Winner of the Golden Eye Award for Best Documentary at Cannes, direc- tor Payal Kapadia creates an intimate look at social life at a Mumbai university through the way it intersects with India’s caste system. The film is skill- fully and artistically constructed through a series of letters of love and longing by a student to her estranged boyfriend – a separation forged by his family who deny them permission to see each other because she is below his caste. As such, it addresses important issues such as Hindu nationalism, the caste system and capitalism through the eyes of Indian college-educated youth.”

Named one of “The Best Genre Movies of 2022” by the New York Times.

One critic calls it “a testament to the inseparability of the country.

India 2022 (99 minutes)

Born into a farming family in rural Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney became the finest poet of his generation and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Not inconsequentially, his career coincided with one of the bloodiest political upheavals of the 20th century, the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In this absorbing documentary, Heaney’s wife, Marie, and their children gather six years after his death in 2013 to reflect on their family life by reading some of the poems he wrote for them. The voice of Heaney himself, pulled from voluminous recordings, joins them in this tour of his life, his art, and his beloved Irish landscapes. Director Adam Low’s film is resonant with grace and awe for the words one man left behind.

Ireland 2019 (88 minutes)

Grief-stricken Róise lost her husband, Frank, two years ago and is still struggling to get out of bed each morning. One day, an eager stray terrier (a star-making performance by Barley the Dog) turns up on her doorstep. And just won’t leave. This mysterious dog brings happiness to her life once more, curiously seeming to know things about her late husband – his favorite chair and the route of his morning walk. Róise comes to believe that the dog is Frank reincarnated. A warm-hearted, witty and hugely entertaining film from directors Peter Murphy and Rose Moriarty, it may bring a tear or two to the eyes of dog lovers. In Irish Gaelic with subtitles.

Ireland 2022 (88 minutes)

For the Irish-born, Pulitzer prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon, music matters almost as much as poetry. He sees little difference between poetry and song lyrics. In this unique musical documentary from director Alan Gilsenan, Muldoon tours us through key moments in his creative life, as his language and literary influence are explored by many of the artists and musicians he has worked with: a stellar lineup including Paul Simon, Liam Neeson, Van Morrison and Bono. Illuminating Muldoon’s allusive and playful poetry as both dramatic and lyrical, this innovative documentary will inspire fans of music, poetry and literature alike. In English and Irish Gaelic with English subtitles.

Ireland 2022 (75 minutes)

Co-Presented With Irish Culture Bay Area

In this honest and affecting film, a retired sea captain and his daughter must reassess their strained relationship after he begins a new romance with a widowed housekeeper. With painstaking care and an extraordinary amount of empathy, Finnish director Klaus Härö catches the tiny fluctuations in the relationship between father and daughter that prove to be of seismic, heartbreaking proportions. A story told with profound compassion and a clear eye, My Sailor, My Love is both the beautiful, moving story of true love found in late years, and the ensuing devastating family drama.

Finland/ Ireland 2022 (103 minutes)

This comedic drama is directed by Michael Powell, based on Norman Lindsay’s novel. A disheveled and disillusioned Australian painter, Bradley Morahan, played by James Mason, decides to retreat from New York City to his homeland to find inspiration and revive his waning creativity. Settling on the shore of a small island on the Great Barrier Reef, the elderly artist has a fortuitous encounter with bombshell young islander, Cora, a nubile Helen Mirren in her first major role. As a gorgeous beach babe, she becomes his model and muse. Helen Mirren as a hot young thing does indeed recharge Bradley’s creative batteries!

Australia 1969 (106 mins)

Sponsor: Australian Consulate General San Francisco

Like a fine wine, this is a well-balanced documentary that goes down smoothly. It follows four young Zimbabwe men who escape to South Africa in the hope of starting new lives. Strangers when they meet, they discover a shared brilliant talent for identifying wine even though they’ve never so much as sipped the stuff in their native country. The film follows them as they become all-knowing sommeliers. With charm and admirable chutzpah they infiltrate a white world by competing as a team at the World Wine Tasting Championship in Burgundy, France.

South Africa 2022 (96 minutes)

Here is an appealing movie about older people, life-long friends who gather for a reunion where you just know hurtful secrets will slowly creep out. The Palm Beach of the title is a glitzy northern Sydney enclave where the sun unfailingly shines. Director Rachel Ward—a former sultry Hollywood star– populates it with a virtual murderer’s row of durably sparkling acting talent including her husband Bryan Brown, Richard E. Grant, Sam Neill and Greta Scacchi. Expect trials and tribulations at the host’s spectacularly airy beach house and for them to be predictably resolved. Ward and Brown — who met on The Thorn Birds set and have been married for 40 years — discuss their film beforehand on Zoom.

Australia 2019 (100 minutes)

Sponsor: Australian Consulate General San Francisco

A young Maggie Smith, fresh off her Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, gives a performance infused with subtle introspection and tender sexuality, bringing her star presence to bare in this bittersweet unlikely love story of a lonely British woman in her late 30s on a bus tour of Spain and an 18-year-old privileged American (played by Timothy Bottoms) wandering the country – and his life – aimlessly. These seemingly mismatched lovers journey through emotionally rocky terrain as they travel through the lush Spanish countryside; two strangers, poles apart, both seeking the same thing – the happy ending that life can never guarantee. Our Valentine’s Day offering. 

USA 1973 (110 minutes)