Keswick Film Festival

Synopsis

Cancelled due to Coronavirus closure

Members' Choice

What a great way to finish our year! The opener at Venice Festival, directed by one of Keswicks favourites Hirokazu Koreeda ("Koreeda has proved himself to be a master of the slow-build human drama, a conjurer of small details that bed down and take root until his pictures burst into flower like a late cherry blossom" - Xan Brooks, Guardian) trying out his first film outside Japan; starring Catherine Deneuve ("[she] comes heaving through every scene like some formidable gunship, wreathed in cigarette smoke, running on scotch and all but scattering the supporting cast") and Juliette Binoche (a second helping from her this season) with Ethan Hawke thrown in for good measure. Wow!

Deneuve plays Fabienne, an aging diva (good casting there then) who has just written an autobiography called 'The Truth', though there appears to be little truth in it that her daughter Lumir can discover. When Fabienne takes on a mother role in a film which also rings bells for Lumir, we have the plot for a disturbed family - just the job for Koreeda!

"If Koreeda's 'Shoplifters' was about discarded people coming together to form a family, perhaps 'The Truth' is the opposite, where flesh-and-blood relations have to figure out how to forgive, or at least to understand, each other. Even working in another language and on another continent, he once again captures the intricacies of the human condition" -Alonso Duralde, The Wrap.

We hope you have enjoyed our 21st year and look forward to seeing you again in September. Have a great summer!