by Meredith Brody (February 4, 2025)
We cinephiles contain multitudes. Luckily, the SF Bay Area continues to cater to its diverse audiences with a number of well-curated film festivals. One of my favorites has always been the annual Mostly British Film Festival, which colonizes (haha) the Vogue Theater for 8 days in February. Mostly British includes films from the UK, Ireland, Australia, India, South Africa, and New Zealand. Catnip for not only the Acorn and Britbox addicts, but for Anglophiles and others.
With the Madness of the Would-Be Orange King swirling around in the ether, escaping into something soothing and distracting is my own mental-health-move of choice. And, as usual, I’d prefer to go to EVERYTHING. New, revival, doc, whatever. Keep myself out of the Slough of Despond, plus get a glimpse of both new English cinema and some vintage hits.
But just in case that’s not possible, I’ve decided to focus on a few areas of special interest (trailers and interviews after the article). Mostly British combines its Opening and Closing Night films with parties where you can sip, nibble, and discuss whatever with your fellow festgoers. This year the Opening Night Film is The Penguin Lesson (Peter Cattaneo, 2025, Thursday, February 6th; party at 5:30 pm, film at 7:30 pm) starring the droll Steve Coogan as a teacher in a private school in 1976 repressive Argentina, who has an unusual pet: yes, the penguin of the title. The screening is preceded by the Opening Night party within walking distance, at Presidio Kebab.
Closing Night is a Franco-Anglais rom com, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (2025, Thursday February 13th, screening at 7:30 pm ), a debut film from its French director Laura Piani, set in Shakespeare & Company, the bookstore on the banks of the Seine named after Sylvia Beach’s place. A young clerk there needs both a boyfriend and inspiration for her first book. I saw it in Toronto last year, and it went down easy (helps if you’re a bookish Francophile as well as an Anglophile). Afterwards you don’t even have to leave the confines of the Vogue, where a dessert party will appear right after the screening.
Mostly British is featuring two mini retrospectives inspired by two recent documentaries: Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (Dave Hinton, 2024, Friday, February 7th, 3 pm), with Martin Scorsese offering his valentine to the prolific directing team who made two dozen films together for their company The Archers. According to Scorsese, they’re “the only independent filmmakers who managed to work within the system and still get away with making truly experimental films.” In addition to the documentary, stick around afterwards (separate ticket required!) and you can see I Know Where I’m Going! (1945, Friday, February 7th, 5;30 pm), an extravagant romance wherein headstrong Wendy Hiller is frustrated in her quest to arrive at the private island where she’s about to marry one of the richest men in the world and inconveniently is distracted by a considerably poorer Royal Navy Officer on leave, played by Archers favorite Roger Livesey. Their glorious, witty Technicolor production, The Red Shoes (1945, Saturday February 8th, 4 pm), stars the riveting Anton Walbrook as the Diaghilev clone who forces exquisite Moira Shearer to choose between being a prima ballerina and a young composer that she loves.
The Merchant-Ivory tribute is even briefer: a delightful documentary, Merchant Ivory (Stephen Soucy, 2024, Monday February 10th, 2:30 pm), featuring lively and charming interviews with Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, and Helena Bonham-Carter, as well as film clips galore (I DO love a clip show). Afterwards a Zoom interview will be conducted with doc director Stephen Soucy and his subject, 96-year-old James Ivory, conducted by Mostly British senior programmer Maxine Einhorn.
And since you’re there already, purchase a separate ticket and watch Merchant Ivory’s breakout hit, A Room with a View (1985, Monday February 10th, 5 pm), starring Helena Bonham-Carter (her film debut at 18 years old), as well as Julian Sands, Rupert Graves, Daniel Day-Lewis, Maggie Smith, and Judi Dench, set in a ravishingly beautiful Florence in the early 1900s.
There are five films programmed in the festival’s Irish Spotlight, two documentaries and three fiction films, all playing in one densely-programmed day (each requiring separate tickets.). A famed artist who lives and works on her sheep farm is profiled in Sheepland (Cara Holmes, 2023, Sunday, February 9th, 11 am); immediately following, Housewife of the Year (Sunday, February 9th, 12:30 pm), about a competition program that ran on Irish TV between 1969 and 1995, revealing the changes in women’s status in Ireland during those years.
Swing Bout (Maurice O’Carroll, 2024, Sunday February 9th, 2:30 pm) is about a woman boxer who faces a moral dilemma: should she take a dive for 10,000 pounds or fight for real with the chance to move up in the ranks?
Afterwards there’s the intriguing Imogen Poots in Rose’s War (Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy, 2024, Sunday February 9th, 4:30 pm), about the real-life Rose Dugdale, wealthy heiress who rebelled and joined the Irish Republican Army.
And we finish the marathon day with Nowhere Special (Uberto Pasolini, 2021, Sunday February 9th, 7 pm), where handsome, boyish James Norton plays a young father with a terminal illness who has to find a family for his four-year-old son before he dies.
Four famed actors each star in movies so far unseen on American screens. Pierce Brosnan plays 21 years older than himself in The Last Rifleman (Terry Loane, 2023, Monday, February 10th, 7:30 pm), as a 92-year-old WWII vet who escapes his nursing home to travel to France for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Ian McShane incarnates a professional killer in American Star (Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego, 2024, Tuesday, February 11th, 7 pm ), out for his last assignment on a picturesque Canary Island. Guy Pierce is an English missionary who arrives in 19th century New Zealand to convert Maoris in The Convert (Lee Tamahori, Wednesday February 12th, 2:30 pm). And Sir Ian Mckellen swans around in the 1934 theater world as a vicious critic who tussles with actress Gemma Arterton and a great supporting cast including Mark Strong, Romola Garai, and Lesley Manville in The Critic (Anand Tucker, 2023, Thursday February 13th, 2:30 pm).
Another great British actor, Hugh “Downtown Abbey” Bonneville, will be onstage for a tribute, “An Evening with Hugh Bonneville” (Saturday, February 8th, 7 pm), featuring an onstage interview with Artistic Director Ruthe Stein, followed by a screening of Julian Fellowes’ From Time to Time, with Bonneville and Maggie Smith. The evening is already sold out, but there may be a rush line. Or you can buy a ticket to see Bonneville in Uncle Vanya at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, where he’ll be appearing from February 14th through March 23rd. The Festival also offers a sneak preview of Bonneville’s newest film Paddington in Peru where he plays the bear’s adoptive father and is joined by an all star cast mixing animation with an all star live action cast including Emily Mortimer, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Olivia Colman, Antonio Banderas plus Ben Whishaw as the voice of Paddington (Thursday, February 13th, 5:30 pm).
But wait! There’s MORE! Peruse the entire program to discover the nine other films we didn’t manage to include in these highlights. Take a flyer!
Meredith Brody, a graduate of both the Paris Cordon Bleu cooking school and USC film school, has been the restaurant critic for, among others, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and SF Weekly, and has written for countless film magazines and websites including Cahiers du Cinema, Film Comment, and Indiewire. Her writings on books, theater, television, and travel have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Interview. She also contributes to EatDrinkFilms including her“Meals with Meredith,” where she talks about food and film with filmmakers at restaurants in northern California, writes about vintage cocktails and where she eats during film festivals at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. A selection of her EDF pieces are found here.
One could describe Meredith as “hooked on cinema” as she attends four-five films a day at many bay area and international festivals each year. Somebody has to do it. Read about her journey back to festivals after two years in pandemic mode.
TRAILERS & INTERVIEWS
Program book
MORE FILMS AT MOSTLY BRITISH
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Sf2VD1Ljk
eatdrinkfilms.com 