Andrei Tarkovsky’s unforgettably haunting film, his first to be made outside Russia, explores the melancholy of the expatriate through the film’s protagonist, Gorchakov, a Russian poet researching in Italy. Arriving at a Tuscan village spa with Eugenia, his beautiful Italian interpreter, Gorchakov is visited by memories of Russia and of his wife and children, and he encounters the local mystic who sets him a challenging task. ‘Nostalgia’ is filled with a series of mysterious and extraordinary images, all of which coalesce into a miraculous whole in the film’s final shot. As in all Tarkovsky’s films, nature, the elements of fire and water, music, painting and poetry all play a major role. Italian languages with English subtitles.
The Monday Night Film Club returns with a classic drama from Hungarian director István Szabó, the Oscar®-winning director of Mephisto, Hanussen and Being Julia.
Set in Hungary in the years following the end of WW2, a young boy concocts a fantasy ideal of his father who has been killed in the war. In the boy's fertile imagination, the father attains mythical and heroic qualities. Szabó's poignant cinematic ode, combining humour with a poetic nostalgia, relates historical events through the prism of personal experience, producing a film of extraordinary warmth, intimacy and power. Chosen by Hungarian critics and writers as one of the best Hungarian films of all time, Father also boasts luminous monochrome cinematography by the great Sándor Sára. In black and white | In Hungarian with English subtitles.
"Szabó's superb second feature, a major prizewinner at the time... shot and edited with all the effervescent brio of early Truffaut" Michael Brooke, MovieMail
"A beautiful study of the need for heritage... Szabó has told his story on two levels that complement each other magnificently" The New York Times
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Set against the backdrop of mass protests in Paris, Case 137 follows Stéphanie, a meticulous internal affairs investigator assigned to investigate a teenager critically injured by police fire. Stéphanie is tasked with uncovering the truth, but her inquiry collides with institutional resistance and pressure mounts as the case turns personal, forcing her to confront the fragile lines between truth, loyalty, and justice. In French with English subtitles.
Case 137 is part of our 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. You can see films like All The President's Men, Klute, and The Parallax View as well as rereleases of several of legendary French director Claude Chabrol's films 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.
PLEASE NOTE Change to Tuesday Night Film Club. FATHERLAND centres on the relationship between the Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika (Sandra Hüller) - actress, writer and rally driver. In the summer of 1949, at the height of the Cold War, father and daughter embark on a challenging and emotional road trip in a black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins - from US dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar. Returning home after sixteen years of exile in the US, Thomas Mann has to face not only a divided fatherland, but also a deep fracture within his own family.
With FATHERLAND, Pawlikowski picks up where he left off with his award-winning Ida and Cold War, exploring – in his elliptic, distilled style - the themes of identity, family, love and guilt amid the turmoil and confusion of post-war Europe. In German, French, English and Russian with English subtitles | In Black and White.
