretations of classic characters, as well as genre-defying original creations, his work constantly challenges readers to reassess what they should expect from comic books. Talking With Gods offers a unique opportunity to [...]Click to read more »
- Two children, Seita and his little sister Setsuko, are at the centre of this deeply moving 1988 anime classic from Studio Ghibli, set in Japan during World War II. After their mother is killed in an air raid, and with their father serving in the navy, they are forced to fight for survival in the [...]Click to read more »
- Unsatisfied housewife Izumi, Professor of Literature Mitsuko, and police detective Kazuko offset the banality of their everyday lives with secret and not-so-secret sexual misadventures. Empowerment and misanthropy go hand-in-hand as the details of their affairs are brought to the surface, and a gruesome murder links their fates. With this risqué, noir-esque film, director Sion Sono [...]Click to read more »
- An evocative wilderness documentary about the life of the indigenous people living in the heart of the Siberian Taiga directed by Russian filmmaker Dmitry Vasyukov, written and narrated by Werner Herzog. The camera follows a trapper through all four seasons of a year, beginning and ending in the small village of Bakhtia, population 300, a [...]Click to read more »
- Heat Wave is a simmering drama of intersecting lives all taking place one sweltering afternoon somewhere on the edge of Marseilles, France. Following overlapping and repeating timelines like a subtler version of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, the narrative is cleverly constructed to enlighten the differing perspectives of its characters. Two teenaged cousins Stéphane and Luigi, [...]Click to read more »
- Yoshihiro Nishimura’s first solo directorial effort since Tokyo Gore Police is an epic, apocalyptic road movie featuring non-stop, over-the-top splatter action. In an attempt to create the ultimate zombie film he has pushed the limits of what is acceptable, throwing everything he has at the screen. With nearly all of Japan turned into zombies, heroine [...]Click to read more »
- When Tom Six presented The Human Centipede: First Sequence at Leeds back in 2009, he promised that the sequel, apart from being 100% medically inaccurate, would also make the original look like My Little Pony. Two years later and after a brief spell on the BBFC’s ‘banned’ list later, The Human Centipede 2 is here [...]Click to read more »
- An extraordinary documentary profiling three very different characters all of whom claim to be the second coming of Christ, each part of a contrasting fringe community of disciples. British ex-secret service agent David Shayler underwent a spiritual awakening after release from prison and now lives in a squatting community rejecting capitalist values. INRI Cristo is [...]Click to read more »
- This late addition to the LIFF25 programme is a free presentation of a beautiful new short-length anime from Japan that has mesmerised audiences in Tokyo since its recent release. A young girl called Hotaru is lost and alone in an enchanted forest. She meets a spirit boy called Gin who helps her to get home. [...]Click to read more »
- Like the illegitimate love child of Calvaire (The Ordeal) and The League of Gentlemen, Inbred is a distinctly un-PC gore-fest with a wicked sense of humour. Set in a remote Yorkshire village that the Tourist Board would never recommend, the stange yokels have some particularly unpleasant ‘ways’ and a distinct dislike for strangers (well, uncooked [...]Click to read more »
- An exclusive screening of the new Sigur Rós concert film in the ideal setting of Leeds Town Hall. ‘The soul-stirring fusion of joy and heartache that burns like a current through the music of Sigur Rós comes through loud and clear… the minimalist Inni strips the group down to its output, fashioning black-and-white performance footage [...]Click to read more »
- Honouring Louis Le Prince, the French-born inventor who shot the first ever moving images in Leeds in 1888, the International Short Film Competition celebrates the outstanding talent at work in the short film form around the world today. The film selection includes prize winners from other festivals as well as submissions to Short Film City, [...]Click to read more »
- Exploring the terrifying thought that the enemy is not ‘out there’, but here among us, Invasion preys on our paranoia and fears of losing our identity, in a psychological sci-fi full of suspense and timely political and social subtext. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) notices something is not right with the community of Santa Mira, as [...]Click to read more »
- Involuntary is a dazzling and highly original black comedy from one of the most exciting new talents in Scandinavian cinema, Ruben Östlund. It’s summer in Sweden… A primary school teacher decides to teach her colleagues a lesson they’ll never forget. Teenage girls are indulging in a webcam tease and seducing strangers. University students are taking [...]Click to read more »
- For Juan and his rag-tag bunch of Cuban slackers, a new revolution is about shake up their laid-back Havanan lifestyle. Juan of the Dead has a bit of everything for fans of the genre: zombie splatter, belly laughs, great characters, social and political comedy, and laconic Cuban style. A crowd-pleasing zombie comedy with intelligence, shedding [...]Click to read more »
- A hilariously over-the-top tribute to the transforming robots of ‘70s Japanese television, K-RZ is an exciting action/comedy that will stir the heart of anyone who longs for justice dispensed with a swift robot karate kick! Following the death of his scientist father, secret police officer Yutaka Daimon inherits a mighty robot warrior named Zaborgar. Equipped [...]Click to read more »
- From the producers of Man Bites Dog, A Town Called Panic and Calvaire comes a blacker-than-black comedy that fans who remember previous Fanomenon hits Aaltra and Adam’s Apples will adore. Dr. Kruger runs a special ‘assisted death’ clinic deep in the remote Swiss woods. His wealthy but suicidal patients wait until it is their time [...]Click to read more »
- The late Krzysztof Kieslowski and the co-writer of many of the great man’s films, Krzysztof Piesiewicz, planned a trilogy of films loosely based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. Other directors have tackled this material after Kieslowski’s untimely death with mixed results, but Bosnian director Danis Tanovic did an excellent job with Hell, the intense story of [...]Click to read more »
- A gloriously free-wheeling selection of films on Super8 and 16mm, made by artists at DIY film labs and chosen for their sense of fun, freedom and their uncompromising attitude, which seem to emanate from the very material itself. Enjoy some black and white Lithuanian cat-stroking in Paris, a Portuguese radical manifesto, Berlin’s kaleidoscopic art and [...]Click to read more »
- Two medium length films which explore the relationship between language and possession in politically resonant ways. Roee Rosen’s film Tse confirms his status as one of Israel’s most interesting and provocative experimental filmmakers, forming a link between S/M bondage practices and the policies of Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, renowned as one of [...]Click to read more »
- In a gentle and deeply touching road movie, a poignant relationship slowly grows between a lonely truck driver, Rubén and a single mother, Jacinta who travels with her 8-month-old baby Anahí. Initially reluctant, Rubén gradually warms to his passengers on the long journey from Asunción del Paraguay to Buenos Aires and the skilfully restrained direction [...]Click to read more »
- Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network present a free evening of short films and discussion, featuring the personal account of a refugee who has first-hand experience of the UK’s asylum system. In the UK, despite what you might read in the newspapers, the majority of asylum seekers live in very tough circumstances, with very little money [...]Click to read more »
- The highest grossing domestic Chinese release ever, this hugely entertaining comic Western is a brilliant deadpan satire set during the Warlord Era of the 1920s. Bandits, led by ‘Pocky’ Zhang, hijack a train en route to Goose Town with its new governor on board. When the train crashes, its lone survivors are the governor’s sleazy [...]Click to read more »
- Portmenteau horror comes bang up to date as three British genre directors represent three very different but equally shocking and gruesome tales on the theme of sex and death. The stories of three screwed up couples are told by Hogan, Parkinson and LIFF favourite Simon Rumley, who offer a bizarre and disturbing experience, including sadist [...]Click to read more »
- Love is a deeply moving story of fractured family life under a repressive political regime, also a deft artistic reaction to political censorship. Janos has been imprisoned on a trumped-up charge and his wife Luca tends his bedridden mother, comforting her by pretending that Janos is away pursuing a career as a Hollywood director. The [...]Click to read more »
- The Camera Lucida is a prismatic device that was used as an aid to drawing and David Hockney would argue that it ushered in Renaissance perspective of art. These wondermental film and video works consider life through the cinematic magic of the prism, as light spills its bounds, inviting us to see the world in [...]Click to read more »
- A freewheeling portrait of Ken Kesey and the Merry Prankster’s fabled road trip across America in the legendary Magic Bus. In 1964, Ken Kesey, the famed author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, set off on a legendary, LSD-fuelled cross-country road trip to the New York World’s Fair. He was joined by “the merry [...]Click to read more »
- A chilling and disturbing psychological horror, following one man’s guilt after the death of his estranged wife brings him nightmares and drives him to the edge of sanity. Slowly, his disturbing experiences worsen, and he struggles to cope as his terrifying experiences become more and more real. Like last year’s Méliès d’Argent winner The Last [...]Click to read more »
- An inventive explosion of different styles, Mars is a rotoscope-sci-fi-slacker-romantic comedy with a raft of hipster cameos and a stylistic nod to comic book art. It’s also great fun from beginning to end. Mark Duplass (Humpday, The Puffy Chair) plays Charlie Brownsville, a kind of slacker-celebrity astronaut sent out on the first manned mission to [...]Click to read more »
- Director Andreas Marschall disturbed LIFF audiences in 2004 with his previous film Tears of Kali. Now he’s back with a giallo-esque bloody thriller in a homage to Suspiria. Stella, an ambitious but unfocused acting student, is offered a place at the mysterious Mateusz Gdula school, which was infamous for a strange method which killed a [...]Click to read more »
- A shop unit in Granary Wharf by the river Aire has been transformed into a temporary Microcinema for this long weekend of experimental film, offering stunning pieces by original filmmakers for your pleasure and illumination! The Microcinema shows that any location can become a cinema given a few basic ingredients. Enjoy complimentary drinks and the [...]Click to read more »
- A special Planet Japan double-bill of twisted romantic hilarity. Milocrorze is a delirious send-up of masculine romantic angst featuring a gyrating celebrity love therapist, a smitten oneeyed ronin, and a man-child subjected to the whims of a mysterious beauty. Artist and designer Yoshimasa Ishibashi’s visually rich debut balances ridiculous humour with arresting images to create [...]Click to read more »
- The best comedy yet from Japan’s exciting new talent and Leeds favourite Yûya Ishii. Stuck in a tiny flat in Tokyo, Mitsuko is unattached, friendless, broke and 9-months pregnant. Her inept parents thinks she is in California, happily settled with the baby’s GI father. One day she follows a cloud back to the run-down alley [...]Click to read more »
- If you’ve ever played the game ‘who’d win in a fight between…?’, then welcome to the movie version of that very debate! Monster Brawl takes this to the next level, filmed as if it were a pay-per-view wrestling match rather than a film, matching up fantastic combinations of fighters such as mummy versus vampire, and [...]Click to read more »
- This delightful Singaporean film follows a lovable Tamil magician (played by real-life magician Bosco Francis) whose magic tricks are brilliant to behold on screen! Performing magic to make the locals smile, including fire tricks, jaw-dropping glass-eating and loads more (all performed in reality!), this big-hearted magician is an important figure to his son but hard [...]Click to read more »
- Made at the end of the communist era in Hungary, Ildiko Enyedi’s surreal odyssey tracks the progress of female identity through the accelerating mechanical age of the early twentieth century. Boasting an extraordinary triple role for the excellent Dorothy Segda as identical twins Dora and Lili and their mother. Born on the day Edison invents [...]Click to read more »
- Until 1980 most Indonesian films had followed the Indian method of filmmaking, with musical numbers, slapstick comedy, et al. The first true horror film aimed at a western audience, Mystics in Bali is a forgotten classic that was deemed too bizarre and shocking on its original release. College student Cathy travels to Bali to research [...]Click to read more »
- A gentle and poetic evocation of a rural childhood, Nana is also a narrative innovation, telling a story almost exclusively through the eyes and words of a four-year-old child. Nana lives in a stone house near her grandfather’s farm. Her young mother is clearly unhappy in their rural retreat and yearns to be elsewhere. Back [...]Click to read more »
- An innovative 16mm workshop run by Richard and Diana of Australia’s Nanolab! Usually, reversal cine film is developed as a negative and then converted to a positive image through a series of chemical baths, but it is possible to intervene by hand with a brush, thereby limiting their effect to particular areas of the film [...]Click to read more »
- Never Make It Home chronicles the final tour of ‘insurgent country’ band Split Lip Rayfield, a barnstorming punk-bluegrass band led by hellraiser singer/guitarist Kirk Rundstrum. Kirk is diagnosed with throat cancer and given only months to live, but with steely determination and a passionate conviction to his craft, he sets out on a last tour, [...]Click to read more »
- Sean returns from Afghanistan to find his heart and head in disarray. When he is befriended by strong willed Evangelical Christian, Ike (a raw, perfect performance by Will Oldham) he reaches a cross-road, and it is difficult to see which route leads to salvation. Alverson’s second feature is a subtle and quiet meditation on mutual [...]Click to read more »
- A dazzling selection of recent artists’ cinema from some of the most interesting and engaging contemporary artist filmmakers, bringing together an eclectic mixture of ideas, aesthetics, technique and forms. Wondermental cinema has a long relationship with obscurity and these films emerge out of the shadows into the blinding light of the Microcinema space for one [...]Click to read more »
- It’s been a difficult year and in this International Shorts Panorama filmmakers depict our global nervous state in unexpected ways. French film Higher is about people who substitute themselves with bolster in places they don’t want to be anymore and escape to somewhere better. In BEEP (United Arab Emirates), Mr K’s experience of life has [...]Click to read more »
- France is a dedicated short filmmaking nation; the richness of their storytelling invention is vast. This year’s French Panorama selection features often very funny stories about the eccentricities of characters at work in the shadows of everyday life. In Mixed Doubles, James is a witness in a trial and protected by a bodyguard called Arthur. [...]Click to read more »
- Three stunning short films from Korean genre master Park Chan Wook, director of Old Boy and Thirst. Park’s new short film Night Fishing (co-directed with his brother and shot on an Iphone 4) is the story of a woman reeled in from the water who turns out to be a shaman acting as a medium [...]Click to read more »
- One of Britain’s best loved comedians, Paul Merton is appearing exclusively at Leeds Town Hall to host a special presentation of his Silent Clowns event. Celebrating the icons of silent cinema, Silent Clowns features the Harold Lloyd classic Safety Last! Plus Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Laurel & Hardy in hilarious extracts all introduced by [...]Click to read more »
- Based on the graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis is the poignant and hilarious biographical story of Marji: from a rebellious, heavy metal loving tomboy experiencing the turmoil of adolescence during the tyrannical Iranian revolution to a teenage exile in Vienna, Austria, where she discovers the benefits of freedom can also cause deep conflict. Returning [...]Click to read more »
- Movie characters such as Freddy in Nightmare on Elm Street and Norman Bates in Psycho suggest that people with mental illness are violent, evil and out of control. This is the view of Dr Peter Byrne, Consultant Psychiatrist at Newham University Hospital and Director of Public Education at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who has [...]Click to read more »
- The second of many screen versions of Gaston Leroux’s famous novel is universally hailed as the best, thanks in no small part to the unforgettable, larger than life performance by the great Lon Chaney, also designer of his own infamously gruesome makeup job. Universal Studios created considerable media hype on the film’s release surrounding the [...]Click to read more »
- Working with the photogram technique, participants will use 16mm analogue sound and image samples to ‘compose’ in the darkroom, and hand-process the film! The result will be a sound/image collage, played back at the end of the workshop to produce ‘photo-sonic’ film strips. Using the area usually reserved for the 16mm soundtrack, sound is recorded [...]Click to read more »
- PressPausePlay takes the pulse of art and creative endeavour in the exhilaration and turmoil of the digital revolution. On the one hand, it has unleashed an avalanche of creativity and opportunities for talented people but does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the [...]Click to read more »
- The Film Festival is thrilled to present, for one night only, Professor Vanessa’s Performing Wonders, an evening of cine-variety and spectacular entertainments. Featuring early films from the Library of Congress, Lobster Films and the National Fairground Archive with live piano accompaniment, vintage ephemera, and performances by internationally renowned artists including Olivier award Sword-swallower and eccentric [...]Click to read more »
- No self-respecting ‘greatest movies of all time’ list could leave out Alfred Hitchcock’s famous thriller, always worth revisiting on the big screen. Psycho is famous for many reasons; its bold re-invention of thriller narrative conventions, the perfection of Hitchcock’s nerve-wrenching suspense, Bernard Herrmann’s dissonant score, the creepy performance by Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, the [...]Click to read more »
- Red Psalm, which won director Miklos Jancso the Best Director Prize at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, is an astonishing film in which Jancso’s technical and conceptual virtuosity are at their peak. Set in the 1890s on the Hungarian plains, a group of farm workers go on strike only to face increasingly harsh reprisals for [...]Click to read more »
- Presented in partnership with Leeds Asylum Seekers Support Network, The Refugee All Stars tells the amazing story of six Sierra Leonan musicians who face a daily struggle to keep their hope and music alive. Civil war in their home country forces them to live in a refugee camp in the Republic of Guinea, but despite [...]Click to read more »
- Polanski’s disturbing and hallucinatory psychological thriller was his explosive introduction to an English speaking audience. It’s an unparalleled depiction of mental disintegration featuring an extraordinary performance by the young Catherine Deneuve. Polanski skillfully manipulates an arsenal of virtuoso filmmaking techniques inspired by everything from Hitchcockian thriller to Bunuelian surrealism, depicting a sexually repressed young Belgian [...]Click to read more »
- Three live expanded cinema performances, combining cine-sculptures and interactions, embodied beams and alchemical projections. In Face for an Other, obsessions with horror manifest as phantasmagoric projections onto the filmmaker’s own body in a bizarre accumulation of unreality. In Super Grotesquerie, images and sounds contact printed from 16mm science educational films and Super8 horror and sci-fi [...]Click to read more »
- Bela Tarr’s Satantango is one of the landmarks of modern cinema, a true epic at seven and half hours, it’s a monumental, must see experience on the big screen. Made in Hungary shortly after the collapse of communism, the film is set in a ramshackle rural community. Many of the villagers are set to leave [...]Click to read more »
- Scrapper uncovers a bizarre subculture in the Californian desert, a community eking out a living illegally collecting scrap from military testing sites. Groups of outlaw survivalists risk life and limb infiltrating lethal impact areas to carry off small mountains of lucrative aluminium bomb casings and brass shells and filmmaker Stephan Wassmann follows them into no [...]Click to read more »
- The Swiss fable of the Sennentuntsci tells of a woman created from straw who is made flesh by the devil to do her creators’ bidding. All goes well until they mistreat her and she takes her bloody revenge. Here, director Michael Seiner adds his own twist to the tale, tranposing the action to a remote [...]Click to read more »
- Poland’s biggest ever box office hit, ‘80s comedy Sex Mission is a cult guilty pleasure and a crowd-pleasing delight. Unashamedly bawdy and seriously satirical, it’s like an Eastern Bloc Carry On film directed by Woody Allen. Sex meets sci-fi as two scientists awaken after a 50-year cryogenic slumber to discover a postnuclear apocalyptic world in [...]Click to read more »
- Closing the Official Selection in considerable style, Shame represents another great feature in the best year for British film in living memory. Steve McQueen consolidates his reputation as one of our most gifted and confident directors, following his extraordinary feature debut Hunger. Shame is a mesmerising character drama boasting a superbly orchestrated soundtrack and cinematography and [...]Click to read more »
- She Monkeys is an intense and taboo-challenging drama about the sexual awakening of Swedish teenagers with powerful, naturalistic performances by its young actors. When Emma tries out for the local voltige (horseback acrobatics) team she befriends the attractive and confident Cassandra, but feelings of jealousy, competetiveness and sexual attraction have them pushing each other to [...]Click to read more »
- Testament to the adage that truth is stranger than fiction, Shut Up Little Man introduces us to a viral phenomenon that predates the internet and the strange underground phenomenon of ‘audio verite’. It all began in San Francisco in 1987 when two mid-west punks, Eddie and Mitch moved into a cruddy flat with noisy neighbours [...]Click to read more »
- A lyrical and redemptive tale of southern gothic sensibilities, Ed Gass-Donnelly’s Small Town Murder Songs boasts evocative cinematography, a haunting soundtrack and a soulful central performance by Peter Stormare. Walter is police chief in an Ontario Mennonite community, struggling to keep a lid on simmering local tensions and a violent past that returns to haunt [...]Click to read more »
- In this wacky and shocking crime comedy from Leeds favourite Katsuhito Ishii, a failed actor is forced to smuggle dead bodies in a world full of underground bankers and crazed fashionista yakuza killers. Kinuta discovers his first ‘cargo’ consists of slaughtered yakuzas, including the headless corpse of Boss Tanuma. The killers, ultra-assassins Vertebrae and Viscera, [...]Click to read more »
- The discovery of the Snowtown murders in 1999 shocked Australia to its core. A gang of serial killers controlled by the notorious John Bunting had butchered 11 victims around Adelaide and stored their remains in barrels of acid. One of the killers, teenager James Vlassakis, had lived with his mother and brothers in an already [...]Click to read more »
- From its humble origins as the portrait of the last independent record shop in Teeside, Jeanie Finlay’s warm and funny documentary has attracted rave reviews and swept the festival circuit all over the world. Catch it in Leeds on the big screen as it embarks on a national tour. A cultural haven in one of [...]Click to read more »
- A delightful crowd-pleasing musical crime comedy from Sweden. Police Officer Warnebring suffers from a hatred of all music and his life is thrown into chaos when he is assigned to his first sonic crime spree. A band of outlaw musicians are causing havoc with shock guerilla gig tactics using anything in their path as instruments. [...]Click to read more »
- Innovatively blending documentary and fiction and bending generic expectations at every turn, Nicolás Pereda has constructed a startlingly original feature with Summer of Goliath. It is summer in Huilotepec, a rural community in the Mexican countryside, where a placid atmosphere belies the intrigues stirring among the townspeople. Teresa is convinced that her husband has left [...]Click to read more »
- Shoot, process and project Super8 film! Learn about the different film stocks and how to use a high-end camera (including plenty of tips and tricks) before heading out to shoot a film with a partner. Back at the Cherry Kino Lab, we’ll process the films by hand in a DIY method that’s easy to recreate [...]Click to read more »
- Learn how to use high end Super8 cameras including how to film long exposures, time-lapse and slow motion, and hand-process the black and white film in coffee! Known as ‘Caffenol’, this DIY film processing mixture is an environmentally responsible way of processing black and white film that gets great results, and the ingredients are readily [...]Click to read more »
- Symbol is a sublime feat of surreal comic fantasy from cult Japanese filmmaker Hitoshi Matsumoto, whose debut Big Man Japan is also showing at LIFF25. A man wakes up and finds himself mysteriously trapped in an empty, white rectangular room, wearing clownish bright yellow polka dot pyjamas. His attempts to solve the puzzle and escape [...]Click to read more »
- Sinbad is considered a lost masterpiece of international cinema, rarely seen outside Hungary but cherished as a classic at home. Based on the stories of surrealist writer Gyula Krúdy, this iconic film is a lush and sensuous depiction of the life, loves and memories of serial seducer Szindbád (Zoltán Latinovits). As Szindbád contemplates his life [...]Click to read more »
- Take Shelter is a riveting blend of domestic drama and supernatural thriller featuring an outstanding central performance by Michael Shannon, rapidly emerging as one of the best America actors of his generation. In his second collaboration with director Jeff Nichols (Shotgun Stories), Shannon plays Curtis, a Midwestern husband and father who begins having terrifying dreams [...]Click to read more »
- We are delighted that the finale film of the 25th Leeds International Film Festival is an exclusive screening of Cannes sensation and Oscar-tipped comedy The Artist. One of those out-of-the-blue delights that cinema can sometimes spring on audiences, The Artist is a highly original and hilariously funny story about ambition and passion set in 1920s’ [...]Click to read more »
- Both an affecting love story and the history of an iconic phase of the counter-culture, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye is essential viewing. Ground-breaking performance artist and musical pioneer Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV) and his other half and collaborator, Lady Jaye embarked on a daring and controversial programme of sexual [...]Click to read more »
- From the makers of Made in Sheffield, a fantastic new documentary tracing the city’s extraordinary musical heritage focuses on one iconic band. Glastonbury 1995. Last minute replacement headliners, Pulp deliver a set ‘regarded as one of the best in the festival’s history’ climaxing with the era-defining song, Common People, and in the process catapult themselves [...]Click to read more »
- Documentary filmmaker Dean Puckett interrogates the writer and international security analyst Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It – a powerful critique of a failed global system and a manifesto for constructive social change. Taking a similar filmmaking approach to Adam Curtis, he [...]Click to read more »
- Along with Aliens, we’re celebrating another birthday in our Alien Encounters programme, and for The Day the Earth Stood Still, it’s the big Six Zero! Standing the test of time as much for its message of peace and commentary on the Cold War as for its iconic giant robot Gort, one of the greatest 1950s [...]Click to read more »
- In The Divide, Frontier(s) director Xavier Gens delivers an incredible nightmarish portrayal of fear, paranoia, love and survival set against an apocalyptic backdrop. As nuclear bombs fall on New York eight strangers take refuge in the basement of their now destroyed apartment building, home to paranoid superintendent Mickey (a brilliant performance from The Terminator’s Michael [...]Click to read more »
- A jawdropping concert film from 1974 featuring the fabulous Celia Cruz and The Fania All Stars filmed in Kinshasa, Zaire as part of the famous Rumble in the Jungle title fight between the reigning champion George Foreman and the greatest, Muhammad Ali. Their original performance on the first day caused such a hysterical response from [...]Click to read more »
- Marie Kreutzer’s amazingly assured first film The Fatherless is set in the idyllic Austrian countryside in a large, run-down house which was the site of a sexually liberated commune back in the ‘80s. Now the commune’s charismatic former leader Hans is dying, attended by his oldest son, who never got the approval he craved. Hans’ [...]Click to read more »
- Richard Tuohy’s formidable 16mm films show exceptional artistic innovation, technical brilliance and inspired audiovisual strategies. An abstract visual exploration of an Australian Eucalyptus tree, a camera-less ‘rayogram’ film made by layering fly-screen material onto raw 16mm film stock (where the images also play the sound), the extraordinary movement and sound study of a restless hand, [...]Click to read more »
- An engrossing documentary portrait of an an often overlooked figure of immense cultural influence, Leonard Percival ‘Gong’ Howell, a Jamaican man born at the turn of the Twentieth Century who formed Pinnacle, the first Rastafarian community in 1939. After travelling the world as a sailor and encountering radical ideas from Bolshevism and anarchism to Gandhi, [...]Click to read more »
- One of Japan’s few surviving pre-war horrors, a genre that was soon to be suppressed by the increasing state censorship. Japan’s first scream queen Sumiko Suzuki plays Mitsue, the possessive actress betrothed to apprentice shamisen player Seijiro. When his lost cat Kuro brings home a beautiful girl, dark jealous passions are invoked in Mitsue and [...]Click to read more »
- Veteran cinematographer Sandor Kardos’ astonishing adaptation of the classic Rainer Maria Rilke short story is a bold innovation in cinematic narrative technique. Commandeering the technology used in horse racing to document the photo finish, the film resembles a carousel of hall-of-mirrors images, distorted and bleeding into one another. An enigmatic stranger comes to work as [...]Click to read more »
- Park Jungbum’s much-lauded debut is the story of Jeon Seungchul, a North Korean defector forging a life in the capitalist South. Emerging from a resettlement camp, the unassuming Seung-chul is placed in a home on the outskirts of Seoul, and finds a job papering the city with posters. Yearning for a human bond, he joins [...]Click to read more »
- This is what Peeping Tom might look like if it were directed by Michael Haneke. Loner Sylvain’s beloved arthouse cinema, which is also his home, is about to be closed down. As obsessed with films as he is with blood, every night after the cinema closes Sylain unleashes his anger in acts of extreme violence. [...]Click to read more »
- A humorous and intimate account of the Leeds Jewish Community charting their rags to riches story from the ghettos of Eastern Europe to the self-made empires of Marks & Spencer, Burton’s Clothing and countless more. Combining drama with documentary, a 19th Century Russian Jew searches the city of Leeds for a people that have moved [...]Click to read more »
- Natalia Almada’s hypnotic and unsettling documentary uses stately, atmospheric cinematography to illuminate a dark corner of Mexican culture, the rapidly expanding El Jardin Cemetery. From dusk to dawn The Nightwatchman, ‘El Velador” accompanies Martin, the guardian angel whom, night after night, watches over the extravagant mausoleums of Mexico’s most notorious Drug Lords. In the labyrinth [...]Click to read more »
- The Other Side of Sleep takes the small town murder story and subjects it to a dreamlike metamorphosis, reinvigorating familiar themes with deeply unsettling and atmospheric results. One morning Arlene wakes in the woods beside the body of a young woman. Fear and suspicion spread through the rural Irish community. Increasingly drawn to the girl’s [...]Click to read more »
- A subtle and powerful political drama, The Prize tells its story with haunting originality, through the eyes of a seven-year-old child featuring beautiful cinematography and fantastic performances particularly by the young lead. Ceci and her mother have moved to a dilapidated beach house on the remote Argentine coast for fear of the repressive military regime. [...]Click to read more »
- Jan Zabeil’s highly original and atmospheric debut feature is an otherworldly survival tale exploring divergent European and African sensibilities. A young German actor is travelling in an unnamed African country. He meets an old fisherman near a river, who takes him deep into the wilderness in his wooden boat. He wakes up to find his [...]Click to read more »
- The Round Up combines the delicate choreography of a musical with the brutal sensibilities of a war film, profoundly influencing filmmakers from Sergio Leone to Béla Tarr. Set in a detention camp in Hungary 1869, at a time of guerrilla campaigns against the ruling Austrians, the film depicts the desperate quest to quell the last [...]Click to read more »
- A fascinating, eye-opening history of LSD provides an enlightening journey through the innovations and contradictions of the late twentieth century. By coincidence rather than design the swiss chemist Albert Hofmann makes a sensational discovery in the spring of 1943. He realizes that he is dealing with a powerful molecule that will have an impact beyond [...]Click to read more »
- Fans of the much-loved John Carpenter classic: here’s your chance to delve into the back story of one of the most horrific monster movies of all time at one of the film’s first screenings in the UK. The Thing acts as a prequel, offering an alternative story with a focus on the Norwegian scientist’s point [...]Click to read more »
- Uncompromising Hungarian master Bela Tarr has threatened that A Turin Horse will be his last ever film. If so, it would make a magnificent swansong, but it would be a real loss for cinema. The film is set in Turin in 1889, using the famous anecdote of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s mental breakdown as its starting [...]Click to read more »
- After flooding in the remote Vermont mountains, strange stories surface of odd things found in the swollen rivers. Albert Wilmarth, a folklore professor at Miskatonic University, at first dismisses these sightings. That is, until he begins to correspond with Henry Akeley, a farmer who claims strange creatures are terrorizing him. Like in their silent-film version [...]Click to read more »
- A breathtaking crime drama from one of Korea’s most exciting filmmakers, Na Hong-jin’s The Yellow Sea sets a new standard for hardcore action. When a cabdriver agrees to murder a businessman for a local crime boss, he could never imagine how deep into the criminal underworld he’s about to fall. Stuck in a foreign land, [...]Click to read more »
- A clear eyed and constructive survey of organic food production and sustainable land management, Think Global is an inspirational documentary identifying concrete local solutions to the global ecological mess. What are the common points between the millions of landless workers of the plains of Brazil, a couple of microbiologists in France, the world’s biggest organic [...]Click to read more »
- The special two day Thought Bubble comic convention includes an incredible line-up of leading artists and writers, including Tim Sale (Batman, Heroes), Adam Hughes (Star Wars, Wonder Woman), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth, Swamp Thing) and Posy Simmonds (Tamara Drewe, Gemma Bovery) and features over 300 tables showcasing the best that sequential art has to offer. [...]Click to read more »
- The documentary movement is a cornerstone of British film history and arguably our greatest contribution to world cinema. During the 1940s the British Council was an enthusiastic commissioner of short documentaries designed to showcase Britain to the rest of the world. Largely unseen for nearly 70 years, the collection is currently being digitised and contains [...]Click to read more »
- Marxists and nudists and vegans oh my! Life goes from hippie heaven to hellish anarchy when a housewife and her two precocious kids move into a ‘70s commune unleashing a maelstrom of suburban values. As the belligerent beatniks and commitment-phobic communists start questioning their beliefs, they realise living in harmony can be all-out war. After [...]Click to read more »
- Toomelah is a tough and uncompromising portrait of a remote Aboriginal community featuring non-professional actors and a mesmerising central performance by 10-year-old Daniel Conners. Daniel yearns to be a gangster like the male role models in his life. Skipping school, getting into fights and running drugs for Linden, the main dealer in town, Daniel is [...]Click to read more »
- Spearheading the recent trend of intelligent, political animation, Waltz with Bashir cleverly manipulates its unique style to interrogate the process of memory through traumatic experiences. One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari Folman about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. They conclude that there’s a [...]Click to read more »
- Warren Ellis has produced some of the most insightful comic books focusing on the human (and post-human) condition that the medium has to offer. A true phenomenon of the internet generation; his writing speaks to a wide-ranging, multimedia audience on a bewildering number of subjects, all of which have some bearing on how our society [...]Click to read more »
- After targeting the eccentric political power games of Berlusconi in The Caiman (2006), Italian director Nanni Moretti parodies the hermetic inner workings of the Vatican in We Have a Pope. Perfectly-cast veteran actor Michel Piccoli plays the newly-elected Il Papa who suffers a panic attack and pulls out of all his public and private commitments. [...]Click to read more »
- One of the annual Film Festival highlights and always a hit with audiences, the World Animation Competition presents a diverse selection of painted, drawn, modelled, stop-frame and computer-generated shorts. The first programme contains iconic British artists Gilbert and George reflecting on their idyllic day out in the English countryside, and there is exhilarating action, destruction [...]Click to read more »
- This second programme of short films demonstrates the incredible talents of international animators, some of them very new to the festival scene. Like the creator of irresistible Don Justino de Neve, a charming scoundrel who leaves a trail of broken women behind him, or the sculptor who moulded figures from sand and from snow and [...]Click to read more »
- Sometimes a short film is not so short, so here’s an opportunity to enjoy four slightly longer animated films without interruption and allow yourself to be swept away. To an African island far away from the rat race, and to a Canadian ranch in 1909. There’s a bewitching dream of a lost mediaeval city under [...]Click to read more »
- Building on the success of Red Road and Fishtank and breaking new cinematic ground, Andrea Arnold has cemented her reputation as one of Britain’s leading filmmakers with a bold and sensual adaptation of Emily Bronte’s famous novel. An excellent cast present fresh interpretations of the novel’s larger than life characters including an intense and feral [...]Click to read more »
- The Film Festival’s collaboration with top homegrown record label Yadig continues with a folk film showcase featuring our favourite singer songwriter Serious Sam Barrett, performing alongside an exclusive new documentary about him, Hardeep Pandhal’s stunning Sam at 30, the first of a proposed series of films. Sam has also selected three extraordinary, rarely seen American [...]Click to read more »
- Yakuza Weapon is a wild combination of hard-boiled gangster action, manga-style comedy and splat-tacular special effects. When ex-yakuza Shozo discovers his gang boss father has been assassinated by his most trusted man Kurawaki, a titanic battle is fought and he is left barely alive, missing an arm and a leg. Despite his debilitating wounds, the [...]Click to read more »
- Whilst celebrating the wonderful array of International filmmaking talent active today is undoubtedly key to the festival, it is also great to be reminded of the terrific talent working not only here in the UK but also right on our doorstep! This year’s outstanding selection includes: Tetley’s – Quality Pays, an insightful documentary about the [...]Click to read more »
