To save paper, cut costs and give us flexibility in selecting films at short notice, we no longer produce printed programmes. All of our films are listed on the Buxton Opera House Cinema website as well as our own. If you’d like to receive a weekly alert for our Monday film please subscribe to our newsletter.
Here is our diary – we update it as soon as new films are confirmed. You won’t find a more varied and interesting programme anywhere!
| Monday 5/1/26 | Palestine 36 (12A) | This film has been in the making for a while – a period drama about the region at a time of seminal change. It’s 1936. The Great Palestinian Revolt has shattered the complacency of British rule, denouncing its long-standing injustices, its land theft and Zionist ideology. Little did the director know her film would premier at the Toronto Film Festival to a 20-minute standing ovation just as these earlier events were reaching their culmination, namely the systematic erasure of the Palestinian people. Cast members took to the red carpet with placards calling for an end to the violence. If you want to know the history of what’s happening in Palestine today, you’ll want to see this film. |
| Monday 12/1/26 | It Was Just An Accident (12A) | Jafar Panahi returns with another secretly made political thriller from Iran. Hailed as one of the best films of 2025 and winner of the Palme D’Or at Cannes, the story begins with an apparently ordinary man driving through the night with his wife and daughter. After hitting a dog and damaging his car, he pulls into a service station and arranges a repair. What follows is a mad but tense enterprise to extract revenge for past misdeeds. In his customary style, Panahi manages to inject humour, pose ethical quandaries as well as an impressive ending into the escapade. Not to be missed. |
| Monday 19/1/26 | Tale of Silyan (PG) | From the Oscar-nominated director of ‘Honeyland’ comes a poignant and visually arresting story set in the heart of a rural farming community. Nikola, a farmer grappling with the harsh realities of new government policies, finds himself unable to sell his land or crops. When his family leaves in search of a better life abroad, Nikola takes a job as a landfill attendant, where he encounters the injured white stork Silyan. As he nurses the bird back to health, an unlikely bond forms between man and animal. The result is a deeply moving film that touches on climate change, economic migration, resilience and the quiet power of connection. |
| Monday 26/1/26 | Bugonia (15) | Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things 2023) returns with another masterpiece in his unique and darkly satirical but compelling style. Emma Stone surpasses herself as the sociopathic corporate CEO abducted by two men who live in a fantasy world of their own, convinced that she is an alien plotting to exterminate bees and, consequently, humanity. This couldn’t possibly be a film reflecting the dystopian state of American society, the disparity between rich and poor, the fantasies conjured up within insular subcultures and the way the powerful manipulate the weak, could it? Don’t miss it – the ending is unforgettable. |
| Monday 2/2/26 | Ackroyd & Harvey: The Art of Activism (12A) | Presented by Buxton Film on behalf of Transition Buxton. Ackroyd & Harvey: The Art of Activism is the latest film from award winning documentary maker Fiona Cunningham-Reid. An intimate portrait of internationally acclaimed artists, Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey, who work at the intersection of art, activism, biology and ecology, and their quest to shake humanity into action on climate catastrophe – whatever the personal cost. Intrinsically bound up in protest, the film follows the pair collaborating with Extinction Rebellion, and co-founding the movement, Culture Declares Emergency. Their work is uncompromisingly preoccupied with the climate and ecological crisis, and has become a rallying point for the environmental movement. It’s won them international acclaim, but the film leaves us in no doubt – they’d be creating it whether the world was watching or not. |
| Monday 9/2/26 | Sentimental Value (15) | Joachim Trier’s rewarding and profoundly moving directorial follow-up to the highly acclaimed The Worst Person in the World. An intimate exploration of sisterhood, father-daughter relationships and the evocative power of childhood memories. Nora, a successful stage actress who, along with her sister Agnes, reunites with their estranged father Gustav Borg – a once-renowned film director planning a major comeback with a script based on his family. When Gustav offers Nora the lead role, which she promptly declines, he turns his attention to Rachel Kemp, an eager young Hollywood starlet primed for her big breakthrough. With their fraught dynamics made even more complex, Nora, Agnes and Gustav are each forced to confront their difficult pasts. |
| Monday 16/2/26 | The Voice of Hind Rajab (15) | Possibly one of the most essential films of 2025 and recently released in the UK. For its premier at the Venice Film Festival, it received the longest ever standing ovation in the history of the festival - of almost 24 minutes - and won the Grand Jury Prize. By the time you read this, it may also have won a Golden Globe. While the mainstream media carefully moderates what we are allowed to know about what is really going on in Palestine, this story did make it through. The docudrama is the story of just one young girl and the inexcusable ordeal she had to face. “there is a … kind of provocative brilliance in what Ben Hania is doing...” Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. |
| Monday 23/2/26 | The Shepherd and the Bear | Set high in the majestic French Pyrenees, The Shepherd and the Bear explores a conflict provoked by the reintroduction of brown bears in the midst of a traditional shepherding community. The film follows an aging shepherd who struggles to find a successor as bears prey on his flock, and a teenage boy who becomes obsessed with tracking the bears. Through its breathtaking cinematography and immersive storytelling, The Shepherd and the Bear is a modern folktale about tradition, community and humanity’s relationship with a vanishing natural world. Nominated: Best Feature Documentary, BIFA 2025 Nominated: Best Debut Feature, Cinema Eye Honours 2025 |