10 to see at Borderlines Film Festival 2017

Now in its 15th edition, the UK’s biggest rural film festival comes to Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire and Powys from 24 February to 12 March, offering its traditional many-plattered feast of world and independent cinema. Featuring many previews ahead of national release, alongside a rich seam of finely curated older titles, Borderlines brings 17 days of cinematic splendour to the Welsh borders. Here are some key films to look out for.

Now it’s the ripe old age of 50, it’s the perfect time to catch Michelangelo Antonioni’s archetypal swinging-60s classic on the big screen. Blowup is an existential mystery thriller starring David Hemmings as a photographer who believes he may have witnessed a murder while taking pictures in a park one day. Sexy, stylish and deliciously confounding, it’s one of the great London films. At Borderlines, there’ll be an intro and Q&A with Peter Burden, the ghost writer of Hemmings’ autobiography.

These two themed programmes present highlights from the BFI National Archive’s Britain on Film project. Railways promises a selection of films capturing the joys of rail travel from the Victorian era onwards, while Rural Life features archive films spanning from 1903 to 1981 exploring the glories of the British countryside and the communities who live there.

Winner of the best film award at last year’s BFI London Film Festival, Kelly Reichardt’s latest should be at the top of any cinephile’s to-watch list. It’s a gentle trio of stories centred around the lives of women in rural Montana, starring Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams and Laura Dern. Exquisitely sad, and told with Reichardt’s usual sensitivity and eye for landscape, Certain Women finds the director on peak form.

Though less features get written these days about the extraordinary vitality of Romanian cinema than a decade ago (when 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days won the Palme d’Or), the truth is that Romania’s film renaissance largely continues unabated. On the evidence of Graduation, the same is true of 4 Months’ director Cristian Mungiu, who has made another finely turned moral drama. Following a father who takes a step too far in helping his daughter achieve her academic goals, and must navigate ethically tricky waters as a result, this gripping film made Mungiu joint winner of the best director award at Cannes 2016.

2017’s Borderlines is celebrating women filmmakers from around the world, which is a very fine excuse to screen this enigmatic 2008 feature from Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel – still among the finest films of this century. It’s a hypnotic thriller that reveals Martel as a master of framing and control, creating a strange sense of discombobulation as she charts the psychological fallout of a driving incident.

Time to catch up with the hype, as Borderlines presents a number of screenings of Damien Chazelle’s wildly acclaimed new musical. Starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, it’s a dizzying tribute both to Los Angeles and to classic song-and-dance films both American (Singin’ in the Rain) and French (Les Demoiselles de Rochefort). Already garlanded with BAFTAs and Golden Globes galore, only a major upset will prevent this sweeping up handfuls of Oscars come 26 February.

Cuban cinema comes under the spotlight at Borderlines, with titles including Laurent Cantet’s reunion drama Return to Ithaca (2014), Miriam Day’s British documentary A Wedding in Havana (1995) and two canonical Cuban classics from the 1960s: Mikhail Kalatozov’s dazzling Soy Cuba (1964) and this landmark film from Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Set during the Cuban revolution, as aspiring writer Sergio decides to stay put while his wife and peers flee for Miami, Memories of Underdevelopment will be introduced by Cuban cinema specialist Michael Chanan.

After its triumphant return to the big screen in 2016 after many decades’ absence, Abel Gance’s magisterial silent epic will screen in its entirety at Borderlines. Depicting the heroic rise of the young Napoleon Bonaparte, it’s one of the landmark movies of the silent era, presenting an astonishing array of pioneering cinematic techniques. At five and a half hours long, with three intervals, it’s a day-engulfing experience that shouldn’t be missed.

With award-winning features such as About Elly (2009) and A Separation (2011), Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has established himself as one of world cinema’s most distinctive voices. Hinging on how a married couple deals with a sudden violent act, The Salesman is the latest of his series of cinematic moral mazes that do double duty as piercing character studies and grippingly suspenseful drama. Nominated for this year’s Oscar for best foreign language film.

In tribute to the Iranian master filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, who died last year, Borderlines offers screenings of three of his films, and at least two of these screenings are extremely rare opportunities to see them. Alongside his Palme d’Or-winning modern classic Taste of Cherry (1997), the festival will screen his early gem The Report (1977) and, earlier still, 1974’s The Traveller, which follows a 12-year-old boy’s determined efforts to raise enough money to see his favourite football team play in Tehran.