Ticket price £7.00
Dark Horse: The Incredible True Story of Dream Alliance (PG) – 6.30pm
2015 ( UK ) ( Documentary, Drama)
Director: Louise Osmond
With its sheer warmth and likability, this good-natured documentary is a real-life ‘The Full Monty’ or ‘Billy Elliot’. In 2000, Jan Vokes was a barmaid and part-time Asda cleaner in the Welsh village of Cefn Fforest, a place depressed both economically and emotionally. Jan conceived the idea of organising a syndicate to breed a racehorse and drinkers in the bar would get a share in return for a weekly £10 sub.
When Jan and her fellow owners cheerfully rocked up at posh racing meets, toffee-nosed types would mock. But their horse, Dream Alliance, soon showed them what it was all about…
(1hr 25min)
followed by…
Phoenix (12A) – 8.30pm
2014 (Germany | Poland) (Drama)
(German with English subtitles)
Starring: Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld, Nina Kunzendorf
Director: Christian Petzold
Nelly, a disfigured concentration-camp survivor (Nina Hoss), unrecognizable after facial reconstruction surgery, searches ravaged postwar Berlin for the husband (Ronald Zehrfeld) who might have betrayed her to the Nazis. Finding her husband working as a pianist at a night club in the American sector, she doesn’t identify herself, and he doesn’t recognize her. However he thinks that she resembles Nelly to the extent that, with a little effort, she could impersonate his late wife and claim her inheritance (since, as he knows, her entire family was killed by the Nazis).
Tense, complex, and drenched in atmosphere, Phoenix is a well-acted, smartly crafted war drama that finds writer-director Christian Petzold working at peak power.
(1hr 38min)