Time to rise and shine

At previous festivals, East Anglians have been the first Brits to enjoy such future classics as Thelma and Louise, Reservoir Dogs, Bowling for Columbine and more. This year’s crop of UK premieres includes such acclaimed international works as The Last Mitterrand by Robert Guédiguian, France’s answer to Ken Loach.

Casting the net even further afield are Howl’s Moving Castle, the latest eye-popping fable from the Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, and Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch, the supercharged vampire thriller that broke box-office records in Russia.

One of the most hotly anticipated Cambridge premieres is Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers, starring the immortal Bill Murray as an ageing lothario whose colourful past catches up with him in a Friends Re-united frenzy of former lovers and love children.

Speaking in Cannes in May, Jarmusch professed his longstanding love of smaller European film festivals: “They are still a celebration of cinema,” he told me. “The higher thing is still appreciation of films.” But Jarmusch laughed off suggestions that Broken Flowers might prove to be his most commercially successful film for years. “I don’t have high hopes for that. To be honest, I think Americans will probably not get it. But that’s OK. I don’t make films for any particular audience.”

Jarmusch will not be in Cambridge next week, but the guest list still includes some left-field legends. The evergreen indie auteur John Sayles is giving his new political mystery thriller Silver City its premiere. That hardy arthouse perennial Peter Greenaway will also show the five episodes so far in his never-ending film cycle, The Tulse Luper Suit- cases, and Christopher Frayling hosts a public discussion based on his newly published appreciation of spaghetti westerns, Once Upon a Time in Italy.

The Danish director Thomas Vinterberg will also be in Cambridge for the first UK screening of Dear Wendy, an offbeat anti-gun fable scripted by his fellow Dogme movement founder, Lars Von Trier. The film stars the Billy Elliot survivor Jamie Bell as a small-town loner who founds an underground society of peaceful gun worshippers, leading to inevitably grisly consequences.

“The film sets up a contrast between Europe and America,” Vinterberg says. “Between this Anglophile, ritualistic dandyism on the one hand and this completely American, clichéd, western gun culture on the other. It was actually a Dogme rule that you’re not allowed to use firearms in films, but I think Lars was fascinated by hunting at the time. He’s always looking for reasons to tease the grown-ups.”

One key reason why Cambridge can punch above its weight in securing high- profile films and directors is because the Arts Picturehouse belongs to the nationwide independent cinema chain City Screen. Many film- makers and distributors are understandably keener on forging direct relationships with commercial exhibitors than relying on one-off festival screenings.

“It helps if we’re able to deliver bookings as well, which is where some of the other UK festivals have issues with us,” explains Tony Jones. “We do have strength in the fact that we show what we believe in as well. If a film has got a UK distributor, we won’t just have festival screening, we try and have a later run too.”

But this ability to cherry-pick from the global marketplace has only increased political friction with other, larger British cinematic events. The Edinburgh International Film Festival, which takes place just a month after Cambridge, views the competition as a serious threat.

“There should be no big deal with Edinburgh,” argues Jones with an air of exasperation. “At the end of the day we are both building up audiences for specialised films. If we spend our time at each other’s throats scrapping over exclusives, it’s a bit pointless. It would be better if we got together and worked out how we could foster a bit more interest through the whole year in small, independent films. If we can’t support distribution of foreign titles, then really there will be no UK distributors. There will just be DVD releases.”

FIVE NOT TO MISS

Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch) Deadpan whimsy meets Zen comedy as Bill Murray delivers another minimalist masterclass in mid-life melancholy. With a host of starry female cameos as Murray’s army of ex-lovers, this may be Jarmusch’s most accessible crowd-pleaser.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Alex Gibney) The rise and fall of the notorious energy corporation is turned into witty high drama. Incorporating corporate videos, personal interviews and incriminating phone calls, Enron’s culture of greed and dishonesty is nailed in post-Michael Moore style.

With Blood on our Hands: Pusher II (Nicholas Winding Refn) This sequel maintains the original’s edgy, intense atmosphere as it drags the audience through the sleazy underbelly of modern-day Copenhagen. The cast features mostly non- professionals alongside real criminals.

Paradise Now (Hany Aba-Assad) A botched suicide bombing mission spills over into farce in the Palestinian director Aba-Assad’s topical thriller. This blackly funny view of a depressingly familiar subject won a clutch of awards at the Berlin film festival in February.

Hidden Blade (Yamada Yoji) Oscar nominated for Twilight Samurai (2002), the Japanese veteran Yamada delivers a more romantic but still cynical snapshot of the cruelty and corruption behind his country’s much mythologised samurai period. Elegiac and ravishingly shot.