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 7/4/25 | I Am Martin Parr | Since the 1970s, English photographer Martin Parr has held up a sometimes tender, sometimes critical and always mischievous mirror to our times, forcing us to take a hard look at how consumer society has shaped our lives. Discover the maverick behind some of the most iconic images of the past century on an intimate and exclusive road trip across England with the uncompromising Parr, whose subjects, frames and colours have revolutionised contemporary photography. One of the most controversial photographers of his time, Martin Parr’s images often have the power to both amuse and leave us ever so slightly uncomfortable, caught between laughter and the uneasy recognition of ourselves in his uncompromising portrait of consumer society. Though he’s now celebrated, collected and exhibited worldwide, Parr’s early work did not find an easy public and was highly criticized for trivializing the working class. Yet, in retrospect, perhaps he was just observing what we often overlook - forcing it into the spotlight as an essential topic of discussion. I Am Martin Parr is the definitive portrait of an extraordinary photographer who revolutionized contemporary photography by inventing a political, humanist and accessible photographic language. |
| Monday 14/4/25 | I'm Still Here | BRAZIL, 1971. Brazil faces the tightening grip of a military dictatorship. Eunice Paiva, a mother of five children, is forced to reinvent herself after her family suffers a violent and arbitrary act by the government.The Oscar-winning I’m Still Here is based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva's biographical book and tells the true story that helped reconstruct an important part of Brazil’s hidden history. |
| Monday 21/4/25 | On Falling | Set against a landscape dominated by an algorithm-driven gig economy, in a world designed to keep us apart, On Falling explores the silent, vital struggle to find meaning and connection. It tells the story of Aurora, a Portuguese migrant working as a warehouse picker in Edinburgh, Scotland. Trapped between the confines of a vast distribution centre and the solitude of her own bedroom, Aurora seeks out every opportunity to resist the alienation and isolation that threaten her sense of self. Winner: Best Director,San Sebastián International Film Festival 2024 Winner: Sutherland Award, BFI London Film Festival 2024 |
| Monday 28/4/25 | Four Mothers | The witty, disarming and tender story of one Irish son juggling four very different mothers, Darren Thornton’s (A Date for Mad Mary) film won the BFI London Film Festival 2024 Audience Award for Best Feature. An adaptation of Gianni Di Gregorio’s Mid-August Lunch (2008), it follows Edward (James McArdle), an up-and-coming novelist who’s forced to balance press commitments with caring for his elderly mother. Pressure to go on a US book tour is mounting, but when his three closest friends head off on an impromptu Pride holiday – and leave their own ageing mothers in Edward’s care too – he must juggle a burgeoning career with the care of four eccentric, combative, and wildly different ladies over the course of one chaotic and unforgettable weekend. |
| Monday 5/5/25 | Santosh | A widow-turned-police officer investigates a troubling murder in British Indian filmmaker Sandhya Suri’s (I for India, Around India with a Movie Camera) fiction feature debut, screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2024. After her constable husband is killed on the job in remote northern India, Santosh reluctantly assumes his role. When a teenage Dalit (low caste) girl is found murdered and a Muslim boy is suspected, igniting protests in the local community, she is pulled into the case under the command of new female superior who skilfully navigates their police station’s misogynistic culture while remaining a fierce advocate against gendered violence. As the case develops, though, both women must confront their place within a corrupt (and corrupting) system, and Santosh’s personal ethics are painfully challenged by the realities of her world. A deft thriller interrogating hierarchies of gender, caste, religion and class in rural India, with superb performances from Goswami and Rajwar, Santosh combines a complex character study with searing social critique. |
| Monday 12/5/25 | Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story | The 93-year-old Irish writer recounts her controversial life, novels, love affairs, and stardom through personal journals read by actress Jessie Buckley, with perspectives from writers like Gabriel Byrne and Walter Mosley. |
| Monday 19/5/25 | Misericordia (15) | Winner of the Prix Louis-Delluc for Best French Film of 2024, Misercordia initially seems to promise a low-key, straight-down-the-line French rural melodrama. But then it takes a few confounding thriller detours before showing its hand as a peculiar small-town tale of murder, desire, and repression with the macabre humour and underlying suspense of Hitchcock.Darkly sparkling, offbeat and the director’s best work to date. |
| Monday 26/5/25 | Two To One (12A) | Set in the long, hot summer of 1990, a family in Socialist East Germany hatch a plan to make a fortune when they find a bunker full of soon-to-be-worthless currency. With the help of their friends and neighbours they tackle progress and capitalism head-on. A light-hearted heist comedy about friendship, community, love and capitalism with a superb performance from Oscar nominee Sandra Hüller, the film has been a sell-out hit in Germany and came second audience favourite at the recent Glasgow Film Festival. |
| Monday 2/6/25 | One To One: John & Yoko (15) | On August 30, 1972, in New York City, John Lennon played his only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One Benefit Concert, a rollicking, dazzling performance from him and Yoko Ono. Director Kevin Macdonald’s riveting documentary ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO takes that epic musical event and uses it as the starting point to recreate eighteen defining months in the lives of John and Yoko. By 1971 the couple was newly arrived in the United States— living in a tiny apartment in Greenwich Village and watching a huge amount of American television. The film uses a riotous mélange of American TV to conjure the era through what the two would have been seeing on the tube: the Vietnam War, The Price is Right, Nixon, Coca-Cola ads, Cronkite, The Waltons. As they experience a year of love and transformation in the US, John and Yoko begin to change their approach to protest — ultimately leading to the One to One concert, which was inspired by a Geraldo Rivera exposé they watched on TV. Filmed in a meticulously faithful reproduction of the NYC apartment the duo shared, ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO also includes a wealth of never-before-seen material, including home movies and numerous phone call recordings of John and Yoko to offer a unique take on a seminal time in the lives of one of music’s most famous couples. |