An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, but believes that he can find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day.

A new goat kid is born. We follow its first few tentative steps, its first games, until it gains strength and goes to pasture. Nearby, a majestic tree stirs in the mountain breeze and slowly changes through the seasons, until transformed into fuel through the ancestral work of the local Calabrian charcoal makers.

A beautiful and poetic vision of the revolving cycles of life and nature in the unbroken traditions of a timeless place, Le Quattro volte appears as the metaphor of a soul that moves through four successive states of being.

But be warned: the film is slow, is almost devoid of dialogue and features many goats.

“The film is an extraordinary achievement – beautiful, moving, mysterious, and, at times, extremely funny… One of those rare works that breaks all the rules of about what cinema “should” be, in order to demonstrate what it “can” be… the freshest and deepest film I’ve encountered in a while…” – The Independent on Sunday

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Michelangelo Frammartino / Italy 2010 / 84 min / cert: U

Brockley Max 2012 website

Inspired by the life of his own father who revealed at the age of 75 that he was gay, director Mike Mills has written a funny and poignant story showing how love can cross generations and, if you’re that way inclined, genders. Hal (Ewan McGregor) is a man whose best friend is his dog until he encounters the superior charms of a beautiful French actress called Anna (Mélanie Laurent). But the course of true lust is impeded by Hal’s fears of another failed relationship and memories of his parents’ troubling marriage. Hal’s father is played by one of the greatest stage and screen actors of our time, 82-year-old Christopher Plummer, whose warm and witty performance earned him an Oscar and a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor, but only because the dog wasn’t allowed to be nominated.

“Immensely moving, funny and involving… One of the most sensitive films I’ve seen about the experience of living through and responding to the profound social changes of the past 60 years.” – Philip French, The Observer

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Mike Mills / USA 2010 / 104 min / Cert: 15

Lewisham is one of only two London Boroughs without a cinema and the NXDFFF will be screening films in some very unusual places including a ceiling, some prison cells and from a 40ft lorry turned mobile cinema.

Events include open-air family screenings, showing mainstream feature films in parks, a community garden, and an adventure playground and film-based discussions on topics of local and global concern.”

Official website

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vincent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003.

Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce’s life, Dreams of a Life is an imaginative, powerful, multilayered quest, and is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait of London in the Eighties — the City, music, and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

“A poetic documentary that will live in your mind and heart.” – The Guardian

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Carol Morley / UK 2011 / 90 min / 12A

Winner of this year’s Oscar for best foreign language film, A Separation is that rare thing – not just a critically acclaimed but also a commercially successful Iranian film. This is unsurprising as it is beautifully crafted with a gripping script that will keep you guessing till the end.

It’s a simple enough story of a middle class couple at a crossroads in their lives. The wife (Simin) wants desperately to leave Iran to give her twelve-year-old daughter (Termeh) a chance of a better life, while the husband (Nader) feels compelled to stay to look after his ailing and senile elderly father.  Unable to reach a mutual decision and bound by the Iranian courts who prohibit Simin taking her daughter out of the country without Nader’s permission, the couple decide to separate. Termeh remains with her father while Simin moves out of the family home.

Incapable of looking after his father and working at the same time, Nader employs devout working class woman Razieh as home help and this is where the drama really begins, with Nader’s middle class pragmatic and no-nonsense approach to life clashing with Razieh’s outdated religious ideologies. Director Asghar Farhadi then continues to weave a mesh of deceit more intricate than a spider’s web, where no one seems to be telling the truth.

“This powerful, complex Iranian drama centres on a conflict that cuts across boundaries of gender and class.” – The Guardian

The event has sold out

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Asghar Farhadi / Iran 2011 / 125 min / PG

When a woman’s life comes to an end, her children’s lives go in shocking new directions. Obeying the requirements in their mother’s will, a brother and sister travel to the Middle East where they make unsettling discoveries about her and about themselves. Adapted from Wajdi Mouawad’s award-winning play, Scorched, this beautifully filmed Québécois mystery was also a winner of multiple awards and a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It’s a spellbinding drama about the secret lives our parents lived before we knew them and the difficulties of bridging the chasm between generations, between cultures, and between siblings. According to one reviewer “there are no words to describe how touching and powerful this movie is”. So I might as well stop here.

“From its arresting opening to its shattering conclusion, the Canadian film Incendies is muscular, emotional film-making of the highest order… the story powers to a climax which left me reeling.” – The Observer

The film will be preceded by the screening of the short Callum by Michael van der Put, set in our very own Honor Oak!

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Denis Villeneuve /  Canada 2010 / 130 min / Cert: 15

Do not see this movie. It is “baffling”, “confounding” and “pretentious”. You must see this movie. It is “mesmeric”, “transcendent” and “awe-inspiring”. Like the reviewers, audiences don’t agree about Terrence Malick’s astonishing film. At the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or, its premiere ended with applause and boos. Intrigued by the origins of life, especially his own, a man (Sean Penn) reflects on his upbringing in a Midwestern family in the 1950s, particularly his relationship with his gracious mother (Jessica Chastain) and his authoritarian father (Brad Pitt). Imagine Happy Days scripted by Sartre with dinosaurs thrown in. Come along and make up your own mind.

“For anyone who loves cinema, The Tree of Life is a film that demands to be seen, experienced, analysed – it’s an eminently worthy Palme d’Or winner.” – The Telegraph

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Terrence Malick /  USA 2011 / 138 min / Cert: 12A

One night in Havana a talented songwriter meets a beautiful singer. United by their love for music and for each other, Chico and Rita begin a romance that will bring them hope, heartache and happiness. But in which order? We follow the young lovers through the ravishing cityscapes of New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood and Paris in the 1940s and 1950s.  With Latin rhythms and American jazz, this delightful award-winning animation is a treat for the ears, the eyes and several other major organs, most of all the heart. If this sensual tale of love and desire fails to move you, consult your doctor immediately.

“Sexy, sunny and sweet-natured.” – The Guardian

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Listen to soundtrack extracts

Javier Mariscal & Fernando Trueba /  Spain 2010 / 94 min / Cert: 15

The Brockley Jack Film Club rocked to the rafters on Saturday night with the sing-along version of Mamma Mia. The Sing It Back! choir kicked the event off and helped the audience hit the right notes throughout.

The final songs brought everyone onto the stage in a Dancing Queen frenzy, catch a glimpse here…

Back to our normal programme with a hard hitting gangster flick tonight.