Hotel Splendide

Director: Terence Gross

Year: 2000

In spite of a cast list boasting Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Katrin Cartlidge and Stephen Tompkinson, the real star of Hotel Splendide is the hotel itself. Director Terence Gross and his team spent more than a year searching for the perfect location. They finally found it in the Slieve Donard Hotel in Northern Ireland. "It had all the qualities we were looking for - a fairy tale element, a hint of gothic and was overwhelmingly big to dwarf the staff and guests," says producer Ildiko Kemeny. Gross sees the Hotel Splendide as embodying the spirit of Mrs Blanche, the late matriarch of the family who still manages the crumbling establishment. "She created a very ingenious heating system that runs off human waste. After her death she has had herself cremated into it and has a kind of presence in the hotel," explains Gross. "It's very Oedipal, with the children still living inside her." Although the film has what Cartlidge describes as "a European sniff about it" ("it's very unusual for a British film to veer away from naturalism," she says) Gross sees it as carrying a very British message. "The whole film is a metaphor for the way the British settle for less and feel that mediocrity is better than risk," he says. But if that sounds portentous, it is also leavened with an essentially British sense of humour, as outsider Kath (Collette) brings liberating chaos into the suffocating environment of the hotel. The film, which is Gross's feature debut, was selected for this year's Berlin Film Festival in the Panorama section.

Director: Sandeep Kumar Paul

Year: 2026

Science teacher Swarna and her partner Driti move to a suburban town for a fresh start. When a student leaks intimate photos of Swarna online, school authorities turn her private life into a disciplinary issue. Official Selection Busan International Film Festival 2026 - World premiere

Director: Yv Shells

Year: 2026

When Arlo arrives to find Marcus has cooked someone else’s favourite meal, a single question begins to unravel an evening that refuses to stay in the present. Through a fractured timeline set entirely within one dining room, we move between Marcus and Arlo and the relationship that came before, with Una, the woman he met at a late-night bus stop and once talked about marrying. The same table, the same chairs, the same arguments about trust, honesty and what it means to truly see someone. As the timelines bleed together, it becomes clear that Marcus has never fully left the past, and that Una’s ghost sits at every table he sets. When Arlo asks what her own favourite meal is and he cannot answer, the film’s quiet devastation lands completely. CLOCKS is a portrait of a man who loves generously but sees poorly, and the women who carry the cost. It asks what we owe the person in front of us while we are still in love with someone we lost, and whether a feeling ever truly ends.