All six new releases to be shown at the South West Group’s Viewing have been confirmed. The titles include ‘Sentimental Value’, which became the first Norwegian film to win an Oscar in the Best International Feature Film category.
The films will be screened in the main hall of Dorchester’s Corn Exchange, home of our hosts, Dorchester Film Society, and in the Council Chamber.
SENTIMENTAL VALUE – winner of the Best International Feature Film in this year’s Oscars with six other nominations including Stellan Skarsgard and Elle Fanning for their supporting roles. Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav (Starsgard), a once-renowned director, who offers stage actress Nora (Fanning) a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film.
IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT – the courageous Iranian director, Jafar Panahi (Tehran Taxi, Offside), won the Palme d’Or at last years’ Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for prizes at the BAFTAs and Oscars. An unassuming mechanic is reminded of his time in an Iranian prison when he encounters a man who he suspects to be his sadistic jailhouse captor. Panicked, he rounds up a few of his fellow ex-prisoners to confirm the man’s identity.
LATE SHIFT– a dedicated nurse Floria navigates the relentless pace of her hospital’s understaffed surgical ward with humanity and warmth. As her overnight shift intensifies, she is pushed to the brink in a race against time. Switzerland’s submission for the Best International Feature Film category in this year’s Oscars.
UNDERLAND – the varied mysteries of the subterranean world are explored in this mesmerising documentary based on Robert Macfarlane’s best-selling non-fiction book of the same name. Beginning in the shallow soil beneath an old ash tree, the film travels alongside three intrepid ”astronauts of the underworld” into ancient sacred caves.
NOUVELLE VAGUE – Director Richard Linklater (Before Midnight, Blue Moon) pays homage to the French New Wave with this reconstruction of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic Breathless. Linklater follows Godard’s journey from film critic with Cahiers du Cinéma to revolutionary changes to filmmaking with François Truffaut.
A PRIVATE LIFE – Jodie Foster brings comic-timing, charisma and impeccable French to her César and Lumière Award-nominated performance in this playful mystery thriller. She stars alongside French director-actors Daniel Auteuil (Jean de Florette) and Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Foster plays a divorced American psychiatrist living in France who mounts a chaotic private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.