Jodie Foster Retrospective

The first themed strand of KFF26 is our Jodie Foster Retrospective.

This leading American performer and filmmaker started her career as a child actor before establishing herself in diverse adult roles, and becoming a film director of note. She has received several accolades including two Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award. Foster also was awarded with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2013 and the Honorary Palme d'Or in 2021.

We could have filled an entire Festival with films in which Foster has appeared! Out of over 48 feature films we have chosen two from early in her career – both from 1976 but starkly contrasting in content and nature – Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, alongside her most recent feature film A Private Life.

First Films Announced For The 22nd Keswick Film Festival

This March we are fortunate that many of our favourite directors have new releases that we can screen. How do the latest films from Clio Barnard, Jacques Audiard, François Ozon, Joanna Hogg and Julia Ducournau sound as a line up?

You can find all the films announced so far on our films page.

Opening Night Films

Our opening night is only a week away. We'll be starting with  Mike Tweddle’s short film The Curator starring none other than Derek Griffiths “The Curator leads a lonely life. His whole life’s work has been art and his gallery. But his life is at a crossroads and his facade of knowledge, knowing and complacency is turned upside down following the most innocent of encounters. Can he cast aside all that he has believed in and see the world from anew?”

Anyone who saw White House Farm on TV will relish seeing Mark Addy again in The Runaways, alongside Tara Fitzgerald and rising star, Molly Windsor. It's the story of three children (and two donkeys) crossing the North York moors to find their estranged mother and avoid 'The Social Services'. We are thrilled that writer-director Richard Heap will be joining us to introduce the film and hold a Q&A after the screening.

The Warmer Climes of Keswick Film Festival

The Festival is almost here and as Storm Dennis batters us, we can think about those warm dry hours ahead as KFF takes us across the world to some warmer climes – the heat of India in Tumbbad and The Run; the humidity of the Philippines in The Kingmaker or Australia with The Nightingale and the dry heat of the middle east in For Sama and Derrière les Fronts. It was pretty hot by the look of it when Dance of the Seven Veils was filmed in Keswick all those years ago. OK, so it rains during Parasite but we can live with that!

The best of the best at the Fest

Sight & Sound magazine has just published its 50 best films of 2019. Favourites from this year’s Festival that made it into the list were In Fabric, Border and Happy as Lazzaro.

That should make KFF 2019 a very hard act to follow but there are more gems from the list waiting for you in the 2020 programme – The Farewell, Monos, For Sama, Midsommar, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Parasite and the poll-topping The Souvenir are all lined up, along with a healthy sprinkling of pre-releases that will doubtlessly make their way onto Sight & Sounds' list for 2020.

First Films Announced For 2020 Festival

The countdown has begun for the 21st Keswick Film Festival. It is only about 100 days until the Film Festival starts on 27th February – by which time the nights will be drawing out again and the snowdrops will be out in force.

Not only that but the Alhambra is looking fantastic after its refurbishment, ready to screen such delights as Parasite, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Monos, Judy and Punch, The Kingmaker and many more. The screens at the Theatre by the Lake and Rheged will be busy too – keep checking our website, Twitter and Facebook for further information on the programme.

Passes are on sale now from the Theatre by the Lake and individual tickets from 3rd January.

Sorry To Bother You and more films

We've announce some more films for our 20th Festival. I can guarantee that you will be still talking about Border days after seeing it. From the writer of the novel Let the Right One In, Border is the tale of a Swedish Customs Officer with the ability to sense people's emotions – a smuggler's nightmare. As she discovers where this peculiar gift comes from, we move into magical territory.

Staying in the Nordic countries, Arctic is a gripping Icelandic thriller with Mads Mikkelsen and from Demark we have The Guilty, a taut, gripping drama set within the confines of a police call centre.

On that theme, if the next thing you hear about KFF is by phone, you will know that we will have contracted out our marketing to the company in Sorry to Bother You, a biting American satire on race, resistance, capitalism – and telemarketing.

Details of the rest of the festival programme will come to you – by whatever means – in the days to come.

Early Bird Passes, with a saving of £5, are now available from the Theatre By The Lake.

Sorry to have bothered you!

Ian

Early Bird Passes Now Available

Passes are now available for the 2019 Festival at a special early bird rate. This £5 off offer expires on 3rd January, making a festival pass the ideal Christmas present.

Our opening and closing films cannot be more different. We are going to kick off with Jellyfish, a award-winning British movie set in the deep south of England and close with Green Book, a gem of a film from Peter Farrelly, set in the American South. In between those two films we travel all parts of the compass from arid war zones to arctic ice. A particular highlight will be Carl Hunter’s first feature Sometimes Always Never, written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and starring Bill Nighy, Jenny Agutter, Alice Lowe and Sam Riley.

Further details of the film programme will follow very soon and we look forward to seeing you in Keswick in February.

More Films From Around The World

Where do you belong? Where do your loyalties lie? Our films from the KFF 2018 programme explore those themes from places as far apart as the USA, Iceland, Scandinavia and Sicily and closer to home, northern France.

The Rider, an authentic and heart-rending film, is the story of Brady, a rodeo rider who just emerged from a coma and told he should not ride again. Horses are his life however and where does he go now? Decisions need to be made as to where Brady belongs.

Coming of age drama Heartstone asks the same sort of questions. A remote fishing village in Iceland. Teenage boys Thor and Christian experience a turbulent summer as one tries to win the heart of a girl while the other discovers new feelings toward his best friend.

In Sami Blood a 14-year-old girl belonging to the Sami people, a Scandinavian ethnic minority, is subjected to racism and eugenic scrutiny in the 1930s when she is removed from her family and sent to a state-run school that aims to re-educate her into Swedish culture. To which culture does she or should she belong?

Family pressures weigh heavily on Jeanne in A Woman’s Life, a tale of tormented love embedded in the restrictive social and moral codes of marriage and family in 19th century Normandy.

Then we have Sicilian Ghost Story, based on the true story of the kidnapping of a 12-year-old boy, held by the Mafia for 779 days in the hopes of silencing his informant father, the film focuses on Luna, a classmate with a crush, who refuses to sweep his disappearance under the rug and challenges the code of silence that prevails amongst the adults.

The Far East Comes to Keswick

No film festival would be complete without a samurai sword epic and Blade of the Immortal, Takashi Miike’s 100th film, fits the bill perfectly. Based on a manga series it stars Takuya Kimura as Manji, a Shogunate era samurai, granted by a witch the dubious gift of eternal life. After meeting a young girl, orphaned by a group of master swordsmen, Manji wreaks vengeance on them through a series of stylised showdowns – brilliantly choreographed, outlandishly violent and sometimes brutally comic to boot. 

"Blade goes for the carotid while offering a classic look and a comic-book story. It's part Kurosawa, part 'X-Men', part 'Ichi the Killer'" - Washington Post

At the other extreme of Japanese cinema we have The Third Murder from KFF favourite Hirokazu Kore-eda. Maasharu Fukuyama (Like Father, Like Son) plays a famous defence attorney named Shigemori, who willingly takes the tough case of Misumi ,a man who murdered his boss. We know he did it. He’s confessed to doing it. There’s little mystery there. But the reason why he did it is important to his sentence.

"The Third Murder offers the satisfactions of a well-constructed suspense story, with twists that come from the characters of its principals, not plot contrivances" - Japan Times

Continuing our far eastern journey, we come to Mountains May Depart from China and directed by by Jia Zhangke. Set in 1999, 2014 and 2025, Mountains May Depart revolves mostly around its everyday heroine, Tao (Zhao Tao, Jia's muse on and offscreen), a woman caught somewhere between the dream and the reality of modern China.

"Jia’s languid style and exquisite framing complement his understated approach to the material, which opts for depth over melodrama. ...Mountains ... is grounded in Zhao’s delicate performance, a character caught between progress and tradition, her life running in place, each day blending into the next.” - San Francisco Chronicle