5 things to watch this weekend – 14 to 16 February

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

The second feature from Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel is a gripping and assured present-tense drama about two Palestinian men living in Athens but seeking fake passports to help get them to Germany. It derives its humanity and immediacy from two terrific performances from Mahmood Bakri and Aram Sabbah as Chatila and Reda, whose plan goes awry after Reda squanders the passport money on heroin. To get back on track, they unwisely become embroiled in a plot to scam a gang of people traffickers, as To the Land Unknown evolves into the kind of street-level thriller perfected by filmmaking brothers the Dardennes (in Belgium) and the Safdies (in the US). 

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

Valentine’s Day and the film’s 80th anniversary are excuse enough to have this evergreen British classic back on the big screen this week. The pinnacle of a run of collaborations between director David Lean and playwright Noel Coward, Brief Encounter unfurls in atmospheric black and white and to the plangent strains of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2, as Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard’s two strangers begin their adulterous romance. Although based on a play (Coward’s 1936 one-act drama Still Life), Lean transforms the story into highly expressive cinema, the editing, cinematography and two clipped performances all communicating a turbulent undercurrent of disobedient emotions.

Where’s it on? Blu-ray

Time has been kind to this idiosyncratic fourth feature from Paul Thomas Anderson, which was made during PTA’s ascendancy to the front ranks of American filmmakers – following Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999) – but proved a financial disappointment upon release in 2002. An oddball romance centred around the socially anxious owner of a toilet plunger company, it was a step-change for lead Adam Sandler, perhaps confusing fans of the actor’s goofball comedies even as it led the critics taking him more seriously. Emily Watson plays his unlikely love interest, but their hopes of happiness become derailed when Sandler’s Barry Egan is targeted by scammers. 

Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide

On a trajectory not much taken by other films, this delicate drama travels from Japan to the Lake District as it follows a grieving widower, Kenzaburo, on a journey to scatter his wife’s ashes on the shores of Lake Windermere, the world of the Beatrix Potter stories she loved as a child. Early scenes have the reflective calm of a Hirokazu Koreeda drama, and in fact the actor playing Kenzaburo, Lily Franky, is a veteran of the Koreeda films Like Father, like Son (2013) and Shoplifters (2018). So there’s an enjoyable cognitive dissonance when the scene changes to London cabs and Cumbrian tearooms. This is the fiction feature debut of Patrick Dickinson, expanding the themes of his 2013 short Mr. Rabbit.

Where’s it on? BBC Four, Saturday, 22:45

Unexpected romance plays out to the languorous rhythms of a long-distance train journey in this arthouse charmer, which is getting a welcome showing on BBC Four. A Finnish archaeology student studying in Moscow sets off on her own on the epic journey to Murmansk, in the far north-west of Russia. She wants to check out some ancient petroglyphs – something the boorish miner sharing her compartment openly sniggers at. He doesn’t seem like romance material, but the charm of Juho Kuosmanen’s Linklater-ish brief-encounter drama is how it slowly opens the door to just that.