Leeds Film Festival 2019 selection
Now in its 33rd year, the Leeds International Film Festival is one of the UK’s premiere platforms for new and world cinema.
Taking place November 6th – 21st at various venues around the city, with festival strands including all-day and all-night horror marathons, animation and short films.
See our selection of 6 films to see at this year’s festival.
From Robert Eggers, the filmmaker behind the standout modern horror The Witch, comes this hallucinatory tale of two lighthouse keepers on a remote and mysterious island in the 1890s.
As he arrives to work under lighthouse keeper Tom Wake (Willem Dafoe), Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) quickly finds his time ahead will be tending to the more demeaning and punishing tasks of the building.
As the dynamic between the two becomes increasingly tense, Ephraim learns of the mysterious events which lead to him taking the place of Tom’s former assistant, as paranoia begins to creep in.
With extraordinary performances from Dafoe and Pattinson, The Lighthouse is a hypnotic and truly original piece of cinema.
Marriage Story is a film about breaking up, while trying to keep it together.
A reflection of something we already know and recognise, perhaps have even felt and experienced personally, but seldom have the capacity to express or represent in a genuine or meaningful way.
See our review from the 2019 BFI Film Festival >here<.
The latest feature from renowned documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog, explores the ‘rent-a-relative’ service, in this Tokyo-set meditation on contemporary alienation.
With the real-life CEO of Family Romance, LLC – a company that rents out human surrogates for their clients’ every need – Herzog’s film questions the nature of social conventions, how we deal with our own existence and our relationships with others in this fascinating film.
From director Taika Watiti, who has been steadily amassing fans with What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnarok, comes an anti-hate satire.
Jojo is a young German boy living through the final days of World War II, whose world view is turned upside down when he discovers his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl in their attic.
Aided only by his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (played by Taika Waititi), Jojo must confront his blind nationalism and go to war with his own conscience.
14-year-old Eun-hee roams the neighbourhood searching for meaning in life – in friendships, in shoplifting, in karaoke bars and romances with both girls and boys alike.
With her parents always working late or fighting, it feel like she’s invisible. But as Eun-hee navigates adolescence, she begins to develop her own philosophy towards life.
Director Bora Kim captures the intimate growing pains of youth, in an absorbing coming-of-age drama about a dysfunctional Seoul family circa 1994.
After a personal tragedy, Elin and Tobias’s marriage isn’t what it used to be, so they try to fix things by spending time together outdoors in the hope of salvaging their fractured relationship. But when they discover they are not alone in the forest, soon Elin and Tobias find themselves trapped in a nightmarish cycle of horrific events from which there appears to be no escape.
Combining live action and animation, director Johannes Nyholm’s dark tale enters an unimaginable world that, quite simply, has to be seen to be believed.
See the full 2019 programme here:
https://www.leedsfilm.com/film-festivals/leeds-international-film-festival/liff-2019-programme/
You can also see a selection of films back on the big screen under different strands of the festival…
2019 marks the 80th Anniversary of a film widely regarded as one of the greatest of the 20th Century – The Wizard of Oz (1939).
When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her dog Toto are swept away in their house to the magical land of Oz.
They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and on their journey they meet a Scarecrow that needs a brain, a Tin Man missing a heart, and a Cowardly Lion who wants courage.
See our feature review >here<.
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