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This November, Towner Cinema brings you the best of new releases - expect plush production and A-list casts across this selection, which includes heartfelt comedy, witty satire and slower paced sultry mystery. Read on for the highlights...

In 2012, the remains of Richard III, the last English king killed in battle, were discovered beneath an unassuming Leicester car park. This unprecedented archaeological find was helmed by Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins), an amateur historian who had developed a special affinity with the king, perhaps relating to her own fears of becoming lost as a woman struggling to make a mark through her career and her life. The Lost King, written by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, is a wry fictionalisation of Phillipa's personal journey and historical breakthrough, piecing together clues left unturned for 500 years. 

Oscar-winning director Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, In Bruges) returns with The Banshees of Inisherin, another masterfully bleak and absurd tragicomic fable, as hilarious as it is heart-breaking. Set in 1923 on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, whose inhabitants don't seem too concerned about the civil war raging across the mainland, Padraic (Colin Farrell) is devastated when his companion Colm (Brendan Gleeson) suddenly puts an end to their lifelong friendship. With help from his sister and a troubled young islander, Padraic sets out to repair the damage by any means necessary, leading to shocking consequences that spiral out of control for everyone involved.

There are a few threads connecting the works of Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) but one that stands out is a fascination with the dark impulses of humanity and how these tend to ignite sparks between near-strangers. Decision to Leave is neo-noir, sultry and mysterious with a glimmer of romance as a benevolent detective begins to fall for the mysterious wife of the man whose death he is investigating. Uneasy attraction, or the allure of uncertainty, is a common theme - while Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) asks if the dead man was pushed from a cliff or compelled to jump, we wonder whether our detective will take his own leap too. 

While millions of birds migrate freely in the skies, Fadia, a Palestinian refugee exiled to Lebanon, yearns for the ancestral homeland she is denied. In this striking, deeply poetic and profound documentary, Fadia challenges the film’s director Sarah Beddington to find an ancient mulberry tree that stands as witness to her family’s existence – with only inherited memories, a blind man and a two-headed dragon as her guides.

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