One of the masterpieces of modern cinema, adapted from Carlo Levi's autobiographical experiences when exiled by the Fascists for 2 years in the 30s to an arid and poverty stricken south Italian village, a place so desolate that even Christ stopped short of going there. Here Levi learns to understand the national character which he finds amusing, irritating and sympathetic, impoverished and exploited. but with a magical imagination. Here the man as writer, as doctor and as painter is transformed find out more...

Set in the 1930s and based around real events, we follow a diverse group of characters and events in depression hit New York. The young Orson Welles, with a group of equally idealistic and determined actors, sets about trying to stage a performance of the infamous left leaning musical 'Cradle Will Rock'. This has an awesome cast and is strikingly visualised, but Robbins has perhaps bitten off more history than it is possible to chew on in one two hour movie. Nevertheless a powerful and absorbi find out more...

Forget that this is a Scorsese movie, 'cos there's not a gangster or a grifter in sight. Stunningly shot, this is the visually breathtaking account of the early life of the 14th Dalai Lama, starting with his discovery by Buddhist monks in the northern Tibet of 1935. Meticulously detailed but well-paced, it's a rich, riveting movie with a powerfully haunting soundtrack from Philip Glass. find out more...

An award-winning and arty biopic, adapted from his memoirs, of the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich, focusing on the period between the 30s and 60s and his deeply ambivalent relationship with Stalin. Worthy and with a resonant cinematic understanding of Shostakovich's opuses. find out more...

White Russian General Fyodor Voronin is living as an exile in Paris with his devoted wife Arsinoe, but even to her he is an enigma. In the turmoil of a pre-WWII Europe where do the man's loyalties lie? To old Russia, to the Communists, or perhaps even the Nazi's? Based on a real unsolved mystery the film concentrates not on the mechanics of espionage, but on the consequences, emotional and other, of a world where deceit, concealment and conspiracy are the norm. Who and what do you believe? Tripl find out more...