Keswick Film Festival

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We open this year with an amazing film that we couldn't get last season; nominated for Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for best Foreign Language Film and for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, we felt we had to give you a chance to see it.

The film follows a twelve-year-old boy, Zain, who is forced to wander the streets of Beirut trying to make a living where he can; he is one of the many thousands of unregistered children in Lebanon who have no access to schooling, medical care or travel documents. But this is no sad story or even a tear-jerker: Zain is fighting back. "As the film opens, [he] is in court, suing his neglectful parents for having given birth to him. The piercing child's eye view of his chaotic Beirut life, to which we flash back, suggests he has a case" - Kate Stables, Sight & Sound.

Filmed by award-winning Nadine Labaki using the real-life experiences of her non-professional cast, we feel a real anger at the plight of these kids (Using my first ever quote from the Bible, "And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be thrown down to Hades!"). The acting is superb - "Zain Al Rafeea (who was working as a delivery boy when cast) is simply excellent in the lead role. In a spiky, foul-mouthed performance, he gives Zain the wary, weary adult toughness of a youngster whose childhood has been stolen from him" - Kate Stables again.

An opener to enjoy, then, as a story, with acting to revel at; but also one to get us thinking...ready for what we hope is a great season ahead.

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Agnès Varda directed 55 films in her 60 years in the industry. She presented this documentary about herself at the Berlin Film Festival this year with film notes that said "I don't want to do press, I don't want to speak about my work. After Berlin, the film will be shown instead of me speaking!" This became very prophetic when she died a month later, aged 90.

We have shown several of her films here, including 'Cleo from 5 - 7', 'Faces, Places' and 'The Beaches of Agnes' and despite the programming team's normal dislike of documentaries, we felt you would want to see this one. It "takes the form of an illustrated lecture, it's designed as a swansong, a greatest hits showcase that revisits and consolidates her extensive body of work...Varda's tone remains generously intimate, friendly and unpretentious" - Simran Hans, Guardian.

Whether you have seen her films or not, this should be fascinating and even...educational!

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"Aniara: the interstellar equivalent of a luxury cruise ship, ferrying the wealthiest survivors of a dying Earth to a new home on Mars. When the Aniara gets knocked off course, a three-week voyage gets an updated ETA of 'TBA.' While the staff and the customers try to distract themselves with shopping, arcades and discos, as the years drag on, the ship's culture degrades..." - Noel Murray, LA Times.

Not so much a Sci-fi movie as a philosophical look at what humans might do when threatened with disaster (seems appropriate!), this looked too interesting to ignore. Just what would we do?

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Members' Choice

The relationship between Hong Kong and China is big news as we go to press; this film is based on the weird fact that there is a black market of iPhones going from Hong Kong to China, where they were probably made in the first place.

"Huang Yao is shy 16-year-old Peipei, who's frantically saving up for a holiday in Japan with her rich best friend Jo. Peipei commutes daily between her home in the Chinese city Shenzhen and school in Hong Kong. To make a little extra money she smuggles for a gang. It begins harmlessly enough, slipping a couple of iPhones wrapped in cling film into her school bag" - Cath Clarke, Guardian.

Newcomer Bai Xue is more interested in Peipei's character than the smuggling though, concentrating her cameras on the gradual change in Peipei and her relationships as she gets more involved. She lives with her mother in Shenzen, but her father lives in Hong Kong giving her access to school there. Both parents have new partners, so when she meets Sister Hua, who runs the gang of smugglers, she seems "a more appealing mother-figure...But her youthful naivety leaves her well out of her depth in both her relationships and the criminal underworld" - Tony Rayns, Sight & Sound.

That is not to say that Bai Xue's film is not dramatic; she keeps up the tension at the crossings, using hand-held cameras and changes of music to show Peipei's nervousness, but, as Cath Clarke goes on to say, "She has a light touch and a precise way of finding the emotion in scenes. It took her a decade after graduating film school to get this film made – it's worth the wait".

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A film about one woman's fight to get to the top; in this case literally as well as figuratively as promotion means cleaning the floor above in this Mexican hotel.

"For the time being, however, Eve has a world of grindingly hard work. She has to leave her young son behind in the care of a neighbour, and has to get up even earlier in the morning than everyone else because she is also going to adult education classes" - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian.

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Imagine if Harry Kane had been forced to miss the world cup because his wife would not let him go. Based on a true story, this is what happened to Afrooz in Iran, when her passport was refused because her husband had not given his permission.

"Beyond her love of the game itself and her commitment to her country's success, Afrooz's identity is at stake. She has played for 11 years and been married for just six; why is being a wife then assumed to define her? A film that urges its audience to do more than just feel sad and sign a couple of petitions, 'Permission' brims with an anger that goes beyond that of Afrooz. It's less interested in tragedy than in making demands, less in pity than in emphasising how much potential is squandered when women are treated in this way. It's full of hunger for justice" - Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film.