14-year-old Zeina and her family are the last to have stayed in their besieged hometown of Damascus in Syria. A missile rips a giant hole in their home, exposing them to the outside world. When a rope is mysteriously lowered into the hole, Zeina gets her first taste of freedom, and an unimaginable world of possibility opens up for her…
Sarah Agha discusses casting, magic realism, filmmaking in the Arab world, and how the film resonates a few years down the line.
This is also available as a podcast, if you prefer to listen on the go:
Film writer Savina Petkova discusses Fiume o morte! (Fiume or death!) with its director, Igor Bezinović. In defiance of the Paris Peace Conference Italian poet and military officer Gabriele D’Annunzio led a rogue, short-lived, and ultranationalist occupation of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) in 1919. Over a century later, filmmaker Igor Bezinović revisits this strange historical episode, blending archive, reenactment and interviews with residents in the present, interrogating how a city remembers and forgets, and the enduring presence of European fascism.
A stark and peculiar lesson in the history that is not past, Fiume o morte! won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2025 and is Croatia’s submission for the Oscars.
Ken Loach’s longtime collaborator Rebecca O’Brien joins Gareth Evans for a discussion following Sweet Sixteen, showing as part of Ken Loach: A Retrospective at the Garden Cinema.
This is also available as a podcast, if you prefer to listen on the go:
Director Paul Andrew Williams and actors Andrea Riseborough and Brenda Blethyn join host Joe Miller and a Garden Cinema audience to discuss Dragonfly.
Recorded on 8th November 2025 at The Garden Cinema
Also available to listen to as a podcast:
Ken Loach on his controversial, underseen, and outrightly suppressed films, including The Gamekeeper, The Navigators, The Save The Children Fund Film, Which Side Are You On?, and A Question of Leadership. Part of our season, Ken Loach: A Retrospective.
Also available to listen to as a podcast:
Recorded at The Garden Cinema on October 27th 2025.
Lebanon in the UK: Diaspora Shorts was a programme of short films by 5 (women) Lebanese filmmakers based in the UK, part of our season: New Lebanese Cinema: Reclaiming Storytelling. The season is focused on contemporary filmmaking in Lebanon which sees a new generation of directors telling authentic stories of life on the ground, eschewing as much as possible some of the constraints of European financing bodies and co-productions.
The five filmmakers discuss filmmaking in Lebanon today and what it means to be part of the diaspora.
https://www.thegardencinema.co.uk/film/lebanon-in-the-uk-diaspora-shorts/
The Greek actress, best known for Yorgos Lanthimos’ Alps, Dogtooth, and The Lobster, and currently to be seen in Mahdi Fleifel’s To A Land Unknown, discusses Yannis Oukonomides’ Matchbox and Greek cinema with Erifili Missiou, the curator of the Garden Cinema’s Contemporary Greek Cinema: Beyond the Weird Wave season.