As an additional event to our usual monthly calendar we’re screening a double-bill for Halloween. Two films for a fiver. We’re starting a little earlier than normal so the first film, Grabbers, starts at 7:30pm. Then there’ll be a 15 minute interval where you can grab a drink from the bar before An American Werewolf In London begins at 9:20pm.

Not far from the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu, now ruled by the religious fundamentalists, proud cattle herder Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed aka Pino) lives peacefully in the dunes with his wife Satima (Toulou Kiki), his daughter Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed), and Issan (Mehdi Ag Mohamed), their twelve-year-old shepherd. In town, the people suffer, powerless, from the regime of terror imposed by the Jihadists determined to control their faith. Music, laughter, cigarettes, even soccer have been banned.

The women have become shadows but resist with dignity. Every day, the new improvised courts issue tragic and absurd sentences. Kidane and his family are being spared the chaos that prevails in Timbuktu. But their destiny changes abruptly in this stunningly rendered film from a master of world cinema

Six apocalyptic Argentine stories of revenge combine in this hugely enjoyable and extreme anthology. Ordinary people provoked into acts of madness are the theme of Wild Tales, an Oscar-nominated extreme satire about modern life by Argentinian writer/director Damián Szifrón. With the darkest of humor, it graphically illustrates what happens when the stress of 21st century living causes regular citizens to “go postal.” The aptly named Wild Tales, a Best Foreign Language Film nominee at the most recent Academy Awards, is produced by Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, whose own films frequently approach social meltdowns in a slapstick vein. Szifrón’s movie, a portmanteau of six distinct stories, also provokes shocked laughter, as it did at its Cannes world premiere last May and at TIFF last September. You almost feel guilty for laughing.