Baltic Cinema: Together! Solidarity and Community on Screen

Thursday 5 November | 18:30
Dirs. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne Belgium / France 2014 / 95’

Oscar winner Marion Cotillard received another nomination for her searing, deeply felt performance as a working-class woman desperate to hold on to her factory job, in this gripping film from master Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Cotillard is Sandra, a wife and mother who suffers from depression and discovers that, while she was home on sick leave, a majority of her coworkers voted in favour of her being laid off over giving up their annual bonuses. She then spends a Saturday and Sunday visiting them each in turn, to try to convince them to change their minds. From this simple premise, the Dardennes create a powerfully humane drama about the importance of community in an increasingly impersonal world.

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Thursday 19 November | 18:30
Dir. Věra Chytilová Czechoslovakia / 1979 / 1hr 36mins

Life is a construction site for the tenants of the only partially finished prefab housing development in Prague. Between the buildings, young mothers struggle to push their prams through mounds of mud. And things are not any better inside.

Věra Chytilová’s film depicts one day in that construction chaos through the eyes of a handful of people of various ages who must deal with the hodgepodge of permanently makeshift solutions in what was conceived as a ‘garden city’.

In 2002, the director said: “It’s not a critical reaction to the regime; it’s more actually a view of human behaviour.” Nonetheless, her amusing social satire was held back by the authorities and not shown in Czechoslovakia until 1981. (Berlinale)

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Saturday 5 December | 14:30
Dir. Pedro Pinho Portugal / 2017 / 2hr 57mins 

One night, a group of workers realises that the administration is stealing machines and raw materials from their own factory. As they organise to survey the equipment and block the relocation of production, they are forced to stand at their posts with no work to do, as a form of retaliation, while negotiations over general lay-offs take place. The pressure leads to a breakdown of the workers along with the world around them.

Inspired by the true story of the Fataleva lift factory, which was run by its own employees for over 40 years following Portugal’s Carnation Revolution in 1974, between 1975 and 2016, The Nothing Factory relocates the collective takeover to the present, against a familiar backdrop of neoliberal decline which echoes other Portuguese films of the same time in subject and approach, especially Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights trilogy.

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Saturday 23 January | 15:00 
Dir. Roland Joffé UK / 1981 / 2hr 26mins

The BBC’s Play for Today (BBC, 1970-84) strand demonstrated single drama's potential to engage mass audiences with social comment and artistic experimentation.

This incendiary feature-length film from 1981, written by Jim Allen and directed by Roland Joffé and filmed in Dunston, just upriver of Baltic – exactly contemporary with, and a stone’s throw from Tish Murtha’s Elswick – tells the story of a group of housing estate residents who attempt to organise against persistent rent rises. Fiercely compelling and enduringly relevant, perhaps more than ever, United Kingdom unravels the issues which haunted Murtha’s work: the sacking of industry, the hollowing out of public services, the turn from people to profit.

Featuring Ricky Tomlinson (The Royle Family) in his first role.

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Thursday 4 February | 18:30
Dir. Aki Kaurismäki Finland / 1996 / 1hr 37mins

The ever-poker-faced Ilona loses her job as a restaurant hostess, as her tram driver husband, Lauri, also finds himself out of work. Together they must hit the streets of Helsinki, facing up to hardship and humiliation in their quest for survival, guided through the gloom by a ray of hope.

Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes, Drifting Clouds is classic Kaurismäki, mixing together bleak humour with brilliantly straight performances, the film captures the harshness of a recession with a real bite, however is never quite as cynical as it makes out. Hilarious and surprisingly hopeful, Drifting Clouds is Kaurismaki at his best.

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Sat 6 Mar | 15:00
Dirs. Jean Rouch, Edgar Morin France / 1960 / 90mins

Echoing Kuba Ryniewicz’s videos Good News (2026) these two films ask strangers who they are and how they feel. A rare screening of Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s trailblazing study of the hopes and fears of a generation is paired with artist Barbara Hammer’s gonzo New York subway film.

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