Film Festival

The 20th Anniversary Film Festival will feature international films selected by our team of language tutors to celebrate diversity and multiculturalism!

Choose a film and invite a friend, everyone is welcome!

Films will be screened at the Film Theatre, located in the lower ground floor of the Attenborough Seminar Block.

Free entry and open to all!

Turkish film: Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul

Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul is a 2005 documentary film directed by Fatih Akın. The film is a journey through the music scene in modern Istanbul, Turkey as well as portraying its cultural life. It was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. It features German musician Alexander Hacke (member of Einstürzende Neubauten) as the narrator. Hacke and Akın travelled around Istanbul with a mobile recording studio and a microphone, assembling an inspired portrait of Turkish music — from classical music to indie rock and rap.

• Monday 22 September 2025 at 6.00 pm (screening starts at 6.15 pm).

Belgian/French film: La famille Bélier

La Famille Bélier (aka The Bélier Family) is a 2014 French-Belgian coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Éric Lartigau. The film received six nominations at the 40th César Awards, winning Most Promising Actress for Louane Emera. It won a Magritte Award in the category of Best Foreign Film. In the Bélier family, sixteen-year-old Paula is an indispensable interpreter for her deaf parents and brother on a daily basis, especially in the running of the family farm. Despite the fact that her family is unable to hear, Paula's special gift is for singing. Her choir is rehearsing songs by iconic French singer Michel Sardou. The music teacher encourages Paula to audition for the prestigious Maîtrise de Radio France music college in Paris, which will secure her a good career and a college degree. However, this decision would mean leaving her family and taking her first steps towards adulthood, a theme expressed in her audition song, Sardou's 'Je vole' ('I Fly').

• Tuesday 23 September 2025 at 6.00 pm (screening starts at 6.15 pm).

Mexican film: Roma

Roma is a 2018 historical drama film written, produced, and directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also served as cinematographer and co-editor. Set in 1970 and 1971, Roma follows the life of a live-in indigenous (Mixteco) housekeeper of an upper-middle-class Mexican family. It is a semi-autobiographical take on Cuarón's upbringing in Mexico City's Colonia Roma neighborhood. The film stars Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira. Roma premiered on 30 August 2018 at the 75th Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion. It received ten nominations at the 91st Academy Awards, among them Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress (Aparicio) and Best Supporting Actress (de Tavira). It became the first Mexican entry to win Best Foreign Language Film, and the first non-English-language to win both Best Cinematography and Best Director for the same person in a single night. It also won two awards at the 76th Golden Globe Awards, four awards (including Best Picture) at the 24th Critics' Choice Awards, and four awards (including Best Film) at the 72nd British Academy Film Awards.

• Wednesday 24 September 2025 at 6.00 pm (screening starts at 6.15 pm).

Syrian/British film: Limbo

Limbo is a 2020 Scottish comedy-drama film, directed by Ben Sharrock. The film centres on four asylum seekers who are staying on a remote island in Scotland, and taking cultural awareness classes, while awaiting the processing of their refugee claims. The film was named as an Official Selection of the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, but was not screened due to the cancellation of the physical festival in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised Limbo's "elegant deadpan style established from the outset" and notes that "Sharrock soon gets you to invest in the characters and care deeply about what happens to them. Limbo is about refugees and asylum seekers in Britain, and it's a bracingly internationalist and non-parochial piece of work: film-making with a bold view on the world but also as gentle and intimate as a much-loved sitcom... This is superlative film-making from Sharrock."

• Thursday 25 September 2025 at 6.00 pm (screening starts at 6.15 pm).

German film: Good Bye Lenin!

Good Bye, Lenin! is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, directed by Wolfgang Becker. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Sass, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. The story follows a family in East Germany; the mother is dedicated to the socialist cause and falls into a coma in October 1989, shortly before the Peaceful Revolution in November. When she awakens eight months later in June 1990, her son attempts to protect her from a fatal shock by concealing the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in East Germany. Most scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbau buildings near Alexanderplatz. Good Bye, Lenin! received numerous honours, including 2003's European Film Award for Best Film and German Film Award for Best Fiction Film.

• Monday 29 September 2025 at 6.00 pm (screening starts at 6.15 pm).

Turkish film: Bogeyman

Bogeyman is a 2023 Turkish action comedy directed by Egyptian director Husain El-Minbawi. It stars Amir Karara, Yasmine Sabri and Mohamed Anwar. A pharmacist doctor falls in love with a criminal who decides to repent and leave criminality, and together with his friend, faces many situations that turn the course of events upside down.

• Tuesday 30 September 2025 at 6.00 pm (screening starts at 6.15 pm).

Argentinian film: Wild Tales

Wild Tales (aka Relatos salvajes) is a 2014 satirical absurdist black comedy anthology film, written and directed by the Argentine filmmaker Damián Szifron. The film is composed of six standalone shorts with a common theme of catharsis, violence and vengeance. The film has an ensemble cast consisting of Ricardo Darín, Oscar Martínez, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Érica Rivas, Rita Cortese, Julieta Zylberberg, and Darío Grandinetti. Because of Szifron's desire to work with Darín and Martínez, these actors were allowed to choose the role they wanted. Four of the film's stories were partly based on Szifron's real-life experiences and were all planned either as thrillers or dramas. The film won many accolades, including eight of ten Platino Awards, the BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language, and the Goya Award for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, and for the Palme d'Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Wild Tales is the most-seen Argentine film of all time.

• Wednesday 1 October 2025 at 7.00 pm (screening starts at 7.15 pm). Please note later start-time.

Italian film: Rose Island

Rose Island (aka L'incredibile storia dell'Isola delle Rose) is a 2020 Italian biographical adventure film directed by Sydney Sibilia and starring Elio Germano. The film is based on the true story of engineer Giorgio Rosa and the Republic of Rose Island, an artificial platform, which became a micronation on May 1, 1968, and was demolished in February 1969.  An idealistic engineer builds his own island off the Italian coast and declares it a nation, drawing the world's attention. Values are tested when the Italian Government declares him an enemy, but to change the world risks must be taken. In 1968, engineer Giorgio Rosa established the independent state called "The Isle of Roses" off the coast of Rimini, built on a platform outside the territorial waters, with Esperanto as the official language. The Italian authorities did not take it well because the micro nation was seen as an expedient to not pay taxes on the revenues obtained thanks to the arrival of numerous tourists and curious people.

• Thursday 2 October 2025 at 6.00 pm (screening starts at 6.15 pm).