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The Oswestry Film Society programme will appear on this site once films are scheduled. Keep checking back to find out what's being screened and when, and please come out and support us.
Thank you to our former long-term hosts in Oswestry, the Kinokulture cinema. We are now based just round the corner at the Hermon Chapel Arts Centre. You can check out their own varied range of music and arts events at their separate website, www.hermon-arts.org.uk
MONDAY 19th May 2025, 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
A Real Pain (15) 89 minutes
​Mismatched cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) reunite for a tour through Poland to honour their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the odd-couple's old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.
Culkin - clearly enjoying himself - won the Oscar for best-supporting actor.
Wed May 28th, 2025
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Chinatown (15) - 130 mins
This iconic 1930s-set neo-noir begins when private investigator JJ Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by a woman to prove her husband’s infidelity. Believing it’s a simple case, Gittes soon finds himself drawn into a world of Los Angeles corruption, violence and murder. Nicholson and Faye Dunaway provide electric leads in this elegantly plotted and politically charged film with a sparkling script. Even at 50 years old, Chinatown is still viewed as one of the all-time greatest crime films.
Wed 4th June 2025 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Mickey 17 (15)
136 mins
Satirical black comedy - Mickey (Robert Pattinson - the titular character in 'The Batman') is a disposable crew member on a space mission, a bio-clone menial worker of the future condemned to eternal life, or eternal death, by being repeatedly killed in the service of a space exploration corporation doing fatally dangerous jobs, and then being reincarnated. But after one regeneration, things go very wrong! "An absurdist, anti-capitalist, Trump-mocking masterpiece" -The Independent. Mickey 17, director Bong Joon-ho’s hotly anticipated follow-up to his Oscar-winning Parasite, is an entertaining, crazy rollick through space.
11th June 2025
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
The Last Showgirl (15)
- 88 mins
Pamela Anderson shows her real mettle - a mettle perhaps not seen from her before - playing a seasoned showgirl who has made a 30-year career on the Las Vegas strip, but whose act is repidly declining. When she learns that her famed show is unexpectedly set to close, she faces a late-life crisis. Anderson, whose character is left questioning not just what the future holds but also the costly choices that shaped her past, is excellent, delivering a performance that has single-handedly rewritten the way the former Baywatch celebrity can be viewed as an actor. Jamie Lee Curtis adds zesty suport as Anderson effectively rewrites her career in this poignant drama.
AWAITING LICENCE 2025 tbc, at Hermon Chapel
Stay Awake (15)
- 94 mins - AWAITING SCREENING LICENCE
With a take on what might just be happening around us in Shropshire that we're blissfully unaware of, Stay Awake is a quietly powerful look at the ripple effects on family life of addiction to prescription drugs. It explores addiction from the lesser-seen viewpoint of the carers - in this case two teenage brothers. Their mother is loving and well-meaning, but powerless to pull herself out of the destructive cycle of her disease. The boys must put their dreams on hold as they're constantly discovering their mum passed out, dragging her to hospital, and encouraging her to go to rehab - with the possibility of relapse always lingering. Anchored by three superb performances, Stay Awake finds surprising humour and humanity amid the tragedy of parental addiction.
Wed 7th May 2025 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
A Complete Unknown (15) - 140 mins
* THIS IS A PAST EVENT *
Set in the influential New York music scene of the early 60s, A COMPLETE UNKNOWN follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician BOB DYLAN's (Timothée Chalamet) meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts – his songs and mystique becoming a worldwide sensation – culminating in his ground breaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
26th March 2025 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Agent of Happiness (12A)
- 94 mins - *THIS IS A PAST EVENT*
How can you measure happiness? The country of Bhutan invented Gross National Happiness to do just that, and Amber is one of the agents who travels door to door to meet people and measure how happy they really are. He is still living with his elderly mother at the age of 40, but is nevertheless a hopeless romantic who dreams of finding love: a happiness agent who is in search of his own happiness. We embark with Amber on a cross-country road trip meeting citizens from all walks of life, reminding us of the fragility and beauty of our own happiness. No matter where we live. Documentary. Bhutan (subtitled)
Wed 2nd Apr 2025,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel.
Conclave (12A) - 120mins
*THIS IS A PAST EVENT*
The Power of God. The ambition of men.
Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, cardinals from around the world are meeting in conclave to cast their votes in the world's most secretive election.
They are holy men. But they are dangerously driven. And they have rivals. Over the next 72 hours, one of them will become the most powerful spiritual figure on earth. Who will it be?
Conclave is a thought-provoking papal drama that delivers edge-of-your-seat suspense with a venerable Ralph Fiennes exceptional as the lead, backed by powerful performances from big-hitters Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini.
Top film at the recent BAFTAs – and perhaps by the time we screen it, the Oscars - Conclave is a tale of intrigue, doubt and faith delivering edge-of-your-seat suspense.
Wed 19th Mar 2025, 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel.
Journey's End (12A) - 107 mins - *THIS IS A PAST EVENT*
Journey's End brings R.C. Sherriff's classic thought-provoking play about the futility and slaughter of the first world war to the screen with thrilling power, thanks to director Saul Dibb's hard-hitting urgency and brilliant work from a talented cast.
Set in a dugout on the Western Front in April 1918, it is the emotionally-charged story of a group of British officers, led by a mentally-disintegrating young captain, as – with a massive German attack imminent - they await their fate.
The dramatic action is opened out, whilst always conveying the cramped claustrophobia of this tragic trench-based ordeal, and the dynamic and observant camerawork helps drive the tense momentum.
The OFS is showing this film to support Oswestry’s first Wilfred Owen Festival – Owen the town’s own tragic young officer who died on the front, but whose poetry about the futility of war and the sacrifices made by so many have earned him his own artistic immortality. (Go to www.wilfredowenfestival.co.uk for more events).
This is not a gung-ho action movie. It’s a gripping and profound anti-war statement about men under ultimate stress. A century on, it's never too soon, never too late to think about that.