From debut Iraqi director Hasan Hadi, The President’s Cake is a beautiful tale of love, friendship and resilience told from the perspective of a child growing up under Saddam Hussein’s oppressive regime.   It was the first Iraqi film to feature at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered in the Directors' Fortnight and won both the section's Audience Award, as well as the festival's prestigious Camera d'Or.

Under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, nothing will stop his mandatory birthday celebrations, including choosing a child from each school class across the land to bake a cake in his honour.   Despite Lamia’s best efforts to avoid it, knowing how difficult it will be to source the ingredients, she is picked among her peers to produce the cake, which she must do, or face the consequences.

Drama 106 mins

Highly recommended

Review:  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/11/the-presidents-cake-review-sweet-portrait-of-life-in-wartime-iraq-builds-to-an-explosive-climax        

Trailer: https://youtu.be/ovHvYXbNSwo?si=eyA2Q-1EexbqZMz2

Directed by Keith Swainston

Jenny and Sam, and their baby Phoebe, have recently moved into their new home. But something feels frightening and wrong. Very wrong. Over the baby monitor, at 2:22 every night, Jenny hears footsteps around her daughter's cot. Could the house be haunted?

When their friends Lauren and Ben come round for a housewarming dinner, they drink wine, relive their pasts, and argue about the existence of ghosts. They decide to stay up until 2:22, to discover the truth. Over one adrenaline-filled night – as the foxes scream outside – secrets will emerge and ghosts may appear…

Spine-chilling, funny and scary, Danny Robins' play 2:22 was premiered at the Noël Coward Theatre in London's West End in August 2021, that version was directed by Matthew Dunster went on to win Best New Play at the 2022 WhatsOnStage Awards, and was nominated for Best New Play at the Olivier Awards.

This amateur production is presented by The Bancroft Players in association with Nick Hern Books Ltd and is proudly sponsored by Raymond James Hitchin.

Award-winner Sandra Oh (Killing Eve) plays the title role in this razor-sharp reimagining of Molière’s classic dark comedy.

Telling the truth isn’t always that simple.    Alice, a brilliant novelist, despises the carefully constructed lies of modern society.   But the more she challenges those around her, the fiercer the backlash becomes.   Soon, she must confront the price of speaking her truth in a world that would rather silence her.

Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Indhu Rubasingham directs Martin Crimp’s (Cyrano de Bergerac) highly anticipated play.

A fishing boat reappears in a Cornish coastal village 30 years after vanishing, but unnerving and inexplicable events unfold when three men take it out on the sea once again in this supernatural drama.

Those in peril on the sea are the subject of this arresting ghost story from Cornish film-maker Mark Jenkin.   This is not a traditional ghost story by any means.

Jenkin makes of it something more elusive and complex, with a strangeness and enigma present from the beginning; the film appears to be saying that there is something unknowable here even without the time slip. It’s another really bold and distinct statement from Jenkin.

("I was totally absorbed by this" - Tim)

Review:         https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/30/rose-of-nevada-review-mark-jenkin-cornish

Trailer:         https://youtu.be/bw371ui9cTk?si=aVbuuucIvN5HT7e0]