Chorlton Film Institute

29/04/2026

We have something a bit different for you in May - a 1960s B movie suspense thriller - beautifully remastered in glorious and atmospheric black and white.

Strongroom
Tuesday May 19th 2026
Doors open 19:30
Film starts 20:00

Taut as a drum, Vernon Sewell’s suspense thriller is an outstanding example of the lean British ‘B’ film has been re-released and remastered.

A carefully-planned heist on a suburban bank goes awry when the gang of three small-time criminals are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of two nattering cleaners. The gang lock the bank manager and his secretary in the airtight vault and make off with the cash. However, they soon realise that the pair will suffocate and the gang will face a murder rap if they can’t free them. With only 12 hours’ worth of air in the vault, the clock is ticking. Hailed by Tarantino, Scorsese and Edgar Wright, the film is a real discovery.

Official trailer https://shm.to/FhsI3bO or via our profile
Read Peter Bradshaw’s five start review: https://shm.to/gId4vOP

Director: Vernon Sewell
Writers: Max Marquis, Richard Harris
Cast: Colin Gordon, Ann Lynn, Derren Nesbit, Keith Faulkner
Cert: PG
Length: 80mins
1962 UK

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02/04/2026

We need your help...
Since we started the monthly screenings in 2006 we always wanted just to show great films, in a community setting and take enough money to pay for the hall hire, film licence and rental of the audio-visual equipment. We never have (and never will) take any payment for ourselves.
Over the years, the number of attendees has varied from very few (Kill List in 2010 attracted just 17) to Persopolis (in 2009 which packed us out with over 80 attendees). Over time attendances balanced out and we could continue to provide great films in the heart of our community.
However, since we restarted after Covid, we have not been attracting the same numbers and we are having to consider winding up our operations…so we are asking for your help.

Our next film is The Choral – it’s a belter (see our previous post) so if you could come along (and bring a friend or two) it would be greatly appreciated.

In the meantime, if you have ideas we’d appreciate your feedback/thoughts via the link below or in the comments:

https://us14.list-manage.com/survey?u=23f5c17bf48f7dd33e54f5ccb&id=f0ad663295&attribution=false

29/03/2026

Tuesday April 21st 2026
Doors open 19:30
Film starts 20:00

“Alan Bennett’s new film, directed by Nicholas Hytner, is a quiet and consistent pleasure: an unsentimental but deeply felt drama which subcontracts actual passion to the music of Elgar and leaves us with a heartbeat of wit, poignancy and common sense. Music itself mysteriously exalts and redeems the community. The film is about men in a fictional Yorkshire town during the first world war who are variously too old or too young to fight, and the women who have to deal with the menfolk’s repressed emotions and their own. The place is upended by the arrival of Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes) who is to be the choirmaster, directing the music society’s annual production; he scandalises some with the fact that he once lived in Germany and has a scholar’s love of that country’s literature and music – as well as the fact that he is a bachelor who had a close friendship with another young man now serving overseas.�
German composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Handel being unacceptable, Dr Guthrie proposes to his ragtag crew of amateurs a radical new production of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, its theme of death being the more heartwrenching in the circumstances. He gets permission from Elgar himself for this performance, though not his daringly interpretive new variations.
The humour is delivered with the same conviction and discreetly weighted force as the sadness, and the same goes for this film’s determinedly unbowdlerised view of s*x; just when you thought this was a picturesque movie, Bennett gives us the question of a young disabled soldier having to learn to ma******te with the other hand now that he only has one arm, and having to persuade his now ex-sweetheart to do it for him. Perhaps this is Bennett’s late style: a wintry, comic acknowledgment of mortality.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

Official trailer https://shm.to/0SAY8sS
Read another review: https://shm.to/MXftNVh

Director: Nicholas Hytner
Writer: Alan Bennett
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Alun Armstrong, Simon Russell Beale
Cert: 12A
Length: 1hr 53
2025 UK

© 2025 GERONITUS PRODUCTIONS LIMITED. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

29/03/2026

We've got a treat for you in April!

🎬 DescriptionTHE CHORAL (2025) – Official Trailer | Set in 1916 England and filled with music, heart and hope — when most of the men in a Yorkshire choir en...

05/03/2026

Come and join us for the story of Lorenz Hart as he copes with his split from Richard Rodgers - it sounds like a great evening's entertainment!

Trailer https://shm.to/QXy4W4p
Guardian review https://shm.to/SwmHrAk

Tuesday 17th March 2026
Doors open 19.30
Film starts 20.00
1hr 40

30/01/2026

If Only I Could Hibernate

Tuesday February 10th 2026 - please note the date!
Doors open 19:30
Film starts 20:00

“It’s the kind of story that crops up fairly regularly on the world cinema and film festival circuit: an academically gifted teenager from a desperately poor background must choose between his future and shelving his studies to help support his siblings. But the Mongolian drama If Only I Could Hibernate, written and directed by Zoljargal Purevdash, brings an earthy, lived-in authenticity to a premise that, in other hands, could feel like a piece of ethnographic voyeurism.
Stroppy, obnoxious and extremely teenaged, Ulzii has little patience for his brow-beaten, widowed and illiterate mother. When she gets a job in the countryside, he decides to stay in the family’s yurt on the outskirts of Ulaanbaatar shouldering the responsibility for his two younger siblings, as well as studying for a prestigious physics exam. But as the temperature drops, the pressure on Ulzii mounts.”

Official trailer:https://youtu.be/x6PQJUpnaqQ or via our profile
Review at BFI: https://shm.to/vGJQRJO

Director & Writer: Zoljargal Purevdash
Cast: Battsooj Uurtsaikh, Ganchimeg Sandagdorj
Cert: 12A
Length: 1hr 40
2024 Mongolia/France
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24/01/2026

SAVE THE DATE!

Due to a clash of dates, our next screening is coming up fast on the 10th February - there will be NO EVENT on 17th February.

Please put the new date in your diaries and let your friends know.

See you all in a couple of weeks!

02/01/2026

I Swear
Tuesday January 20th 2026
Doors open 19:30
Film starts 20:00

I Swear is a funny, compassionate and moving account of the experiences of real-life activist John Davidson, who was diagnosed with Tourette syndrome at the age of 15. He overcame many hardships from adolescence and early adulthood as a result of what was a little known and entirely misunderstood condition in 1980s Britain.

Official trailer: https://youtu.be/oeWqQN3snCU or via our profile
Peter Bradshaw’s review in The Guardian: https://tinyurl.com/yufjau9y

Director & Writer: Kirk Jones
Cast: Robert Aramayo, Shirley Henderson, Peter Mullan, Maxine Peake
Cert: 15
Length: 2hrs
2025 UK

16/12/2025

Our final film of the year is - Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

Come and join us tonight on Jane Austens 250th birthday to help us celebrate another year of wonderful films.

We will be serving our usual tea/coffee/biscuits for £2 and will also have some (alcohol free) mulled wine and mice pies also for £2.

Please share with your friends so we can have a full house for our final film of 2025

05/12/2025

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Tuesday December 16th 2025
Doors open 19:30
Film starts 20:00

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen has inspired more romcoms than any other author – and nearly all of them feature a modern take on an Austen protagonist, a new Lizzie Bennet or Emma Woodhouse. But this funny and smart French comedy instead gives us a 21st-century Jane Austen. British-French actor Camille Rutherford is terrific as Agathe, an aspiring novelist working in a Paris bookshop who wins a place on a Jane Austen writing retreat run by the author’s descendants.
“I’m not living in the right century!” Agathe wails to her best friend and colleague Félix. She’s not into dating apps (“I don’t want Uber s*x!”). But she does have chemistry with Félix (he’s a player, but not at Wickham levels of caddishness), and it’s Félix who secretly submits Agathe’s writing to a Jane Austen society.
On the retreat, Agathe takes an instant loathing to Austen’s great-great-great-nephew Oliver; he’s a professor of modern literature who loftily proclaims that Austen is overrated. Judgmental, arrogant, and altogether up himself, Oliver is the film’s Mr Darcy – though played with too much Hugh Grant to take seriously. You don’t have to be an Austen fan to enjoy this film, but it helps. Agathe’s dilemma between Oliver and Félix is classic Austen – but Agathe’s real discovery is not love, but her writing voice. And that’s the point the film makes without trying too hard: new century, same self-pressure and doubt."

Official trailer: https://youtu.be/i0dy0doC358 or via our profile
Cath Clarke’s review in The Guardian: https://bit.ly/4oEygiR

Director & Writer: Laura Piani
Cast: Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson
Cert: 15
Length: 1hr 35
2025 France