2017 SHERBORNE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW 26th-29th OCTOBER John Buckley
T
he ninth annual Sherborne International Film Festival will take place in the Powell Theatre, Abbey Road, and will feature ten award-winning foreign films. The nine that are in a foreign language have English sub-titles. Tickets for all films are £6 and a ticket for the first night reception plus the film is £10. A season ticket for the Festival is £40. All are available from the Tourist Information Centre on Digby Road. Thursday 26th October
The festival opens with a first-night reception at Vida Comida at 6.15pm, followed at 7.30pm by The Salesman (Iran), which won the 2017 Oscar for best foreign-language film. A couple are forced to flee their crumbling apartment complex and move to a new home, where a shocking and violent incident throws their life into turmoil. Friday 27th October
The 2pm screening on Friday is Tanna. Filmed on the Polynesian island of Vanuatu and based on true events, it is an exotic story of forbidden love, offering a lyrical blend of earthly reasoning with spiritual forces. Shot against the majestic backdrop of Ethiopia’s southern mountains, the second film of the day is Lamb. A young Ethiopian boy is sent to live among distant relatives after his mother’s death. When his uncle decides the boy’s beloved sheep must be sacrificed for the next religious feast, he will do anything to save the animal. A Separation, the final film of the day, is a multiaward-winning and critically acclaimed Iranian drama. It features a married couple faced with a difficult decision – either to improve the life of their child by moving to another country, or stay in Iran and look after a parent with Alzheimer’s disease. Saturday 28th October
Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the early-afternoon film. Defiant city kid Ricky gets a fresh start in the New Zealand countryside with a new foster family. When 18 | Sherborne Times | October 2017
tragedy strikes, threatening to ship Ricky to another home, he and his foster uncle go on the run. A national manhunt and a rollercoaster of adventures ensue. Frantz follows, set in the aftermath of WWI. A young German, who grieves the death of her fiancé in France, meets a mysterious Frenchman, who visits the fiancé’s grave to lay flowers. A complex relationship develops. The evening film is Neruda. An inspector hunts down a Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet, who became a fugitive in his home country in the late 1940s for joining the communist party. The film is a cat-and-mouse game between the two, leading them from the streets of Santiago to the snowy mountains of the Andes. Sunday 29th October
Sunday opens with The Crow’s Egg, a delightful comedy from India. Two carefree slum boys are consumed by their desire to taste a pizza, when a pizza parlour opens on their old playground. Realising that a pizza costs more than their family’s monthly income, they plan ways to earn more money and inadvertently set in motion an adventure involving the entire city. Second film of the day is Julieta. Directed by the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, it is described by one critic as “a sumptuous and heartbreaking study of the viral nature of guilt, the mystery of memory and the often unendurable power of love.” The final film is the Oscar-nominated Palestinian film Omar. Set in the occupied territories, it tells the story of Omar, a charismatic Palestinian baker who routinely climbs over the separation wall to meet up with his girl, Nadja. By night he is either a freedom fighter or a terrorist – you decide. The Sherborne International Film Festival is organised by the Rotary Club of Sherborne Castles and is sponsored by 4 Shires Asset Management, for the benefit of the local community and in aid of two Rotary International charities. shiff.org.uk