This year the Polish School ln Hitchin celebrates its fifteenth birthday.

The film “Warsaw 44”, made in 2014, by Jan Komasa is a culturally important film in Poland and is on the Polish A-level curriculum in the UK.   It is about the uprising in Warsaw in 1944 but as a film it helped to re-align the national conversation about this historic event.

Jan Komasa is an award winning director.   His latest film “The Good Boy“ released this year stars Stephen Graham and is on our possibles list.

This is a modern war film with romance at its heart so expect some blood and violence but nothing more than you get on TV.

There will be an introductory talk to explain more about the historical context and the film’s significance.   Polish snacks will be served before the film and there will be time for Q&A at the end.   Approximate timings are

Doors and bar with snack from 6pm

Talk 6.40pm

Film 7pm

Q&A 9pm

Discover Lee Miller, the pioneering war photographer who documented the truth of the Nazi regime.  A Sky Original film starring Kate Winslet, Lee follows Miller’s extraordinary journey from model to frontline correspondent, capturing some of the most iconic and harrowing images of WWII.

Presented as part of The Hitchin Festival

Drama, war, 117m

REVIEW | TRAILER

Les Liaisons Dangereuses  

by Christopher Hampton

based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

directed by Marianne Elliott

BAFTA Award-winner Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread) joins Aidan Turner (Rivals) in a striking new staging of Christopher Hampton’s celebrated adaptation of the classic novel, where among the glittering salons of the super-rich, one misstep can mean ruin.

Marquise de Merteuil is a master in the art of survival. Alongside the magnetic Vicomte de Valmont, they turn seduction into strategy and weaponise desire.  But when their alliance collapses into rivalry, the battle between them threatens to destroy everyone in their path.

Filmed live on stage at the National Theatre, Marianne Elliott (Angels in America) directs this thrilling game of love, lies, and social warfare.

Presented as part of The Hitchin Festival

This documentary is a portrait of Edna O’Brien, the groundbreaking Irish novelist whose life was marked by literary fame, controversy, exile, and artistic reinvention.

The film includes readings from her journals (voiced by Jessie Buckley) and contributions from writers such as Gabriel Byrne and Walter Mosley, tracing O’Brien’s journey from banned author to international icon.

Documentary, 100m

Presented as part of The Hitchin Festival

REVIEW | TRAILER

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.  

Lamia’s quest for the ingredients allows us explore the gamut of Iraqi society, painting a moving portrait of the resilience of a people caught between authoritarian rule and injudicious American imperialism.

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.

Highly recommended