Jodie Foster brings comic-timing, charisma and impeccable French to her César and Lumière Award-nominated performance in this playful mystery thriller.

She stars alongside French director-actors Daniel Auteuil (Jean de Florette) and Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly).  Foster plays a divorced American psychiatrist living in France who mounts a chaotic private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.

This chilling, effortlessly elegant satire, with some black humour, follows Man-soo, made unemployed after 25 years and desperate to land a new coveted role, develops a ruthless plan to dispatch his competition.  Award-winning South Korean director, Park Chan-wook, (The Handmaiden, Oldboy) mixes wickedly absurd and chaotic set pieces with hilarious wacky comedy.

Winner of the Audience Award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, Twinless is an unexpected, but enjoyable, combination of loneliness, bromance and dark comedy.  After the death of his identical twin brother, Roman, joins a support group for bereaved twins where he meets the enigmatic Dennis.  The result is an exhilarating wild ride, disarmingly funny and dramatic at the same time.

Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a once-renowned director, who offers stage actress Nora (Elle Fanning) a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film.  Winner of the Best International Feature Film in this year’s Oscars with six other nominations including Skarsgård and Fanning for their supporting roles; director Joachim Trier received the BAFTA Film Award for ‘Best Film Not in the English Language’.

The children of a once-famous artist hire a forger to complete some unfinished, long-ago abandoned canvasses, ‘The Christophers’, so that they will have an inheritance when he dies.  Sir Ian McKellan is in his element as the crotchety artist in this incisive chamber comedy of art and avarice, sparring with Michaela Coel as the cunning forger.  Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Magic Mike, Erin Brockovich) shows his amazing range in this intelligent and amusing film.

Brilliant adaptation of a Stephen King’s life-affirming novella about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles ‘Chuck’ Krantz.  Tom Hiddleston gives a captivating performance in the title role, portraying his life from death to childhood.  The film’s audience may be challenged by its unconventional structure but the lasting impression is thought-provoking and rewarding.

On the 29^th January 2024, workers at the Palestine Red Crescent Society receive an emergency call from a terrified 6-year-old trapped in a car under fire in Gaza.

This important film might be distressing to members of DFS. The voice used is the recording of Hind Rajab; the responses made by the actors in the call centre are the actual words used. The film was made with the permission of her mother. Kaouther Ben Hania, director of Four Daughters from our 66^th season, won the Silver Lion at 2025 Venice Film Festival for the film.

Ralph Fiennes gives an outstanding performance as Homer’s Odysseus, returning home from the Trojan war after a 20-year absence, racked by self-doubt and guilt.  Juliette Binoche, reuniting with Fiennes after The English Patient, is an equally powerful Penelope with a regal aura, held prisoner by suitors vying to be king whilst their son is facing death at their hands.

Prolific French writer-director François Ozon, known for Frantz, Swimming Pool, 8 Women, makes an acclaimed adaptation of Albert Camus’ classic 1942 novel.  In crisp black and white, Ozon captures the disaffection and tension of 1930s colonial Algeria through the eyes of an indifferent Frenchman shaken by the death of his mother and a fateful encounter on a beach.

Thirty years ago, the Rose of Nevada vanished at sea, along with its crew.  When it suddenly reappears in the harbour of a remote Cornish fishing village, it feels like an auspicious sign for the future of the struggling village, if only the ship sails again.  Mark Jenkins, the one-of-a-kind Cornish auteur, director of the break-through Bait and Enys Men, brings his distinct technique to a mysterious tale of time-travelling and identity.