In the Belier family, everyone is deaf, except dutiful sixteen-year-old Paula who acts as an indispensable interpreter for her parents and younger brother, especially in the running of the family dairy farm. While her father has decided to run for mayor, spurred on by her vivacious but over-involved mother, Paula’s attention is elsewhere. After impulsively joining the school choir, her music teacher discovers her natural talent for singing and encourages her to travel to Paris to develop her singing voice. This moving and humorous family drama, featuring Louane Emera as Paula (first discovered in the French edition of The Voice), was a word-of-mouth phenomenon across Europe, becoming France’s most popular film of 2015.
Cert 12A – France 2014
Director: Eric Lartigau – Running time: 106 minutes – Language: English subtitles
Cast: Karin Viard, François Damiens, Louane Emera
Adapted from the bestselling book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Adam McKay’s film is a comedic take on the international banking collapse of 2008. Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling are a group of unorthodox investment bankers who recognise that the boom years of finance are built on the shakiest of foundations and seek to make their fortunes from the crash that no one else appears to foresee. It’s funny because it’s true, and it’s tragic and frightening for the same reason.
Suffragette is an historical drama about the women who were willing to lose everything in their fight for equality in early-20th-century Britain. The story centres around Maud (played by Carey Mulligan), a working wife and mother whose life is forever changed when she is secretly recruited to join the U.K.’s growing suffragette movement.
Set on a remote South Pacific island, covered by rain forest and dominated by an active volcano, this is a heartfelt story of a forbidden love affair, a sister’s loyalty and the struggle between traditional culture and the new ways. The film’s familiar plot, a Romeo and Juliet affair with the star-crossed lovers of rival tribes, is based on a true story and is beautifully enacted by people of the Yakel tribe of Vanuatu.
Gummi and Kiddi are estranged brothers raising their prized ancestral sheep stock in an isolated Icelandic valley. When the authorities want to cull their flocks to halt the spread of a lethal disease, the brothers are forced to come together to save the special breed passed down for generations – and their own way of life – from extinction. Rams was winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Brooklyn tells the moving story of Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), a young Irish immigrant navigating her way through 1950s Brooklyn. The novelty of her new life and love is soon disrupted by events at home and Eilis must choose between two countries and the lives and men that exist within both. Sensitively adapted by Nick Hornby from Colm Toibin’s bestselling novel, Brooklyn exudes a magnificence using sumptuous cinematography that at once feels both old and new.
