Belfast Film Festival – ten days of homegrown and international cinema (Thursday 31 October–Saturday 9 November)

Belfast Film Festival is back with a ten-day programme that celebrates films and filmmaking, from shorts to medium duration and feature-length cinema. While there’s nothing from Iceland being screened this year (that alone qualifies a film to jump to the top of a must-see list), there are lots of local and international screenings to choose from.

Thursday 31 October

Fréwaka | 19:00 at Cineworld (103 minutes) | Aislinn Clarke’s second feature opens the festival. It tells the story of care assistant Shoo, who rather than confront the death of her mother, takes a job looking after an elderly woman in a large and remote country house. As the two women slowly come to trust each other, events take a turn that mean they are forced to face up to the truth about each other’s lives. This Irish language horror was shot in Carlingford and Ravensdale, capturing an atmospheric Ireland steeped in history, folklore, secrets and religious iconography. [reviewed]

Universal Language | 20:30 at QFT (89 minutes) | If you can’t make it along to the opening screening, then Matthew Rankin’s offbeat absurdist comedy might be a good alternative. What if the Canadian city of Winnipeg, with its constant tussle between French and English speakers, instead adopted Farsi (Persian) as its official language! A satirical invitation to explore culture and community. [reviewed]

Sunday 3 November

Eephus | 12:45 at QFT (98 minutes) | With their pitch facing demolition, Carson Lund’s wistful movie depicts a small, shabby league of mostly middle-aged amateur players in a sleepy New England suburb, bantering and beercanning their way through the last game of the baseball season. A funny-sad-sweet tribute to the unifying power of community activity.

Dead Man’s Money | 18:00 at QFT (82 minutes) | A gala screening of writer-director Paul Kennedy’s latest production. Young Henry works in his uncle’s pub and when Old Henry begins a new relationship with The Widow, Young Henry hatches a plan to secure the inheritance. Matters spiral out his control when shady pub customer Gerry The Wheels gets involved. [reviewed]

Second Chance | 20:30 at QFT (104 minutes) | 25-year-old Nia retreats to her family’s Himalayan holiday home in the dead of winter, to recuperate following a traumatic breakup and a termination. Amidst the icy backdrop, Nia finds a warm and healing friendship with the housekeeper, an eight-year old, and a cute kitten. An intimately observed story from Indian writer-director Subhadra Mahajan. [reviewed]

Monday 4 November

Armand | 18:00 at Odeon (117 minutes) | A six-year-old boy accuses another of unthinkable abuse. The children are never seen. But the incident triggers grown-up bad behaviour from the boys’ parents and teachers, gathered for a classroom conference that spirals swiftly out of control. An unnerving, hot house, shape-shifting debut by Norwegian writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel.

Tuesday 5 November

La Cocina | 18:00 at Odeon (139 minutes) | Based on Arnold Wesker’s 1957 play, The Kitchen, Rooney Mara and Raul Briones Carmona star in this dynamic and beautifully photographed adaptation that follows the inner-workings of a large and busy restaurant kitchen off Times Square in New York City. One by one we meet the restaurant staff, build up a picture of the hierarchical boundaries of class, gender, ethnicity, language and culture, and the camaraderie of teamwork in a pressurised environment. Sometimes operatic and stylistically bold film written and directed by Mexican filmmaker, Alonso Ruizpalacios.

Rumours | 20:45 at Odeon (103 minutes) | A raucously hilarious skewering of the well-meaning ineffectiveness and gestural rhetoric of the G7 forum, imagined in this film as an international confederacy of dunces, headed by a stiff-backed German chancellor wickedly played by Cate Blanchett. As she and six other world leaders gather in a custom-built gazebo to discuss sundials, the Olympic Games and an unspecified ‘global crisis’ that none of them knows how to solve, a heavy fog sets in, zombie-like beings rise from the earth, and the fun really begins. A corrective to so much political satire that tends towards being clever rather than amusing. An absurd collaboration between veteran Canadian experimentalist Guy Maddin and fraternal directing duo Evan and Galen Johnson on the day of the US Presidential election! [reviewed]

Wednesday 6 November

The Unholylands | 18:00 at Odeon (102 minutes) | Two students living in the Holylands area of Belfast plan for one last house party. Their father finds out and intervenes, forbidding any more parties. Will they risk the family’s reputation and the chance that they’ll be cut off for good. Can they keep control over the event when their father’s assistant is sent monitor proceedings, A homegrown comedy with cameos from Nathan Carter, Tyrone McKenna and James Nesbitt.

The Spin | 20:30 at Odeon (92 minutes) | Two down on their luck record store owners from Omagh take a cross-country road trip to Cork to acquire a priceless record that could save their failing business and save them from eviction from their evil landlord, Sadie. Weaving together the landscape, music and cultural touchpoints of Omagh in this film written by Colin Broderick, directed by Michael Head and starring Tara Lynne O’Neill, Owen Colgan, Brenock O’Connor, Leah O’Rourke, Maura Higgins and Kimberly Wyatt.

Thursday 7 November

Paul & Paulette Take a Bath | 18:00 at Odeon (109 minutes) | A young Parisian who obsessively visits the sites of gruesome historical events and reenacts them is inside the mind of Marie Antoinette before the guillotine blade falls when she catches the eye of a young American photographer. An offbeat love-story brimming with romantic optimism and dark-tinged disillusion. Directed by Jethro Massey, starring Marie Benati and Jeremie Galiana.

Nightbitch | 20:30 at QFT (98 minutes) | Forget childless cat ladies. The real danger to the future of humankind is posed by dog-loving women with kids with Amy Adams juggling her love for her child with her frustration with an absent husband (Scoot McNariy) and her resentment at them both for the way her prior identity as an artist has been subsumed into that of a stay-at-home mom. Darkly humorous. [reviewed]

Saturday 9 November

King Baby | 13:15 at QFT (88 minutes) | A wooden queen comes between a king and a servant in this surreal, dark comedy from English filmmaking duo Kit and Arran. Set in a fictitious kingdom where the sun always shines and the population of two – the king and his servant – live in the open air of a ruined castle until a dream prompts the monarch to command his servant to carve a queen, upsetting the delicate balance of what has gone before. An imaginative exploration of class, hierarchy, gender and power. [reviewed]

Ritz Day – live podcast recording | 14:00 at The Black Box (75 minutes) | Hosts of The Wonder Cinema podcast, filmmaker Brian Henry Martin and cinema historian Dr Sam Manning celebrate the anniversary of the Ritz cinema in Fisherwick Place (later the site of the ABC and Cannon screens, before the building was reconstituted as a Jurys Inn hotel). Bring your memories of the Ritz. Enjoy a slice of birthday cake and marvel at Stuart Marshall’s new model of the cinema.

Housewife of the Year | 18:30 at QFT (77 minutes) | Ciaran Cassidy’s documentary tells the story of a largely forgotten Irish beauty pageant. Weaves together participants’ perspectives on the social norms of the day, the lack of contraception and choice, the Magdalen laundries, and of course the women’s everyday lives and the opportunity to escape the quotidian boredom by being in a pageant.

The Other Way Around | 20:30 at QFT (114 minutes) | Madrid couple Ale and Elex have decided to call it quits on their 14-year relationship. A loopy tale of two people who’ve fallen out of love but not out of like, who are determined to harpoon the ultimate relationship white whale: the pleasant break-up. Neil Sedaka know that Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. But what is doomed can also be noble in Jonás Trueba’s film starring Itsaso Arana and Vito Sanz. [reviewed]