World Cinema Sunday (17/4)        23:45   Film4     Mandibles (2020). Two Provence beachbums, Jean Gab & Manu (above), inexplicably discover a giant fly in the boot of their stolen Mercedes. Unfazed, they set about doing what anyone would do – training the creature as a live drone to execute bank robberies and make… [continues]

World Cinema Sunday (3/4)           00:35    BBC2   Amundsen (2019). We in Britain hear a lot about Scott’s failed expedition to the South Pole [especially in Cheltenham] but very little about Amundsen’s successful one. What does that say about us? This is Espen Sandberg’s film (in Norwegian, with English subs) about the latter, but also… [continues]

World Cinema Saturday (26/3)         22:00   BBC4   Photograph (2019). An appealing Hindi romcom from Ritesh Batra, who directed The Lunchbox. A young man, scraping a living as a street photographer in Mumbai, is under pressure from his grandmother to find a bride. So he persuades a stranger to pose as his fiancée. Delightful,… [continues]

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]

World Cinema Saturday (15/1)       22:00     BBC2                  Yuli (2018). Yuli (BBC2, 22.00, Sat 15th) is billed as a biopic of the Cuban ballet dancer Carlos Acosta, but as a film it is much more than that. It is directed by the renowned Spanish… [continues]

World Cinema Sunday (9/1)         00:10   BBC2    After the Storm (2016). Tremendous Hirokazu Koreeda family drama in which a dodgy private detective (Hiroshi Abe) tries to reconnect with his family after the death of his father. Weather plays a part. Subtle and moving. Koreeda is a master. Japanese with English subtitles. Monday… [continues]

World Cinema Wednesday (5/1)    01:50   Film4   Raw (2016). This is the Julia Ducournau shocker about a vegetarian veterinary student who is introduced to a decadent subculture and eats raw meat for the first time. Soon she can’t get enough. Sexy, violent, bloody, extreme. In French with English subtitles. Go for it. Stephen Ilott’s Picks… [continues]