Paul MacDonald-Taylor, Eden Court’s Head of Film + Visual Art, introduces our new cinema programme for June.
As the releases ramp up to the summer blockbuster season, it’s with delight that my favourite film of the year so far will be screened this month, an antidote to the Hollywood season to come. The Eight Mountains is the story of a lifelong friendship between Pietro, a city boy, and Bruno, the last child of a forgotten mountain village. Set in Valle d’Acosta in the Western Alps, and amongst the mountains of Nepal, The Eight Mountains scales dramatic heights leaving you with a sense of awe at both the landscapes and the power of friendship. It is a genuine wonder.
Leading up to that is the return - by popular demand - of the film that won the Audience Award at last year’s Inverness Film Festival - Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom. This time it’s the mountains of Bhutan that serves as the backdrop of a young teacher sent to the middle of nowhere to work the summer at a tiny school. June is indeed a great month for films not in English – Tunisia’s Under the Fig Trees is a sun-drenched naturalistic drama about a group of young women and men picking figs as we listen to their stories and lives unfolding. From France comes Full Time, which also screened at IFF, one of the most nail-biting films I’ve seen in years - as a single mother tries to get to work, a job interview and watch her children all during a Paris transport strike. I promise you will only use the edge of your seat. For its 30th anniversary, we will also have some special screenings of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours Trilogy, possibly the best European films of the 1990s.
Amongst that we also have some of the most anticipated films of the year so far. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret is based on the best-selling novel by Judy Blume. Greatest Days is the sunny Take That musical set in Greece.
There’s even more sunshine on screen from Wes Anderson in his new film Asteroid City. Most exciting of all is the last instalment in the greatest adventure story in the history of cinema as Harrison Ford dons the fedora and whip for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (also starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge, whose National Theatre show Fleabag is re-released in cinemas this month).
June is shaping up to be a corker, let’s hope the weather is half as good.
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