From BAFTA award-winning director Asif Kapadia (Senna), 'Amy' tells the incredible story of six-time Grammy-winner Amy Winehouse - in her own words. Employing extensive unseen archive footage, this modern and moving film shines a light on the world we live in.
A once-in-a-generation talent, Amy Winehouse instantly captured the world's attention. A pure jazz artist in the most authentic sense - she wrote and sung from the heart using her musical gifts to analyse her own problems. The combination of her raw honesty and supreme talent resulted in some of the most unique and adored songs of modern era. Tragically, relentless media attention coupled with Amy’s troubled relationships, her global success and precarious lifestyle saw her life fall apart. As a society, we celebrated her huge successes but were quick to judge her failings when it suited us. The talent that was initially her salvation eventually became the trigger for her disintegration.
Amy Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning in July 2011 at the age of 27.
Official Selection Cannes 2015 - Midnight Screenings
By Our Selves documents a four-day walk made by the English Poet John Clare. Toby Jones, Iain Sinclair and a Straw Bear follow in his footsteps exactly 150 years after his death. En route they bump into Macgillivray, Dr Simon Kovesi and the wizard Alan Moore. Meantime the journey is narrated by Toby’s father Freddie, a maverick actor who featured in numerous David Lynch films.
John Clare's escape from Epping Forest; an epic march through hunger and madness, is an English journey to set beside 'A Pilgrim's Progress'. Andrew Kötting, hyperkinetic camper-van captain of Gallivant, sets out in hot pursuit, dressed as a Straw Bear. Father and son, Freddie and Toby Jones, are possessed by the spirit of Clare, and locked in Beckettian embrace: one all-voice and one all-mute.
The writer Iain Sinclair watches from the shadows, Alan Moore waits like a bearded figure of fate, in Northampton and Dr Simon Kovesi hands out the medicine.
Captured in lustrous black and white photography, they discover the only truth of the road; whatever our hopes and delusions, we are always By Our Selves.
Inspired by Iain Sinclair’s Edge of the Orison and John Clare’s Journey out of Essex.
Inspired by D.F. Wallace's first short story, visualising mental discomfort as living on another planet to Earth, the film splits the character of May in two halves: one struggling in London in the past, the other one trying to recover in a youth clinic in the present -until the two storylines collide.
A successful young couple’s sheltered, affluent world is shattered when they each make a decision to neglect the needs of a vulnerable teenage girl. The husband exploits her, and the wife, unaware of her husband's actions, fails to respond to the girl's plight. When the girl invades their luxurious country home and scares the pregnant wife, the repercussions of their actions weigh heavily on their consciences, leading to traumatic reassessments of themselves, their relationship and the wider world around them.
"Belfast, it’s a city that is changing, changing because the people are leaving? But one came back, a 10,000 year old woman who claims that she is the city itself." Mark Cousins.
A unique film about an infamous place, with this 10,000 year old woman as our free spirited walking tour guide. Starting in the here and now, with the everyday, we move on to the dream life of the city, mapping the voices of women and the liminal spaces, the unnoticed and the unloved things about this place. But she also looks back and she sees the tragedy and the horror of what went before. She remembers everything… 'I Am Belfast' highlights Mark Cousins’ influences, inherently cinematic, but all the while underscored by the influence of the grandparents, the mothers, the brothers and the women of the city he comes from.
Belfast Film Festival 2015 - World premiere
Wrongfully arrested, Marina is placed in the unfamiliar world of a prison cell. Spending four days on remand, Marina’s distress transforms as she is confronted by the bleak reality of the women she meets inside.
A troubled teenage boy, growing up in a dreamless wilderness and isolated from those around him, is stripped of his dignity as his father abandons him for the outside world which he is trying to retreat from.
Trevor's life has become a void, following the passing of his wife Doris. Days blur as Trevor slowly finds himself isolated and alone, unconcernedly slipping towards death. A chance encounter in the park with a mysterious stranger jarringly reawakens him, and forces both men to once again start to live.
This documentary follows three Newtown families as they rebuild their lives after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. Over a year, we follow families of victims, and survivors. Some are taking the lead in community healing, others advocate for a change in gun laws; all are seeking healing. In their journey, some venture out of their ‘safe’ suburban community with new eyes:- engaging with black urban America; youth from all walks of life coming together to make change; gun proponents; prisoners incarcerated for violent crimes. This film shows the audience how even amidst such a horrific event, people find a way to survive, and brings a unique perspective to the ongoing gun debate.
A film about grief, hope, love and guns.
A multi-faceted story that takes place on an alternate future time line of Earth. A mysterious astronaut crash lands in the middle of an empty field. Elsewhere a young girl stows away on a touring vessel bound for the restored natural borders of the abandoned surface cities of a once thriving metropolis to search for her family. Further still, a prisoner and supposed terrorist, awaits training for a mission to mars that is causing political and social uproar. Fate causes all their paths to cross, but to what end? An exploration of life in a world struggling to re-imagine itself, and the people who inhabit it
Sick To My Bones is a post apocalyptic allegory set years in the future after climate change and war has ravished the Earth. It explores the relationship between good and evil as an angel wakes up to find herself close to death and bound by chains to her demonic prisoner.
