Viva! Film Festival, Manchester
More than just cinema and more than just Castilian (fancy seeing a film in Kaqchikel?), this long-running Hispanic affair makes good use of its new home at HOME with extra art exhibitions and an eye-catching theatre programme. Films include premieres of Alex de la Iglesia’s riotous New Year’s Eve farce Mi Gran Noche (Sat) and Basque family drama Amama (Mon), while Ricardo Darín’s Truman – the big winner at this year’s Goya awards – is the excuse for a celebration of everyone’s favourite Argentinian actor. Other Latin American highlights include Pablo Trapero’s The Clan (Wed), on a real-life Argentinian crime family, and Embrace Of The Serpent, in which a shaman takes explorers on a hallucinogenic trip into the Amazon (Sun). Even further out there is psychedelic 1973 Mexican horror The Mansion Of Madness (Fri), art-directed by renowned surrealist Leonora Carrington.
Belfast Film Festival
Just about everything worth seeing in the coming months that’s not coming to a multiplex near you is on offer here. Representing world cinema there’s Turkish sisterhood drama Mustang, Oscar-winner Son Of Saul (both Thu) and Miguel Gomes’s epic Arabian Nights trilogy, while new Brit works include Stephen Frears’s Florence Foster Jenkins, starring Meryl Streep, and disorienting drama Remainder. Edgy US fare comes via Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead (Fri) and punks v neo-Nazis thriller Green Room, and documentary highlights include Laurie Anderson’s Heart Of A Dog. There are also retro events, with club nights themed around 80s classics including Blade Runner (Fri) and Cocktail, a 30th-anniversary screening of Labyrinth with added puppetry (Thu), live soundtracks to Donnie Darko and Murnau’s Sunrise, and a visit from – and retrospective of – Terence Davies.
