October
November >
In the 72 hours leading up to D-Day, all the pieces are in place except for one key element – the British weather. Britain’s chief meteorological officer James Stagg (Andrew Scott) is called upon to deliver the most consequential forecast in history, locking him into a tense standoff with the entire Allied leadership. The wrong conditions could devastate the largest ever seaborne invasion, while any delay risks German intelligence catching on.
With only his trusted aide Captain Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon) to confide in, and haunted by a catastrophic D-Day rehearsal, the final decision rests with Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser). With only hours to go, the fate of the war and the lives of millions hang in the balance.
When the British colonised Kenya, they took control of prime tea-growing land that still supplies the global market today. As a local Kenyan journalist investigates a legal battle over stolen ancestral land, dark secrets are exposed and ongoing abuses on plantations run by major multinationals become clear. Set against the richness of the landscape, Kikuyu Land is a poetic, stunningly cinematic dive into a complex legacy that refuses to stay buried.
Presented in partnership with Dumfries Fairtrade to mark Fairtrade Fortnight. Followed by comments on the Fairtrade standards for tea and informal discussions over cups of tea.
Maria, a primary school teacher doing her best to inspire a class of 10-year-olds, is stifled by one unruly and chaotic student. With her career in question and the child's behaviour spiralling, she makes a series of bad decisions that lead to her accidentally taking and locking this "bad apple" in her home. Maria tries desperately to backtrack, but when the class starts flourishing and the staff and parents are thrilled with the improvement, she finds herself in a very complicated predicament.
Bitter Christmas is the latest film from iconic director Pedro Almodóvar. The Spanish language drama tells two alternating stories, one starring Elsa, an advertising director, in 2004, during a long weekend in December. The second takes place in 2026 and stars Raúl, a screenwriter and director who is writing a script that we soon discover is the story of Elsa, her boyfriend Bonifacio, and her friends Patricia and Natalia. Mixed with fiction, Elsa is, in a way, Raúl's alter ego, who, like him, resorts to autofiction as a solution to a long period of creative drought. He looks inside himself, and he can't help but also look at the people who make up his most intimate universe: his partner and his assistant. The film narrates the close relationship between reality and fiction, between inspiration and life, exploring the limits of autofiction and stories within stories. In Spanish with English subtitles.
Manchester 1976: Tony Wilson witnesses the Sex Pistols and sets up Factory Records, signing Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays. What follows is a blackly comic tale of music, sex, drugs, mayhem and the birth of The Haçienda – capturing the vibrancy that made Madchester the place to be.
Book your FREE tickets to see it on 6 October
Escapes is a new offering, supported by the BFI, awarding National Lottery funding. Tickets are completely free but limited to 2 adult tickets per customer.
A friend of small-town detective John Klute has disappeared. The only clue is a connection with a Manhattan call girl, Bree Daniels. Klute puts her under surveillance, gradually being drawn further into a world he's never experienced. But while Klute searches, someone is stalking Bree.
Jane Fonda took home the Academy Award for her haunting portrayal of the high-priced call girl being stalked by a psychopath. Master filmmaker Alan J. Pakula (All the President's Men, Sophie's Choice, Presumed Innocent) directed this romantic detective-thriller/character study and the screenplay received an Academy Award nomination. You can see two more of Pakula's films in our Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen season, paranoia thriller The Parallax View on Thursday 15 October and a 50th anniversary screening of All the President's Men on Monday 14 December. The Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season is a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated.
Daisy Edgar-Jones stars in this lush new adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel. Sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood navigate love, uncertainty and societal pressures in the wake of their father’s death.
On Halloween Eve at Mossy Bottom Farm, excitement turns to dismay when the clumsy Farmer ruins the pumpkin patch. Shaun tries fixing it with science experiments, but things go wrong when a wild beast appears in the woods.
Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy family and what seems like a straightforward case quickly spirals into a labyrinth of gambling debts, missing persons, murder, corruption and deception. Humphrey Bogart stars as PI Philip Marlowe in this classic American film noir directed by Howard Hawks. Lauren Bacall stars as Vivian Rutledge.
The Big Sleep, now 80 years old, is part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen season as Hawks' brilliant noir exposes how wealth, influence and social status conceal criminality and moral decay and where every character is hiding something...
There are no adverts or trailers with this screening of The Big Sleep.
Amanda and her stepfather Martin struggle with a moral issue that divides them. Has Amanda’s mother, Leslie, who is experiencing advanced dementia, lost the ability to make critical decisions in her own best interest? If so, who is responsible – a spouse, a child, an institution – for making such a determination? As Amanda and Martin are forced to make increasingly difficult choices, the repercussions spiral out of their control. In French and English with some subtitles in English.
Amanda and her stepfather Martin struggle with a moral issue that divides them. Has Amanda’s mother, Leslie, who is experiencing advanced dementia, lost the ability to make critical decisions in her own best interest? If so, who is responsible – a spouse, a child, an institution – for making such a determination? As Amanda and Martin are forced to make increasingly difficult choices, the repercussions spiral out of their control. In French and English with some subtitles in English.
An ambitious reporter (Warren Beatty) gets in way-over-his-head trouble while investigating a senator's assassination which leads to a vast conspiracy involving a multinational corporation behind every event in the worlds headlines.
You can see two more of Pakula's films in our Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen season, Oscar-winning thriller Klute on Thursday 8 October and a 50th anniversary screening of All the President's Men on Monday 14 December. The Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season is a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated.
After a harrowing plane crash, Special Forces officer James Belmont (Brad Pitt) and his combat dog, Odin, find themselves stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Together, they are forced into a brutal fight for survival against the elements.
From acclaimed filmmaker David Ayer, HEART OF THE BEAST is an intense adventure thriller that explores the unbreakable bond between a man and his best friend as they face their greatest battle yet.
Join us for a spectacular recording of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s exquisite ballet, performed in a limited run at The Royal Albert Hall, with performances that will leave you spellbound.
For wonder and enchantment, look no further than this classic fairytale ballet. Experience all that is grand, gleaming and gorgeous in a stunning version of one of the world’s favourite stories.
As a baby, Princess Aurora is cursed by the wicked Carabosse: on her 16th birthday, she will prick her finger and die. Her godmother the Lilac Fairy alters the spell so Aurora will not die, but sleep for 100 years. Only a true love’s kiss can break the spell and awaken her.
From Aurora’s christening in the grand hall of the palace, to her jubilant wedding celebrations, the bewitching fairy tale is brought to life before your eyes.
2 for 1 ticket offer, free for 10 to 25 years
Winner of 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, HADESTOWN: THE MUSICAL is the genre-defying musical blending modern American folk music with New Orleans-inspired jazz to reimagine a sweeping ancient tale of two intertwining love stories, that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and King Hades and his wife Persephone. Filmed live on stage in London’s West End and featuring the original Broadway stars, HADESTOWN: THE MUSICAL invites audiences on a hell-raising journey to the underworld and back.
Recorded live and not a live broadcast.
The great Willem Dafoe lends his delicate gravitas to the role of Ed Saxberger, a forgotten New York poet who works in the post office. After an eager and flattering young admirer (Edmund Donovan) appears on his doorstep, Saxberger is beckoned into a coterie of twentysomething admirers who anoint him as a rediscovered genius. Intoxicated by the attention—and by the alluring presence of Gloria, the group’s “tragic heroine” (a sinuous, Kurt Weill–crooning Greta Lee)—Saxberger gradually reckons with the authenticity of his newfound poetic circle. This thoughtful, witty second feature from Kent Jones (Diane), working from a sly and hugely entertaining script by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Samy Burch (May December), is a wistful yet unromantic look at a lost idea of downtown New York.
Bertrand Usclat and Martin Darondeau’s hilarious laugh-a-minute comedy is a wonderfully chaotic love letter to the theatre. The Comédie-Française is one of France’s most revered arts institutions, and the oldest still-performing theatre company in the world. There is one golden rule: the play is NEVER cancelled. Unfortunately for theatre producer Nina (Pauline Clément), everything is unravelling just three hours before the premiere of her first production - an ambitious retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Her lead actor is stuck on a train, tensions are exploding, passions flaring, equipment breaking down and egos are clashing. With panic setting in and the clock ticking Nina must hold the show together at all costs. Will the show go on? France’s big comedy of the summer and the runaway winner of four awards at the Alpe d’Huez comedy Film Festival, Comédie Française is a delicious behind-the-scenes farce which is unafraid to poke fun at the highbrow reputation of French theatre. Featuring a cast of real-life members of the Comédie-Française company, this is a gleeful, knowing parody and a sheer delight.
The ever popular French Film Festival returns to the RBC with a classic thriller from 1995. France’s master of suspense, Claude Chabrol, relishes every malevolent, icily controlled shot of this perfectly constructed thriller, right up to its terrifying, violent climax.
Adapted from Ruth Rendell's classic thriller, A Judgement in Stone, Chabrol transposes it to a remote French village. This iconic film has left a lasting mark on the cinematic landscape. Its influence transcends borders, shaping contemporary masterpieces like Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite. In French with English subtitles.
"Creates a palpable sense of unease that fully justifies the shockingly violent finale." - Time Out
You can see two other films by Claude Chabrol as part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen season, La Femme infidèle and Le Boucher, thrillers which explore moral, rather than political, corruption and where polite society and dark secrets entwine to murderous effect.
Gene Hackman plays Harry Caul, a paranoid, secretive surveillance expert who has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that the couple he is spying on will be murdered.
Francis Ford Coppola's brilliant paranoia thriller The Conversation was filmed in between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II and is part of our Power, Corruption and Lies on Film Season featuring a series of films based around the abuse of power, the manipulation of truth, and the consequences of secrecy.
You can also see Gene Hackman in another film in the Power, Corruption and Lies on Film season, 1975's Night Moves in which he plays a Los Angeles private investigator hired by a client to find her runaway teenage daughter only to stumble upon something much more intriguing and sinister. Thursday 29 October.
Adapted from Colleen Hoover's best-selling novel, this seductive, psychological thriller follows renowned author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) and Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling writer who relocates to the remote Crawford estate to ghostwrite for Verity. After Lowen uncovers what appears to be Verity's chilling autobiographical notes, she wrestles with the disturbing and twisted confessions about Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), and finds it hard to separate fiction from reality, manipulation from attraction, and opportunity from obsession.
An unforgettable road trip across Europe, from the Atlantic to Istanbul… Director Mathias Mlekuz stars in a fictionalised version of the real-life bike pilgrimage he took with his co-star and actor friend Philippe Rebbot. They travel from the west coast of France to Istanbul to pay homage to Mathias’ son Youri after his untimely and shocking death.
Filled with moments of intense emotions and occasionally bursting with laughter, this journey becomes an opportunity for these two friends to explore their friendship and pay tribute to Youri’s memory. Audience Award, best director and best music at Angoulême Francophone Film Festival 2024. In French with English subtitles.
"Bittersweet middle-aged bromance." The Guardian
There will be no adverts or trailers with this screening.
Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2026 Berlin Film Festival, Everybody Digs Bill Evans is a biographical drama film about the famous jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans.
1961. Bill Evans is playing with what he considers the perfect musical trio until tragedy strikes in the premature death of his bass player, Scott LaFaro - his musical soulmate. Traumatised by grief, Evans stops playing for the first time since his childhood. A tug-of-war between personal torment and the seemingly safer haven of familial love will see Evans oscillate between New York and suburbia, his genius always bubbling beneath the surface.
Directed by Grant Gee and starring Anders Danielsen Lie, Bill Pullman and Laurie Metcalf, the film is written by Mark O’Halloran and based on Owen Martell’s novel Intermission.
Filmed at the National Galleries of Scotland during the 2025 retrospective, ‘Andy Goldsworthy: 50 Years’, this film captures a dialogue between artist Andy Goldsworthy and art historian, author, and broadcaster Andrew Graham Dixon.
The documentary offers a look behind the scenes of Goldsworthy’s largest and most ambitious indoor exhibition. Surrounded by new installations created specifically for the show, the pair explore the core environmental philosophies, fleeting natural materials, and creative ideas that have defined the artist's extraordinary half-century career.
There will be a Q & A Session with Andrew Graham-Dixon after the film.
Adapted from Colleen Hoover's best-selling novel, this seductive, psychological thriller follows renowned author Verity Crawford (Anne Hathaway) and Lowen Ashleigh (Dakota Johnson), a struggling writer who relocates to the remote Crawford estate to ghostwrite for Verity. After Lowen uncovers what appears to be Verity's chilling autobiographical notes, she wrestles with the disturbing and twisted confessions about Verity’s husband Jeremy (Josh Hartnett), and finds it hard to separate fiction from reality, manipulation from attraction, and opportunity from obsession.
Former footballer and present private detective Harry Moseby gets hired on to what seems a standard missing person case, as an aging Hollywood actress whose only major roles came thanks to being married to a studio mogul wants Moseby to find and return her stepdaughter. Harry travels to Florida to find her, but he begins to see a connection with the runaway girl, the world of Hollywood stuntmen, and a suspicious mechanic when an unsolved murder comes to light.
Starring Gene Hackman and Melanie Griffiths in her film debut, Night Moves was written by Scottish screenwriter Alan Sharp. Sharp was one of Scotland’s greatest screenwriters and one of its most important transnational writers. The adopted son of a Greenock shipyard worker, he became a bestselling novelist, a leading playwright, a record-breaking Hollywood screenwriter and the central figure of a new Scottish national film industry. Today, however, his books, television plays and screenplays are forgotten. Come and see Night Moves as part of our Power, Corruption and Lies on Film season, a film that, like Sharp, is little known, seriously under-rated and deserves to be revalued.
With guest introduction by RBC customer Gerron Stewart.
The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity's saviour before the disaster he's unleashed destroys everything. Tom Cruise plays the ostentatious oil baron in a dark comedy directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant, Amores perros).
“[Digger is] a big cinematic middle finger to any government anywhere making bold statements about billionaires, power and the status quo delivered and led by Tom Cruise in one of his craziest, bravest most magnificent career performances.” – Carla Renata (aka The Curvy Film Critic)
TV adaptation of the popular series of children's books by Janet and Allan Ahlberg about the comical adventures of two skeletons and their skeletal dog. Narrated by comedian Griff Rhys Jones.
This dark and mesmerising collection of horror and thriller shorts showcases the extraordinary power of animation to illuminate the shadowy corners of the human imagination. This screening is part of Manipulate Arts’ Autumn Animation Season.
Each film delves into the depths of fear, obsession, and the unknown, transforming intangible nightmares into hauntingly beautiful visual experiences. Through a blend of striking artistry and storytelling, creators from around the world unravel cautionary tales that warn of human folly, bring to life the monsters lurking within, and paint chilling visions of futures twisted by our own desires and mistakes. Together, these animated works remind us that sometimes, the most terrifying worlds are the ones we create ourselves. The programme will feature films from four continents, including some of the most exciting titles on the current festival circuit.
This programme has been selected by Manipulate Arts and presented in partnership with ArtsD&G. Manipulate Arts’ Autumn Animation Season is supported by Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, awarding funding on behalf of Screen Scotland and the BFI National Lottery.
A leading member of the French New Wave, who came to be regarded as the 'French Hitchcock', for many years Claude Chabrol's classic thrillers have been missing from UK screens. A mid-career masterpiece within Chabrol's remarkable run of bourgeois psychological thrillers, La Femme infidèle traces the fallout following a husband’s discovery of his wife’s affair and his quiet, unnerving and devastating act of revenge. In French with English subtitles.
La Femme infidèle is part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season, a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated. Alongside classics like The Big Sleep and All the President's Men the season brings together three of Chabrol’s most disturbing works, from La Femme infidèle, 1970's impeccable Le Boucher and 1995's La Cérémonie (based on Ruth Rendell's novel A Judgement in Stone), these are thrillers which explore moral, rather than political, corruption and where polite society and dark secrets entwine to murderous effect.
A leading member of the French New Wave, who came to be regarded as the 'French Hitchcock', for many years Claude Chabrol's classic thrillers have been missing from UK screens. Chabrol’s most celebrated and sinister film sees a tender friendship between a schoolteacher and local butcher darken as a series of murders unsettles life in their village. In French with English subtitles.
Le Boucher is part of the Power, Corruption and Lies on Screen Season, a themed run of films exploring how power can be misused, how corruption develops, and how truth can be manipulated. Alongside classics like The Big Sleep and All the President's Men the season brings together three of Chabrol’s most disturbing works, from 1969's La Femme infidèle and 1995's La Cérémonie (based on Ruth Rendell's novel A Judgement in Stone), these are thrillers which explore moral, rather than political, corruption and where polite society and dark secrets entwine to murderous effect.
