An epic family drama spanning three generations of a Jewish family, who moved from a rural village to the city, became wealthy, respected, bourgeois and/or radicalised and Hungarianised, set against a backdrop of the final days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, World War 1, the rise of fascism, the Holocaust and the Communist era. A tour-de-force performance by Ralph Fiennes in various reincarnations, especially as the character who won a fencing gold medal for Hungary in the 1936 Olympics, in th find out more...

Varanasi, India, 1938; 7-year-old Chuyia's husband has died and she is forced to live as a virtual prisoner, as a future cash cow for the mainly elderly inhabitats, in a widows' ashram. Her main ally, beautiful and still young Kalyani, is flirting with handsome Brahmin's son, and Mahatma Gandhi follower, Narayan, but marriage for a widow is against the arcane laws of the Hindu religion. Plausible but with an uncomfortable mixture of Bollywood melodrama and social realism. find out more...

Set during the Great Depression, Jacob Janowski finds his promising career as a vetinary student shattered by family tragedy. Bereft and confused Jacob joins the Benzini Brothers circus as the vet for their animals and in particular the company’s elephant, Rosie. But it is the ringmaster’s wife that really holds the young Jacob’s attention, and it is this mutual attraction that forms the heart of the story. Based on Sara Gruen’s best selling novel, ‘Water for Elephants’ is a sumptuous but relati find out more...