Mostly British Film Festival 2016

The Mostly British Film Festival was created by Ruthe Stein and Jack Bair eight years ago to bring to Bay Area audiences the best in cinema from the UK, Ireland, Australia, India, New Zealand and South Africa. For many of our films this is the only opportunity to see them in a theater. We have shown local premieres of such films as “56 Up,” “Hunger,” “Red Riding Trilogy,” “Lunchbox” and “London River.” The directors represented at the festival include John Boorman, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh and the actors are Colin Firth, Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling, to name just some. The festival is especially proud to have shown early films from Michael Fassbender, Domhnall Gleason and Felicity Jones before they became well known. Our guests of honor have been Malcolm McDowell, Minnie Driver, Michael York and Joel Edgerton. Rebecca Hall will be honored at the 2016 festival.

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The Eighth Mostly British Film Festival

Welcome to the 8^th Annual Mostly British Film Festival February 18-25 at the Vogue and Balboa Theaters. We offer our best-ever slate of 29 films from the UK, Ireland, Australia and India.

Our program includes “A Royal Night Out,” a delightful fantasy (amazingly enough based on a true story) about Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret escaping Buckingham Palace on V-E Day to mingle among commoners, “The Dressmaker” with Kate Winslet in the title role as a successful fashion designer who returns to the Australian backwater town that once exiled her bent on vengeance, “Strangerland,” an unsettling family drama set in Australia’s Outback and starring Nicole Kidman, “Slow West” with Michael Fassbender as a mysterious cowboy in 19^th century Colorado and the riveting Indian courtroom drama “Court.”

Mostly British opens on Feb 18 with “Tumbledown,” a romantic drama starring Rebecca Hall as the grieving widow of a folk musician who finds herself confronted by a music scholar (“Saturday Night Live’s” Jason Sudeikis) seeking to be her late husband’s biographer. The two have a chaotic chemistry, gingerly approaching and then retreating from an actual romance.

Rebecca Hall will be there on opening night to participate in a Q & A. She was most recently seen in “The Gift” and also appeared in “The Town,” “Vicky Christina Barcelona” (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination) and “Iron Man 3.”

Documentaries are especially strong this year. You will love “Women He’s Undressed” about the Australian costume designer Orry-Kelly who dressed movie stars of the 1940s and ‘50s, putting Marilyn Monroe in her notorious see-through gown in “Some Like It Hot.” “Dark Horse” is another must-see documentary, the thrilling story of a racehorse owned by working-class people in Wales that defies the odds with multiple wins.
To mark the Academy Awards on February 28, Mostly British is inaugurating a new series at the Balboa of British films that won Oscars or were nominated. Come be thrilled by matinee screenings of these great films: “Rebecca,” “Secrets & Lies,” “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” and “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.”

British Noir Night will feature additional film classics “Night and the City” and “The Long Good Friday,” both exposing London’s underbelly of two-bit crooks and gangsters.

There’s much more—family dramas, romantic comedies, police procedurals and even our first 3D movie (“Enchanted Kingdom 3D”). If f you are looking for a Christmas present for the movie lover in your life consider our series pass, a great bargain that provides access to all 29 films, including the Classics Series at the Balboa and opening and closing parties for only $100. Series and individual tickets are now available at mostlybritish.org