A Taste of Honey

Tony Richardson : 1961

Jo is an awkward, shy 17-year-old girl living with her promiscuous alcoholic mother, Helen. Desperately longing to simply be loved, when her mother's latest "romance" drives Jo out of their apartment, she spends the night with a black sailor on a brief shore leave. But when Jo's mother abandons her to move in with her latest lover, Jo finds a job and a room for herself, meets Geoffrey, a shy and lonely homosexual, and allows him to share her flat. When she discovers that she is pregnant with the sailor's child, Geoffrey, grateful for her friendship, looks after her, even offering marriage. Their brief taste of happiness is short-lived for Jo's fickle and domineering mother, her own romantic hopes dashed, appears on the scene, determined to drive the gentle Geoffrey from the flat and take over the care of her daughter, rearranging everything to suit herself. The film had its international premiere in competition at Festival de Cannes 1962, where it won Best Actor and Best Actress awards for Murray Melvin and Rita Tushingham.

El Sur

Víctor Erice : 1983
The South

Recalling her youth in 1950s northern Spain, Estrella revisits her relationship with her beloved father Agustin, raised in the south, and realises how little she knew of him and his secrets. Víctor Erice's delicate and mysterious film reveals his abiding fascination with memory and loss, missed opportunities and the links between private dreams and political realities. The performances, like the meticulously lit compositions and evocative soundtrack, are superb, exquisitely beautiful and profoundly moving. His second feature premiered in competition at Festival de Cannes 1983.

The Orphanage

Juan Antonio Bayona : 2007
El orfanato

Many years ago, Laura left the orphanage where she had spent her childhood. Now, thirty years later, she returns with her husband Carlos and her young son Simon, with a dream of restoring and reopening the long-abandoned orphanage as a home for disabled children. But the mysterious surroundings awaken Simon's imagination and the boy starts to spin a web of fantastic tales and not-so-innocent games. As events take a sinister turn, Laura slowly becomes convinced that something long-hidden and terrible is lurking in the old house, something waiting to emerge and inflict appalling damage on her family. The film premiered in the Séances Spéciales at the Semaine de la Critique at Festival de Cannes 2007.