​
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
Wed 22nd Jan 2025,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel.
Ama Gloria (12A) - 84mins
Cléo (an exceptional performance by six-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani) loves her nanny Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego) more than anything. When Gloria suddenly has to return home to Cape Verde to look after her own children, Gloria invites Cléo to visit her and the two have to make the most of their last summer together.
Marie Amachoukeli’s outstanding feature was the opening film of Cannes Critics’ Week 2023 and has been an audience favourite at film festivals across Europe including London and Dublin. It is produced by Céline Sciamma’s regular producer Bénédicte Couvreur (Petite Maman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Girlhood).
French (subtitled)
Wed Jan 29th, 2025
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Fantastic Fungi (15) -81 mins
Imagine an organism that feeds you, heals you, reveals secrets of the universe and could help save the planet. Fantastic Fungi is a revelatory time-lapse journey that takes you on an immersive journey into the amazing underground network beneath your feet. Stunning cinematography helps us investigate the magical, mysterious and medicinal world of the fungi kingdom and its power to sustain and contribute to the environmental challenges facing life on Earth. With its spectacular footage of growth and decay, and impassioned commentaries about the real magic of mushrooms, this documentary is a treat for the eye and the ear.
We will also be holding a short Q&A with the founders of Shrooma, Oswestry's new mushroom-growing and research centre.
Wed 5th Feb 2025,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Sightseers (15) - 88 mins
​Superb example of British dark humour – a delightful story written by and starring Alice Lowe and Steve Oram as a new dorky couple Chris and Tina who take off for a long holiday tour across the countryside. These two are perfect foils; they play deftly off each other in a quietly crashing-into-funny way. Chris has a short fuse for every-day annoyances: you see a guy littering, you run him over with your caravan! Is Tina – repressed by her domineering mother – up for the ride? This is Natural Born Killers meets the Ramblers Association on a caravan tour of carnage. Quirky British black humour at its best - brilliantly written and full of character.
Wed Feb 12th, 2025
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
The Outrun (15) -118 mins
The Outrun is a brutally honest drama about addiction and recovery, strength and survival, mental health and the ability of the sea, the land and of people to restore life and renew hope.
After a decade away in London, 29-year-old Rona returns home to the Orkney Islands. Sober but lonely, she tries to suppress her memory of the events which set her on this journey of recovery. Slowly the mystical land enters her inner world and - one day at a time - Rona finds hope and strength in herself among the heavy gales and the bracingly cold sea.
The film stars four-time Oscar-nominee Saoirse Ronan, alongside Paapa Essiedu, Saskia Reeves and Stephen Dillane, and was highly rated at this year's Edinburgh Film Festival. It's directed by Nora Fingscheidt from a screenplay written jointly by her and Amy Liptrot.
Wed 19th Feb 2025,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Millions (12A) - 94 mins
PLUS: Before Millions, Oswestry-based film director Gareth Thomas will talk about and show part of his new locally-produced mainstream TV project.
The UK is about to switch its currency to the euro when a gang robs a train loaded with pounds on their way to incineration. One of the big cash bags is thrown off the train by a Ronnie Biggs-ish villain, and by chance it falls into the lap of seven year old Damian. He and his brother have only a few days to spend their windfall before it all becomes worthless bits of paper.
Damian wants to use the money for good causes. His brother is rather more materialistic.
Damian then starts seeing what the world and the people around him are made of.
And beware the bad guy (Christopher Fulford) who’s now skulking about the neighbourhood looking for his missing loot.
Directed by the talented Danny Boyle, ethics and being human come to the fore in this uplifting, tender, emotional and inspirational cross-generational mix of comedy and drama.
Wed 26th Feb 2025
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Rose (12A) - 106 mins -
Set over the course of one week, ROSE is the story of two sisters, Inger and Ellen, and how their relationship is challenged on a highly anticipated coach trip to Paris. When Inger announces her struggles with mental health to the group, the sisters are faced with pity from some and downright discrimination from others. On arrival in Paris, it soon becomes clear that Inger has a hidden agenda concerning a figure from her past, ultimately involving the entire group in her hunt for answers. Danish, French. (subtitled).
Wed Mar 5th, 2025
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (15) - 101 mins
​Based on a true story, this is a fascinating black comedy about failed biographer and 1990s serial literary forger Lee Israel.
Her career as an author had bombed and, desperate for money as all her contemporaries seemed to be getting huge advances, Israel found a new vocation: forging letters from stars and celebrities. She sold about 400 to credulous or cynical dealers before getting her collar felt by the authorities.
Melissa McCarthy is magnificent as the rude and bad-tempered main character, abetted by Richard E Grant as her lounge-lizard drinking buddy.
Adapted from Israel's own memoir, this Oscar and BAFTA nominated film is a witty and literate story of desperation and crooked creativity!
Wed 12th March 2025 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Chuck Chuck Baby (15)
- 102 mins -
Helen lives with her ex-husband, his 20-year-old girlfriend, their new baby - and his dying mother Gwen. Her life is a grind, and like all the other women she toils with at the local chicken factory, is spent in service of the clock. Her mundane world takes a surprising turn, however, with the reappearance of Joanne, her teenage crush. Joanne, in fact, always felt the same way, and so the two begin a much-delayed flirting game, and start to fall in love. Helen's zest for life returns, but Joanne is haunted by her the darker parts of her past in their claustrophobic home town.
Wed 19th Mar 2025, 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel.
Journey's End (12A) - 107 mins -
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.
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 suerb erformances, Stay Awake finds surprising humour and humanity amid the tragedy of arental addiction.
26th March 2025 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Agent of Happiness (12A)
- 94 mins -
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 Jan 15th 2025, 7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Our Kind Of Traitor (15) - 108 mins - *THIS IS A PAST EVENT*
This sophisticated twisting thriller from master spy-teller John le Carre sees a British couple holidaying in Morocco sucked into a former Russian mafia money-man (the excellent Stellan Skarsgård)'s attempts to escape from his bosses who want him dead - his only hope is to ask the unsuspecting Brits to broker him sanctuary with the UK intelligence services, in return for exposing a vein of corruption that runs right to the heart of the City of London. The stakes grow increasingly higher as Ewan McGregor and Naomi Harris - perfect Le Carre innocents caught up in a web of deceit - are forced on the run across Europe as the might of the Russian mafia closes in. With beautiful cinematography, the suspense is built relentlessly, keeping you guessing as to who is what...
Wed 8th Jan 2025,
7.30pm, at Hermon Chapel
Wilding (PG), ENCORE SCREENING - 78min film, + 26 min recorded Q&A
*THIS IS A PAST EVENT*
AFTER SELLING OUT 'WILDING' LATE LAST YEAR, WE'RE DELIGHTED TO START THE OSWESTRY FILM SOCIETY'S 2025 PROGRAMME WITH A MUCH-REQUESTED SECOND SCREENING.
Based on Isabella Tree's best selling book of the same title, Wilding tells the incredible story of a couple who bet on nature for the future of their failing 400 year old estate.
The film follows them as they set to work with a ground breaking vision, battling entrenched tradition and major forces along the way, daring to place the fate of their farm into the hands of nature.
Ripping down fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild.
It is the beginning of a grand project that will become one of the most significant experiments in Europe.
​
Director David Allen.
Run time 78 minutes.
Post-film: Recorded Q&A with Isabella Tree and Craig Bennett (CEO, Wildlife Trust) - courtesy of Met Film.