Join us for our second installment in a new breakthrough monthly film series at the Cosford Cinema focusing on current world issues such as migration and social inclusion, peace and security, ageing populations, democracy, climate change and artificial intelligence.

The series is intended to bring two types of audiences together: Movie lovers and people who care about current events.

Each screening will be preceded by a wide-ranging, multi-media conversation between Bill Cosford Cinema manager Rene Rodriguez and a special guest.

The series continues on Saturday Dec. 10 at 5 p.m. with “Mariupolis” (2016), a documentary portrait of Ukrainians going about their daily lives — work, home, spending time with their families — while bombs, death and destruction encroach their city.

Lithuanian documentary filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravicius, who was killed in April 2022 while trying to leave Mariupol, shows the city’s then-500,000 residents, working for the steel factory and fishing, for leisure or food, in between shifts. The orthodox church towers above the city and its newly build bronze domes are sitting next to it, waiting to be donned. A tent near by is sheltering a crying icon, which receives a steady flow of visitors.

The screening will be preceded by a 25-minute discussion between Rodriguez and Dina Moulioukova, lecturer at the University of Miami and co-editor of “Russia and the World in the Putin Era.”

The conversation will focus on peace and war, human stories in embattled countries and hyper-realism in cinema. The discussion will include clips from other movies exploring similar subject matter.

Admission is free but registration is required at link above.

“In the style of an essay film that touches and skirts themes of siege, abandonment and mute denial, the camera makes its way through neglected public spaces in a city which seems to have lost much of its population.

“Yet in these paradoxical visions of a place of odd normality and chilling fear, everyday life comes under close observation.  Church bells ring. A shoemaker continues fixing shoes. A young women goes fishing with her father. Teenaged dancers prepare for a performance on Victory Day, May 9, which marks the fall of the Nazi regime in 1945. A father plays with his children. A steel mill continues to operate. Animals in the city’s zoo pace around their cages, suggesting the unease of the human population.

“Upon closer examination, Kvedaravicius gives us some revealing details. In one public building, a mural from the Soviet days of official harmony among peoples is peeling from the wall. In another extended shot, a plaster cast of a Greek statue lies in pieces, suggesting the fate of the city once called Mariupolis by its Greek population.” — David D’Arcy, Screen International