We enter into the second half of our Spring Season with another excellent offering of international titles including Oscar winners, festival favourites and auteur-driven works.
As ever we strive for a balance of voices in our programme and over the next seven weeks you can expect heartfelt tales alongside sweeping epics with three of our films from first time directors while we close out the season at the end of April with the long awaited return of German auteur Wim Wenders.
As previously announced we kick of this second half with two of the most uncompromising films to be released this year so far in Poor Things and Zone of Interest.
Check out the listings for the next seven screenings below.
Sligo Film Society, Mar – Apr 2024
14th March
Poor Things
Poor Things is a 2023 film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Tony McNamara, based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. Starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, and Jerrod Carmichael, it centres on Bella Baxter, a young woman in Victorian London who is resurrected through a brain transplant and runs off with a lawyer on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, she grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation. Poor Things by Irish company Elemental Pictures won 4 Oscars at the 2024 Academy Awards.
21st March
Zone of Interest
A historical drama by Jonathan Glazer and nominated for 5 Oscar awards. The story is loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis. Starring German actors Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller as the Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, it focuses on the pair as they strive to build a dream life for their family in a home next to the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.
28th March
The Settlers
The Settlers (Spanish: Los Colonos) is a 2023 revisionist Western drama film directed by Felipe Gálvez Haberle (in his directorial debut). In 1893, Segundo, a Chilean mestizo, MacLennan, a British soldier, and Bill, an American mercenary, embark on an expedition on horseback to delimit and reclaim the lands that the State has granted to José Menéndez. What appears to be an administrative expedition turns into a violent hunt for Onas, the natives of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago. The selknam genocide lies at the core of the film.
4th April
20,000 Species of Bees
Eight-year-old Coco doesn’t identify with the male name Aitor she was assigned at birth. She would in fact prefer to be called Lucia. But her family, even her open-minded sculptress mother, are struggling to see Lucia for who she really is. Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s moving debut film approaches its young lead character’s story of self-discovery with great sensitivity and humanity.
11th April
Promised Land
From BAFTA nominated writer and director, Nikolaj Arcel (A Royal Affair, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), comes a powerful Nordic epic starring Mads Mikkelsen (The Hunt, Another Round). In 1755, the impoverished Captain Ludvig Kahlen sets out to conquer the uninhabitable Danish heath in the name of the King. But the sole ruler of the area, the merciless Frederik de Schinkel, who believes the land belongs to him, swears revenge when the maid Ann Barbara and her serf husband escape for refuge with Kahlen.
18th April
If Only I Could Hibernate
(Mongolian Baavgai Bolohson, literal meaning, Wish I Could Turn Into A Bear) is a 2023 Mongolian film written and directed by Zoljargal Purevdash with the Mongolian actor Battsooj Uurtsaikh as the lead actor in the role of Ulzii. A poor but prideful teenage boy Ulzii who lives in the Ger district of Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar is determined to win a physics competition for a scholarship. Still, his illiterate mother finds a job in the countryside and leaves him with his siblings in the middle of the winter.
25th April
Perfect Days
Screening as part of the Japanese Film Festival
Middle-aged Hirayama (a fantastic Kôji Yakusho) leads a modest existence, balancing his work as a Tokyo public toilet caretaker with his love of music, reading and photography. But when a young woman appears on his door step, it leads to evelations about Hirayama’s past and the simple life he cherishes is disrupted. Win Wender’s Japan-set latest is a charming, moving gem.
