As some of you will no doubt remember… 

… we used to publish a monthly programme of films and events. The day of said publication’s arrival in the building was often a day of considerable excitement around the place, with customers often actively scrapping in the foyer over the last available copy of our limited advance supply. That’s a lie, there was no fighting (that we ever noticed), though there are (perhaps apocryphal) tales of customers wanting a copy swimming against the human tide of a fire alarm evacuation in order to get their hands on one! For now at least, a number of reasons dictate we produce our schedule of events on a shorter timescale and rely primarily on digital communications to spread the word and we sincerely hope that’s working well for you. Otherwise, it’s business as usual at Filmhouse! 

Since many of our patrons have only recently returned to the cinema since pandemic restrictions were lifted, we’ve had quite a few requests to bring back some the films that came out during the time they’ve been away, and as our aim is to please and to be, performatively, as clear as we possibly can be as to how happy we are they have returned, this year’s undeniable ‘arthouse’ hit The Worst Person in the World and national treasure Jim Broadbent in The Duke make welcome returns.  

The hippest film production company in the US, A24, have taken it upon themselves to self-distribute one of the their own creations (normally a UK distributor would be taken on to release it here), one that has recently taken US audiences by storm – and one in which Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, a laundry-owning Chinese immigrant to the US who discovers she holds the key to saving the Universe, through the various lives she is living in the multiverse – directing duo ‘The Daniels’’ Everything Everywhere All At Once, the title of which does a better job at explaining the manic, multiverse-hopping mayhem that ensues more than any short synopsis could! 

Speaking of TWPITW, that film’s scriptwriter, Eskil Vogt, has made a darned good directorial debut, the supernatural thriller à la Village of the Damned, The Innocents, in which a group of children explore their newly discovered telekinetic powers; and also speaking of exceptional debuts and children, Irish director Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl is a revelation, and if in this column I was to have a section called AND IF YOU ONLY SEE ONE FILM THIS MONTH, this is the film that would be listed there. If older films restored is your bag, they don’t get too much older than Carl Theodor Dreyer’s weird, wonderful, ground-breaking Vampyr in this the year of its 90th anniversary, and Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop might be a staple entry on ITV4’s schedules but, really, the cinema is the place you really want to watch it. 

And after two postponed years, our Italian Film Festival returns with a strong line-up, opening with Michelangelo Frammartino’s wonderful follow up to Le Quattro Volte, Il Buco (The Hole), which recreates an expedition in the Italian south of a team of young speleologists in the early 60s, and also featuring the visually stunning, hugely enjoyable and very-true-to-the-source-material Diabolik, the misadventures of the amoral gentleman-thief of 60s comic book, and feature film (Danger: Diabolik, 1968), fame.