2025-26's - Rented List
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Stephen Poliakoff is one of Britain's pre-eminent auteurs producing prodigious and unrivalled work including Gideon's Daughter, Friends and Crocodiles, The Lost Prince, Perfect Strangersand Shooting the Past. Capturing Mary, the companion film to Joe's Palace, is set in the same exquisite empty house and is linked by the doorkeeper Joe through whose eyes we see the world. When Joe opens the door to an elderly lady, she takes him back to a time when the house thronged with the glamorous and powerful - and to a time when she was young, beautiful and talented with the world at her feet. As Joe takes her through the house Mary begins to relive her relationship with Greville White, a supremely charming man who seems to hold the rich and famous in the palm of his hand. Who was this enigmatic figure? Was he feigning friendship with Mary, but offering something much more sinister and frightening? In a dark and terrifying exploration of her youth, Mary relates a chilling story of a life captured and transformed. Maggie Smith gives a magnificent performance as Mary and is brilliantly supported by Ruth Wilson as Young Mary and David Walliams as Greville. Also included an exclusive prequel A Real Summer in which we see Young Mary strike up an unexpected friendship with a young aristocrat Geraldine. In this funny and touching story Ruth Wilson gives a remarkable performance playing both Mary and Geraldine. - Director:
- Stephen Poliakoff
- Cast:
- Maggie Smith, Ruth Wilson, David Walliams
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I Got Life! (2017)Aurore
Cesar award-winner Agnes Jaoui gives an intelligent and affecting performance as Aurore; fifty, flirty and not-so-thriving, her world is turned upside down when a past flame returns, reigniting her lust for life and love. A witty and wonderful ode to embracing age whilst staying young, 'I Got Life!' is a timely and uplifting film celebrating womanhood. - Director:
- Blandine Lenoir
- Cast:
- Agnès Jaoui, Thibault de Montalembert, Pascale Arbillot
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Ida (2014)Sister of Mercy
From acclaimed director Pawel Pawlikowski comes "Ida", a poignant and powerfully told drama about 18-year-old Anna, a sheltered orphan raised in a convent, who is preparing to become a nun when she discovers that her real name is Ida and her Jewish parents were murdered during the Nazi occupation. This revelation triggers a heart-wrenching journey into the countryside, to the family house and into the secrets of the repressed past, evoking the haunting legacy of the Holocaust and the realities of postwar Communism. Powerfully written and eloquently shot, "Ida" is a masterly evocation of a time, a dilemma, and a defining historical moment. - Director:
- Pawel Pawlikowski
- Cast:
- Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik
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Parasite (2019)Gisaengchung
Kim Ki Taek's (Song Kang Ho) family are all unemployed and living in a squalid basement. When his son, Ki Woo, gets a tutoring job at the lavish home of the Park family, the Kim family's luck changes. One by one they gradually infiltrate the wealthy Park's home, attempting to take over their affluent lifestyle, but as their deception unravels events begin to get increasingly out of hand in ways you simply cannot imagine. - Director:
- Joon-Ho Bong
- Cast:
- Kang-ho Song, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo
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When Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on "The Green Book" to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe for African-Americans. Confronted with racism, danger as well as unexpected humanity and humor - they are forced to set aside differences to survive and thrive on the journey of a lifetime. - Director:
- Peter Farrelly
- Cast:
- Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini
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La Ceremonie (1995)La cérémonie
Adapted from Ruth Rendell's chilling novel, this is one of Chabrol's most celebrated films. Wealthy family the Lelievres have taken on the extremely efficient but strangely detached Sophie as their live-in maid. Her free time is spent alone in her room until she meets local postal clerk Jeanne who has a disturbed history and a grudge against Sophie's new employers. As the pair begin to bond the family grow increasingly concerned. - Director:
- Claude Chabrol
- Cast:
- Isabelle Huppert, Sandrine Bonnaire, Jacqueline Bisset
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Diva (1981)Jules
Jules (Frederic Andrei) is a Parisian mail courier in possession of two highly sought-after tapes: the first contains a rare recording of American opera singer Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez), with whom he has fallen in love; the second is a tape slipped into his bag by a young woman just before she is murdered. The unwitting Jules thus finds himself being pursued by Taiwanese bootleggers and a thuggish gang of drug dealers who will do anything to get their hands on the cassettes. - Director:
- Jean-Jacques Beineix
- Cast:
- Wilhelmenia Fernandez, Frédéric Andréi, Richard Böhringer
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Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)Sommarnattens leende
A middle-aged lawyer, Frederik Egerman (Gunnar Björnstrand), his inexperienced young wife, Anne (Ulla Jacobsson), and her step-son, Henrik (Björn Bjelfvenstam), are invited to spend the weekend at the country mansion of a beautiful actress, Frederik's ex-mistress, Desiree Armfeldt (Eva Dahlbeck). Amongst the guests are Desiree's current lover Count Malcolm (Jarl Kulle) and his wife Charlotte (Margit Carlqvist). During the course of the weekend these three couples meet, separate and exchange partners, providing some lively comedic action and illustrating. Bergman's sardonic attitude towards the vagaries of love. Behind the scintillating and witty approach to this charming period comedy of manners lie and illusions and pretensions of the haute bourgeois, which Bergman cleverly illustrates with his collection of fickle husbands and scheming women. - Director:
- Ingmar Bergman
- Cast:
- Ulla Jacobsson, Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson
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