Sometimes the simplest stories are the most moving. Ruben, a lonely middle-aged truck driver, hauls lumber from Paraguay to Buenos Aires. As a favour he agrees to give a lift to Jacinta who, to his dismay, brings along her baby. From this simple premise first-time director Pablo Giorgelli builds a little masterpiece of understated emotion with a conclusion which will warm the coldest of hearts.

A huge success in South America, Las Acacias was also a big hit at the London Film Festival.

The manager of a Central American oilfield offers big money to four lorry drivers who will take nitro-glycerine into the jungle to put out an oil-well fire. The incentive of money and the greed this causes creates results which are as black a vision of human infidelity as is possible to imagine.  Cliff-edge tension wracks the nerves but never obscures the fact that the men in contest with each other will crack up and die in a series of craftily managed shocking bad moments.

Hailed by many critics as one of the greatest films of all time, it is the simple story of a naïve young woman who marries a barge captain, shares their home with an old eccentric and falls out and falls in love again.  However the aesthetic appeal lies in the tension between the surface realism, the delicate surrealism of the landscape and a wonderful dream sequence when the captain tries to see the face of his true love in the water. He attempts to recreate this by dunking his head in a bucket, and failing that, jumping into the river.

A contemporary fable – set in Yorkshire – about 13 year old Arbor (Conner Chapman) and his best friend Swifty (Shaun Thomas).  Excluded from school and outsiders in their own neighbourhood, the two boys meet Kitten (Sean Gilder), a local scrapdealer – the “Selfish Giant”.  They begin collecting scrap metal for him using a horse and cart.  Swifty has a natural gift with horses while Arbor emulates Kitten – keen to impress him and make some money.  Tensions build, leading to a tragic event, which transforms them all.

Journalist Jep Gambardella has charmed and seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades. Since the legendary success of his one and only novel, he has been a permanent fixture in the city’s literary and social circles but, when his sixty-fifth birthday coincides with a shock from the past, Jep finds himself unexpectedly taking stock of his life, turning his cutting wit on himself and his contemporaries, and looking past the extravagant nightclubs, parties and cafés to find Rome in all its glory: a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisite beauty.

Featuring an eclectic soundtrack which ranges from Arvo Pärt to Annie Lennox.

The longest-running film in Indian history, it has been showing continuously at the Maratha Mandir Theatre since its release in 1995.  Shot in India, London and Switzerland, the plot revolves around Raj and Simran, two young non-resident Indians, who fall in love during a vacation through Europe with their friends. Raj tries to win over Simran’s family so the couple can marry, but Simran’s father has long since promised her hand to his friend’s son.  Awash with Bollywood song and dance routines (and some frankly hammy acting) it became the highest grossing Bollywood film in 1995 and one of the most successful films of all time in India. It also won the National Film Award for Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment.

Fifteen-year-old Oliver Tate has two big ambitions: to save his parents’ marriage via carefully plotted intervention and to lose his virginity before his next birthday.  Worried that his mum is having an affair with New Age weirdo Graham, Oliver monitors his parents’ sex life by charting the dimmer switch in their bedroom.  He also forges suggestive love letters from his mum to dad.  Meanwhile, Oliver attempts to woo his classmate, Jordana, a self-professed pyromaniac who supervises his journal writing – especially the bits about her.  When necessary, she orders him to cross things out.

Alina and Voichita are two young women in their mid-twenties.  Old friends who grew up together in an orphanage, they reunite over a weekend.  Alina has come back to Romania from Germany and wants Voichita to return with her; but Voichita is reluctant to leave the monastery where she lives with a dozen other women and a lone priest, believing she’s found a cure for crippling loneliness … God.  Mungiu embeds us in the world of her frugal, barren monastery over a few days, with Alina’s presence forcing her to confront her beliefs.  Meanwhile, her colleagues react with increasing hostility to the threat Alina poses to their way of life.

The first feature film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and the first feature-length film made by a female Saudi director in a country where cinemas are banned and women cannot drive or vote. This is the story of a young girl living in a suburb of Riyadh determined to raise enough money to buy a bicycle in a society that sees bicycles as dangerous to a girl’s virtue.  Writer / director Haifaa al-Mansour has broken many barriers with this film.

Kieslowski’s film – the first of three inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution – is an arresting study of notions of individual freedom in the modern world.  Failing to find the courage to commit suicide after the death of her husband and daughter in a car crash, Julie (Binoche) decides to build a new, anonymous and wholly independent life.  Leaving her country mansion for a Paris apartment, she finds that freedom is not as easy to achieve as she had hoped.