11:00
Saturday 7 November in Belfast
Belfast times. Last refreshed Fri 21:33.
Showing Film only.
Saturday 7 November 7 listings
12:15
Nuisance Bear
The plight of the polar bear is captured with style and grace in this documentary that highlights the tragedy and beauty of the natural world in the era of man-made climate change.
12:45
Wild Horse Nine
Martin McDonagh returns with another tragi-comic two-hander with a razor-sharp script and outstanding performances from a stellar cast. After the success of The Banshees of Inisherin , McDonagh has turned his attention to Chile in the 1970s, where two CIA men discuss morality and mortality during a dispatch to the vanishingly remote and metaphorically rich Easter Island. With John Malkovich as the ailing Chris, mentor to Sam Rockwell’s Lee, and idiosyncratic support from Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey and Tom Waits, the film is an accidental allegory for present-day politics with trademark bittersweet notes, sweeping landscapes and strategically-placed horses.
14:00
Films by Helena Gouveia Monteiro
Helena Gouveia Monteiro is an experimental filmmaker and visual artist from Portugal, currently living in Dublin. She creates films, books, and multimedia installations that engage different levels of visual and cultural recognition to question our perception of language and audiovisual experiences. She manages Dubh Film Lab in Dublin, and is a member of L’Abominable/Navire Argo and Filmwerkplaats. Her new film Laoi Shuibhne|Sweeney’s Lay is currently in production with the support of the film project award from the Arts Council of Ireland. We are screening some of her recent works, showing the range of her analogue and digital experimentation and her ongoing interest in materiality and the sensory possibilities of film: ends meet (2025) SKINFLICKER (2024) Man of Aral (2023) Purkyně’s Dusk (2021) Um Filme Pela Palestina (2025) Laoi Shuibhne|Sweeney’s Lay (in production) Helena will also be running an introduction to Super 8 film workshop; see here for more details.
14:30
All of a Sudden
The peerless director of Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, returns with another deeply considered and exquisitely paced drama. His first film set in Europe, it follows the story of nursing home director, Marie-Lou, who, while at a professional impasse, meets terminally ill playwright, Mari. The two women forge a friendship based on shared language, experience and a desire to understand the world and attempt to make it better. A humane film that touches on the profound while being firmly rooted in everyday experience. Themes of aging, illness, care and empathy, art, communication and the human ability to reason are expertly offered with poise and grace. The two leads, Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, jointly won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.
15:00
How Can Cinema Be a Tool for Anti-Racism? Panel Discussion
In 2005, the Belfast Film Festival curated a series of screenings and commissioned a publication on racism in Belfast. This was in response to multiple media outlets describing the city as ‘the most racist’ in the world, and was an attempt to understand how cinema and the moving image can be intertwined with race and racism. 20 years have passed and the world is almost unrecognisable. The advent of social media and the blurred lines of news and fake news has created an environment in which racist pogroms can be incited through AI-generated posts. When the moving image is being manipulated to manipulate others, how can cinema be used to combat this hatred? This panel discussion brings together activists, community workers and film scholars to discuss the question posed and how cinema might fill a vacuum, on a community level, where our own political system has failed. Taking part in the panel will be: Dr Kim-Marie Spence (QUB) Kim-Marie Spence is Lecturer in Cultural Industries and Policy at Queen’s University Belfast. She is also an adjunct lecturer at the Caribbean School of Media & Communication (CARIMAC) at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica). Her research focuses on cultural policy and cultural industries with a focus on Non-West music industries. Recently, she has turned her attention to Black Music/ians in Northern Ireland, as part of a project on British Black Music with the Black Music Research Unit, University of Westminster – which is currently the subject of a BBC Black Music project with the V&A East. Kim-Marie is also a former Jamaica Film Commissioner/Head of Creative Industries. She is director of sits on the boards of international award-winning cultural institutions, The MAC Belfast; Kingston Creative; and Co-Chair of the John Hansard Gallery. Dr Elspeth Vischer Dr Elspeth Vischer is a filmmaker, writer and project coordinator based in Belfast. Elspeth runs the production company Vish Films and specialises in making non-fiction and experimental work concerned with counter-hegemonic perspectives. To date Elspeth has had films screened at international festivals including Docs Ireland, Gaze, Silver Wave, Canada and RVK Feminist, Reykjavik. Elspeth completed a Creative Practice PhD at Queen’s University in 2023 and has been published in numerous academic journals. Elspeth coordinated the Northern Ireland Now Project with Nerve Centre and Northern Ireland Screen between October 2023 – July 2026. This project aimed to diversify the Digital Film Archive through collaborative community engagement across Belfast and the North of Ireland. From August 2026 Elspeth has been a part of the Belfast Stories team working as a Coordinator to bring community engagement and story gathering to this large scale screen centre, creative space and visitor hub due to open in Belfast 2030. Tabassum Islam Susmi Tabassum Islam is a PhD researcher at Ulster University, studying South Asian women’s participation in the UK film industry. Working as a film programmer across Bangladesh, Netherlands, Scotland and Northern Ireland, she has delivered more than 25+ community film screenings in the past three years, driven by a commitment to making cinema more accessible for the underserved audience. This has led to roles including Sparks Programmer at Belfast Film Festival and, currently, Project Facilitator for Spotlight NW at the Nerve Centre. She also hosts Conversations Across Borders, a podcast featuring South Asian film talent from around the world. Claire Mullaly Claire Mullaly is a film and borders researcher. Her fields of research are censorship, identities, and the role of cinema as the alternative public sphere in activism and resistance.
15:30