World Cinema Saturday (12/3)       21:00    BBC4  Pain and Glory (2019). Pedro Almodóvar’s most heartfelt and near-autobiographical film, with Antonio Banderas as a tortured gay dramatist and Penelope Cruz as his mother (in flashback). A far cry from the Spaniard’s earlier essays in shock and awe and all the better for it. I… [continues]

World Cinema Monday (7/3)         23:15   BBC2      The Man with the Iron Heart (2017). Interesting dramatisation of one of the more extraordinary episodes of the Second World War, in which the Czech Resistance in London sent a couple of assassins to Prague to bump off Reinhard Heydrich, who did more to… [continues]

World Cinema Sunday (27/2)           01:00     Film4                Border (2018) You are unlikely to see anything like this in the next week.  Directed by Ali Abbasi and written by him, Isabella Eklof and John Ajvide Lindqvist (Let The Right One In) it features a breathtaking … [continues]

World Cinema Sunday (20/2)         21:00   Great Movies Action    Das Boot (1981)  (also Thursday 16:20). Wolfgang Peterson’s 1981 Das Boot (The Boat) focuses as much on the monotony and claustrophobia of military submarine life as it does on the combat and excitement. The result is a deep, layered portrait of sub-aquatic warfare… [continues]

World Cinema Monday (14/2)           01:30   Film4    Rafiki (2018). Two girls in Nairobi, from very different backgrounds, are drawn together despite the disapproval of their community. A well-liked film by Kenyan director Kwanuri Kahiu. Colourful, youthful and mostly in English. Wednesday (16/2)     01:10   Film4    The… [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (5/2)      21:00    BBC4    Persian Lessons (2020). I find myself rather intrigued by this. It’s a Holocaust film, in German, about a young German Jew who pretends to be half-Persian to avoid being exterminated. He even gives Farsi lessons to the camp commandant, despite knowing no Farsi: the language… [continues]

World Cinema Monday (31/1)      01:55     Film4   Heal the Living (2016). This really looks rather good. A boy in a coma, a woman with a weak heart, doctors and nurses, organ donation. A thoughtful piece about illness and health, which could not be more topical. Directed by Katell Quillévéré, who made the underrated… [continues]