Official Selection is the heart of the Film Festival, championing great unseen cinema from all over the world. Check out new discoveries from emerging directors, exclusives of the latest features by some of the world’s best filmmakers and take the chance to reassess some of the classics, many of them presented in the grand surroundings of Leeds Town Hall. This year we are proud to present a new digital projection and sound system, enhancing the grandest big screen in the North.
This year’s Golden Owl Competition has 12 outstanding UK premieres including dreamlike Irish murder story The Other Side of Sleep, Australian aboriginal docudrama Toomelah and the latest gem from the Romanian new wave, Best Intentions.
Open Wings includes galas of two superb new British features, Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights and Steve McQueen’s Shame, also the acclaimed, intense American psychological drama, Take Shelter, the Cannes Camera d’Or winner from Argentina, Las Acacias and the outstanding Korean political drama Journals of Musan.
Retrospectives this year include Magyar Masterpieces from Béla Tarr to Miklós Jancsó, a special collaboration with the University on the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz, political animation and Swedish comedy. We are also showing some classic drama and thrillers in a reassessment of mental health representation in cinema in conjunction with the Time to Change campaign. A celebration of silent cinema includes a very special presentation of the Harold Lloyd silent comedy classic Safety Last with live musical accompaniment presented by TV comedian Paul Merton.
- 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 about this film »
- 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 about this film »
- 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 about this film »
- 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 about this film »
- 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 about this film »
- 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 about this film »
- John and Laura Baxter are living in Venice when they meet a pair of elderly sisters, one of whom claims to be psychic. She insists that she sees the spirit of the Baxters’ daughter, who recently drowned. Laura is intrigued, but John resists the idea. He, however, seems to have his own psychic flashes, seeing [...]Click to read more about this film »
- 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 about this film »
- 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 about this film »
- 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 about this film »
