Borderlines BAFTA Winners!

BAFTA winners add to the rich mix of cinema at Borderlines Film Festival and the Festival of British Cinema at Hay-on-Wye 2016

Opening in under two weeks on Friday 26 February and running through to Sunday 13 March, the 14th Borderlines Film Festival offers a rich mix of BAFTA-winning films alongside a stimulating selection of the best new British and world cinema to tempt cinema-goers of all kinds to 26 venues across Herefordshire, Shropshire and the Welsh Marches.

At the 2016 BAFTA ceremony this evening the epic survival film The Revenant, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s follow-up to last year’s Oscar-winning Birdman, captured 5 major awards including Best Film, Director, Sound and Cinematography. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, who also won the Best Actor BAFTA, as 19th century explorer and fur-trapper Hugh Glass, brutally attacked by a bear and left for dead in the icy American wilderness.

Also showing at Borderlines venues is Spotlight, winner of the Best Original Screenplay BAFTA. It is a riveting, well-paced account of the true story of the investigative team at The Boston Globe who exposed the child abuse crimes that had been perpetrated by members of local Catholic Church and suppressed by its hierarchy.

Meanwhile Room, for which Brie Larson won the Best Leading Actress award for the authenticity of her portrayal of a young woman who has brought up her small son incarcerated in a confined space, screens at The Courtyard, Kinokulture Oswestry and Wem Town Hall. Critic Mark Kermode has said of the film, directed by Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson, “I was really, properly overwhelmed by it.”

“Though our organisation is responsible for programming independent cinemas nationwide, Borderlines occupies a special position as our only film festival client. With the following that the festival has built up over 14 years, we are able to plan adventurously and take risks, bringing as yet undiscovered gems from national cinemas all over the world to share with receptive audiences in this remote corner of Britain. It’s quite a thrill to be able to do so.”

– David Sin, one of the festival’s two film programmers based at the Independent Cinema Office in London

In this spirit, cinema-goers in the Marches have the rare opportunity to sample two of the finalists for the Best Foreign Language film Oscars, the Turkish coming-of-age drama Mustang and the searing Holocaust film Son of Saul.

Other rare screenings include Dheepan, winner of the 2015 Palme D’Or – a daring German heist thriller called Victoria, shot in real time as a single take, and an adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s dystopian novel High-Rise by prolific and often audacious British director Ben Wheatley.

Tickets for all Borderlines Film Festival and The Festival of British Cinema films, are now available to buy in person at The Courtyard Hereford Box Office, by phone (01432 340555) or online.