Ticket price £7.00
Ida (12A)
2013 (Poland / Denmark / France / UK) (Drama) (Polish, Latin and French with English subtitles)
Starring: Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik
Director: Pawel Pawlikowski
Winner of 44 international awards Ida is a black & white Polish film set in Communist Poland in 1962. The film focuses on Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), an orphaned novice nun who’s about to take her vows when she’s summoned to meet her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), her only living relative. A plain-speaking, high-ranking state prosecutor, Wanda bluntly informs the teenager that she is in fact Jewish, her real name is Ida and her parents were killed during the Nazi occupation. The revelation leads the would-be sister to investigate her family’s past and the lingering impact of the genocide on her country.
Empathetically written, splendidly acted, and beautifully photographed, Ida finds director Pawel Pawlikowski revisiting his roots to powerful effect.
(1hr 22min)
★★★★★
“There is not a frame in this austere spiritual journey that isn’t a thing of heartfelt beauty.”
– The Times
Blue Ruin (15)
2013 (USA / France) (Crime, Drama, Thriller)
Starring: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Macon Blair’s Dwight lives on the beach, scavenges in bins and looks to have spent years castaway on a desert island. Not a strapping Charles Bronson-type vigilante. When he learns that the man who murdered his parents has been released from jail he sets out to kill him, hoping that he can steady his nerves enough to complete the task. His mild-mannered, bumbling nature makes him all the more endearing and provides a sprinkling of gallows humour to balance the brutal deaths and deadly reckonings that follow.
Every single element from the sound design to the cinematography plays a part in building tension and keeping us rooting for an ordinary, fallible man in his pursuit of justice. Winner of the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Blue Ruin proves that a well-told revenge story can still leave its audience on the edge of their seat.