THE LAST SHOWGIRL
20 March
When the glittering Las Vegas revue she has headlined for decades announces it will soon close, a glamorous showgirl must reconcile with the decisions she’s made and the community she has built as she plans her next act. The Last Showgirl, a poignant film of resilience, rhinestones and feathers, stars Pamela Anderson as Shelly, a glamorous showgirl who must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run. Directed by Gia Coppola.
HARD TRUTHS
13 March
Legendary filmmaker Mike Leigh returns with a fierce, compassionate, and often darkly humorous study of family. Reunited with Leigh for the first time since the multiple Oscar-nominated Secrets and Lies, the astonishing Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays Pansy, a woman wracked by fear, tormented by afflictions, and prone to raging tirades against her husband, son, and anyone who looks her way. Meanwhile, her easy-going younger sister, played by Michele Austin (Another Year), is a single mother with a life as different from Pansy’s as their clashing temperaments – brimming with communal warmth from her salon clients and daughters alike.
FIREBRAND
13 March
In blood-soaked Tudor England, Katherine Parr, the sixth and last wife of King Henry VIII, is named Regent while tyrant Henry is fighting overseas. Katherine has done everything she can to push for a new future based on her radical Protestant beliefs. When an increasingly ailing and paranoid king returns, he turns his fury on the radicals, charging Katherine’s childhood friend with treason and burning her at the stake. Horrified and grieving, but forced to deny it, Katherine finds herself fighting for her own survival. Conspiracy reverberates through the palace.
THE RETURN
27 March
After 20 years away, Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognisable. The king finds much has changed since he left to fight in the Trojan War. His beloved wife, Penelope (Juliette Binoche), is a prisoner in her own home and hounded to choose a new husband. Their son faces death at the hands of suitors who see him as an obstacle in their pursuit of Penelope and the kingdom. Odysseus is no longer the mighty warrior his people remember, but he must face his past to save his family.
QUEER
3 April
Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, and Oscar-nominee Lesley Manville lead this William S Burroughs adaptation from director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name). In 1950s Mexico City, William Lee (Craig), an American expat in his late 40s, leads a solitary life amidst a small American community. However, the arrival in town of Eugene Allerton (Starkey), a young student, stirs William into finally establishing a meaningful connection with someone.
