Dir: Payal Kapadia, India, 2024. Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam. In Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles. “A poetic and profound cinematic spellbinder that you don't want to miss. Alternately tough and tender, it's a tale of female sisterhood in a big city full of societal, economic and political pressures that can force out intimacy and kill the yearning to hold onto a dream… The stunner of an opening shows the people of Mumbai, many transplants, bustling to work, their thoughts expressed in voiceovers that show their determination and the staggering loneliness that comes with dislocation… The focus is on three Hindu women in various stages of crisis. Each works in a large city hospital, two as nurses and the other as a chef… Head nurse Prabha lives in a tight squeeze of an apartment with a stray cat and a much younger nurse, Anu, a dynamic contrast to Prabha's reserve. Both have guy problems with an Indian twist. Anu defies rules against interfaith relationships by secretly carrying on with the Muslim Shiaz. And Prabha hasn't heard from her husband since their arranged marriage a year ago… Complicated? Heck, yeah. It's Prabha and Anu's widow friend, Parvaty, the middle-aged hospital cook, who sparks the plot when she is evicted from her shantytown… That's when Parvaty asks her two friends to help her move back to her home village by the sea… Barriers of language, culture and politics vanish in the light of our common humanity. Just sit back and behold.” - Peter Travers, ABC News

This live concert performance will transform the City Cinema theatre into an intimate listening room. Bassist Adam Hill will lead an ensemble of five musicians in an exploration of improvisational music that crosses genre and style. The group will feature Karen Graves on violin, Siddhu Sachidananda on keyboards, Tom Gammons on guitar, and Ryan Drew on percussion. The program will present the premiere performance of a new composition by each member of the ensemble, as well as a few not-so-standards. Through the use of “structured improvisation” the performers will bring their diverse musical experiences together to create a common language that communicates across boundaries. Guaranteed to be a one-of-a-kind musical event.

Dir: John Landis, US, 1988. Eddie Murphy, Paul Bates, Garcelle Beauvais. An extremely pampered African prince travels to Queens, New York and goes undercover to find a wife that he can respect for her intelligence and strong will.

Dir: Quentin Tarantino, US, 2012. Jaimie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio. With the help of a German bounty-hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi.

Dir: Spike Lee, US, 1989. Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee. On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone’s hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.

Dir: Mike Leigh, UK/Spain, 2024. Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Michelle Austin, David Webber. “Hard Truths, is the story of a London woman, Pansy, a middle-aged wife and mother stuck in a cycle of anger and resentment that [director Mike] Leigh is not about to break simply because it would give us a sense of relief... Put simply: Pansy is a piece of work. She snaps constantly at her family, husband Curtley and adult son Moses, and both of them are near mute in the wake of her constant, bitter hectoring. She picks arguments in shops and car parks. She doesn’t have a nice word to say about anyone. The only person to whom she shows vulnerability is her sister, Chantelle, a hairdresser whose warm rapport with her own grown-up, confident, happy daughters is in sad contrast to the absence of any real connection in Pansy’s suburban London household. Hard Truths offers a gentle, inquiring curiosity about ‘everyday’ emotional lives; about what goes on behind closed doors; about the intimate relationship between character and place (often that place is London); about what Leigh himself has boiled down to ‘family stuff’. It’s a film of deep empathy, but a tough one, too.” —Dave Calhoun, Time Out (UK)

Dir: Walter Salles, Brazil/France, 2024. Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, Fernanda Montenegro. Winner Golden Globe for Best Actress - Drama “The opening stretch of Walter Salles’ steely but moving family drama set in 1970s Rio de Janeiro throws you for a loop. Framed in sun-bleached Super 8, kids play on Copacabana Beach, ice creams are eaten, and fresh-from-the-waves teenagers come and go from the elegant home of the Paiva family nearby. Only the odd helicopter overhead disturbs this dreamy vision of middle-class Brazilian life… But the veteran Brazilian filmmaker delivers a proper needle-scratch: those choppers are part of the country’s 1970 military junta, a dictatorship hell-bent on tracking down dissidents, including this real-life family’s patriarch Rubens, a former left-wing politician. Beach football is soon a distant memory as dad is taken away to give a ‘deposition’ while leather-jacketed goons loiter awkwardly in his wife, Eunice’s front room. Played wonderfully by Fernanda Torres, Eunice is onscreen almost throughout. She’s at the centre of a family drama and political thriller that really blossoms as a survival story, about a dogged woman determined to do her best for herself and her family under brutal circumstances… Stirring and poignant. You can feel the shadow of a contemporary Brazilian leader, Jair Bolsonaro, hanging over it.” - Phil de Semlyen, Time Out (UK)

Dir: Gordon Parks, US, 1971. Richard Rountree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi. Crime lord Bumpy hires private eye, John Shaft, to find and retrieve his kidnapped daughter in this crime action thriller.

Dir: Boots Riley, US, 2018. LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson. In an alternate present-day version of Oakland, telemarketer Cassius Green discovers a magical key to professional success, propelling him into a universe of greed.

Dir: Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran, 2024. Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh, Mahsa Rostami. In Persian with English subtitles. “An Iranian lawyer named Iman has just been promoted to “investigating judge.” The position gets him a higher salary, promises him a luxurious three-bedroom home and arms him with a gun. Iman’s new role requires him to produce and confirm evidence for prosecutors to use; that makes him a target for those convicted by or seeking to sway Iran’s secretive Islamic Revolutionary Court… At dinner with his wife, Najmeh, and their daughters, Rezvan and Sana, he informs the two teenagers of the dangers he faces. Rezvan and Sana look worried, but they agree to help keep him safe by not discussing his work outside their home. Iman isn’t just their father and their family’s breadwinner: He’s their hero too. Until he’s not. Iman’s latent paranoia and growing inability to separate his work life, where he’s actually rubber-stamping convictions, not investigating them, from his home life turn him into his family’s very own autocrat. The Seed of the Sacred Fig itself shape-shifts from a quiet study of a close-knit foursome into a high-octane thriller. The film is, as a result, a portrait of how [director] Rasoulof perceives the systematic oppression within his home country, from which he is now exiled. The government’s rejection of its citizens’ efforts for change is personal to him—as devastating and painful, the film suggests, as having a father turn against his own flesh and blood.” - Shirley Lee, The Atlantic

Dir: Rob Reiner, US, 1987. Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Robin Wright. A bedridden boy’s grandfather reads him the story of a farmboy-turned-pirate who encounters numerous obstacles, enemies and allies in his quest to be reunited with his true love.