Best Film Screenings in the North (23-30 Sep)

The best film events happening in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds this week, including early Trouble Every Day at Liverpool Small Cinema and the early films of Ira Sachs at HOME

Feature by Jamie Dunn | 23 Sep 2016

The Skinny presents: Trouble Every Day

With Trouble Every Day, Claire Denis immerses us in an atmosphere engorged with desire and dread. Essentially a twisted vampire love story, it’s a deeply original take on the genre, although Denis has cited many influences, from the photographs of Jeff Wall to childhood stories about monsters to films ranging from Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People, Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction and Brian de Palma’s Dressed to Kill.

At its premiere at Cannes, in 2001, Denis’s film was slammed by critics and branded a gratuitous horror – a misconception that’s still held till this day. They couldn’t have got it more wrong. “It's actually a love story,” Denis told her naysayers at the film’s Cannes press conference. "It's about how close the kiss is to the bite. I think every mother wants to eat her baby with love. We just took this on to a new frontier."

This is a screening presented by The Skinny as part of Scalarama's Directed by Women strand – head down early to meet the team!

Liverpool Small Cinema, 28 Sep, 7.30pmjoin the Facebook event page

Forty Shades of Blue & Keep the Lights On

It’s taken the general public a while to cotton on to the talents of New York filmmaker Ira Sachs, but with the success of his last two features, Love is Strange and Little Men (released this week), he’s now justly recognised as one of the most interesting voices in American indie cinema. HOME screens two of his earlier films this week.

Forty Shades of Blue centres on the relationship between a young Russian woman and the aging and neglectful rock star (Rip Torn) she moves in with after they have a child together, which turns into a strange triangle when the rock star’s adult son comes home to visit. Keep the Lights On, meanwhile, is concerned with a doomed love affair between a Swedish filmmaker (Thure Lindhardt) living in New York and his crack-addicted lawyer boyfriend (Zachary Booth) with one foot in the closet.

Forty Shades of Blue, HOME, Manchester, 23 Sep, 6.20pm  / Keep the Light On, HOME, 25 Sep, 1pm

I, Daniel Blake preview + Ken Loach Q&A

The latest from Ken Loach may be his last, although he said that about his previous film too. Reports are, however, that he’s not leaving the fray gently; we hear this Palme d’Or winner is a barnstormer. The film follows a middle-age carpenter who’s just had a heart attack and a young mother as they struggle with the UK’s benefit system, which Loach shows to be unfit for purpose. Our reviewer, Patrick Gamble, called the film “a timely example of protest filmmaking that speaks to audiences’ hearts.”

Loach and his regular screenwriter, Paul Laverty, will be at these Liverpool screenings and they’re sure to be given a rousing reception.

FACT, Liverpool, 24 Sep, 5pm & 6pm

Closet Monster

This superb coming-of-age film was the standout of this year’s LGBT festival POUTfest. It follows Oscar, a talented young FX artist struggling to come out as gay, the chief obstacles being his casually homophobic father and the horrific memory of a hate crime he witnessed when he was a young boy. The joy of Stephen Dunn’s film is that we’re let in on Oscar’s rich imagination, which includes conversations with his pet hamster Buffy (delightfully voiced by Isabella Rossellini).

FACT, Liverpool, 28 Sep, 6.30pm

In the Mood for Love (35mm) + panel discussion

One of the most sizzling love stories ever put on screen, Wong Kar-wai and regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle immerse us in the not quite love affair between two cuckolded next-door neighbours (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung). The film is essentially a chamber piece, with a narrative that’s paired to the bone, but Wong creates an intimate grandeur by luxuriating in scenes, letting beautiful vignettes of Leung and Cheung’s charged interactions repeat in silky slow motion, and there’s a real sense of sadness. This is a film that must be seen on the big screen.

Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds, 24 Sep, 2.30pm

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