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 13/4/26 | My Father's Shadow (12A) | Set in 1993 Nigeria during tensions surrounding the presidential election and the transition from military rule. In a remote village two young boys are awed at the sudden and unexplained reappearance of their charismatic and commanding father. When he announces that he must return immediately to Lagos and that the boys can accompany him, we join them on a difficult journey and spend a day in the city when they connect with their father and witness the impact of political unrest on personal lives. The first Nigerian film to be selected for the Cannes film festival's Official Selection. “A rich, heartfelt and rewarding movie.” The Guardian |
| Monday 20/4/26 | DJ Ahmet (tbc) | A touching, comic and radiantly colourful coming-of-age story about the unifying power of music. A wistful 15-year-old from a remote Yuruk village in North Macedonia, Ahmet has a lot on his plate after the loss of his mother, including herding sheep and caring for his kid brother. Weighed down by his father’s rules, he’s also bound by their conservative wider community. He finds an unlikely refuge in music, which brings him closer to Aya but she’s already promised to someone else… Winner of the Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award and a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision, DJ Ahmet casts a crowd-pleasing spell while sensitively exploring the realities of life in patriarchal societies. Uplifted by an extraordinary young cast and a rich soundtrack that draws on regional as well as English language songs, it dances along the line between modernity and tradition. |
| Monday 27/4/26 | The Spin (15) | So many of the very good films we screen tend to be serious or, according to some, “depressing”. This one is a sweet and uplifting Irish road movie that packs in the laughs as it follows Dermot and Elvis, two music lovers who run a struggling record shop in Omagh, Northern Ireland. Facing an unpaid rent bill and their vicious landlord Sadie, who’s eager to get them out of her building, the pair stumble across a deal too good to be true: rare, vintage records of blues legend Robert Johnson for sale in Cork at a knock-down price. If they can make it to the other end of Ireland in time, then maybe they could get the rare vinyl, and save the shop…. A fun and off-the-wall buddy movie, The Spin is based upon a semi-autobiographical short story by Omagh music star Mark McCausland (The Lost Brothers, The Basement, McKowski), who also provides the film’s beautiful folk soundtrack. |
| Monday 4/5/26 | La Grazia (12A) | As Head of State, Italy’s president wields significant constitutional power yet it is rare for those outside of Italy to even know their name. Above party politicking, their role is to step in when parliament is in crisis, to pass or delay signing into law, to slow things down and avoid rash decisions. In this, Sorrentino’s latest film, the fictional President Mariano, a widower still grieving for his wife, is in the last days of his term. He has three important decisions to consider but he is struggling, lonely and haunted by the suspicion that his late wife had been unfaithful to him 40 years before. With some fantastic set-piece moments, La Grazia is a stylish, elegant and thought-provoking film that reveals the vulnerability within and the absurdity of official pomp and ceremony. |
| Monday 11/5/26 | Underland (12A) | Based on Robert Macfarlane’s 2019 non-fiction bestseller Underland: A Deep Time Journey. Sandra Hüller’s soft, poetic voiceover guides us through the myriad of extraordinary subterranean spaces beautifully photographed in this stunning documentary. Mexican cave divers take us through a winding, breathtaking cave barely seen by human eyes in millennia – with its own unique ecosystem thriving in the dark. An enormous ash tree with a cavern opening at its base. A sterile, miles-deep facility in Canada attempts to detect dark matter. Cave artwork dating back to early humans…. Underland weaves an exploration of our human species like no other documentary. A mesmerising descent into deep time. |
| Monday 18/5/26 | Two Prosecutors (12A) | Set in 1930’s Stalinist Russia and based on a story by the dissident author and scientist Georgy Demidov who spent 14 years in the gulag. Against all odds, a letter from a falsely accused prisoner reaches the desk of the newly appointed local prosecutor, Alexander Kornyev. In the face of obfuscation and delay by the authorities, Kornyev does his utmost to meet the prisoner, a victim of agents of the secret police, the NKVD. A dedicated Bolshevik of integrity, the young prosecutor suspects foul play. His quest for justice will take him all the way to the office of the Attorney General in Moscow. In the age of the great Stalinist purges, this is the plunge of a man into the dark corridors of a totalitarian regime. “A terrifying parable of bureaucratic evil” 5* The Guardian |
| Monday 25/5/26 | The Stranger (15) | Algiers, 1938. An unassuming man in his early thirties, Meursault attends his mother’s funeral, at which he does not cry. The next day, he begins a casual affair with his colleague Marie and slips back into his daily routine. But life is soon disrupted by his neighbour Sintès, who draws Meursault into an altercation over an ex-lover. Then, one blisteringly hot afternoon, an inexplicable, tragic event occurs on a beach; one that will see Meursault’s very moral standing brought into question. A stylish adaptation of Albert Camus’ classic existentialist novel, capturing an atmospheric and enigmatic portrait of disaffection amid the tensions of 1930s French-colonised Algeria. Shot in sharp black-and-white and with great performances, not to be missed. |
| Monday 1/6/26 | Primavera (15) | A magical story of Cecilia, a young and talented violinist confined to an orphanage and whose gift is discovered when Antonio Vivaldi, down-on-his-luck composer at the time, is hired to tutor the Ospedale della Pietà orchestra she plays in. Under his mentorship and through his music, she is promoted to first violin and the women’s orchestra becomes the talk of Venice. Their performances to the rich nobility in lavish settings contrast dramatically with the austere and uncared-for life they lead in the orphanage. Will Cecilia’s partnership with Vivaldi set her destiny in motion? An uplifting and sumptuous film loosely based on the novel Stabat Mater by Tiziano Scarpa. |
| Monday 8/6/26 | Frida Kahlo (12A) | Exhibition on Screen have re-released their award-winning film on Frida Kahlo, arguably the world’s favourite female artist – beloved by young and old. It was first released during covid to a restricted audience and not yet shown in Buxton. This re-release also contains new material from the Tate exhibition that is about to open. The high-quality photography takes an in-depth view of Kahlos’s key works throughout her career together with letters she wrote that reveal her emotions and the symbolism contained within her art. A personal and intimate film giving access to her art, her home, her studio and highlights the source of her feverish creativity, her resilience and her unmatched lust for life, beauty and revolution. |
| Monday 15/6/26 | tbc | |