THE 17th Borderlines Film Festival offers cinema-goers across Herefordshire, Shropshire, Malvern and the Marches the perfect opportunity to watch movies that have recently reaped the film industry’s full acclaim.

Running from March 1-17, the Festival is impeccably scheduled to follow last week’s Baftas and the Oscars next week (February 25).

At last Sunday’s glitzy BAFTA awards ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall, Mahershala Ali (Oscar winner for Moonlight) won best supporting actor for his role as Afro-American pianist Dr Don Shirley in the feel-good road movie Green Book. Shirley embarks on a concert tour of the Deep South in the early ’60s; he is mismatched by his driver and bodyguard, bigoted Italian-American Tony Lip. Green Book screens on multiple dates at The Courtyard Hereford, moving on to Malvern Theatres and finishing at the kinokulture Cinema in Oswestry.

Adam Mackay’s roller-coaster political satire, Vice, with a masterful performance from Christian Bale as George W. Bush’s Machiavellian vice president Dick Cheney scooped up the prize for editing. Vice screens at The Courtyard in Hereford from March 2 and at Oswestry’s kinokulture from March 4.

Free Solo, the spectacular account of Alex Honnold’s death-defying attempts to climb the face of Yosemite National Park’s 3,200 foot El Capitan without a rope, has won the Documentary BAFTA. This heart-stopping documentary, which has wowed cinema audiences across Britain, plays at The Courtyard Hereford from March 1 to 3, and at Malvern Theatres on March 3, 5 and 6.

The popular A Star is Born, winner of the BAFTA for original music, with its director Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga as leads, is showing extensively across the Flicks in the Sticks network at the Conquest Theatre, Bromyard, Brilley Village Hall, the Leintwardine Centre, The Simpson Hall, Burghill and Much Birch Community Hall, all in Herefordshire. Says Borderlines Marketing Manager, Jo Comino, “What makes Borderlines special is that it aims high, bringing in prestigious films and talent to the area it covers, while remaining grounded in its audiences and its community. It’s a nice touch that in the village where our newest venue, Yarpole Parish Hall, is located, residents have joined together to buy shares in their local pub, the Bell Inn, which will reopen this month.”

For the first time, the Festival is giving local filmmakers the space to showcase their work in the Festival. Twelve filmmakers will be present with their films –animation, fiction, documentary, local history and horror – at Open Screen on March 15 and 16 at De Koffie Pot, Left Bank. Borderlines invites you along to tell them what you think, and establish a dialogue that will actively contribute to the burgeoning film community in Herefordshire.

Among the new venues for 2019 is All Saints Church, right in the heart of Hereford city. On Friday March 15 the Church will host a classic with an ecclesiastical theme, Hitchcock’s neglected masterpiece I Confess, starring Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest facing a moral dilemma of life or death proportions. A special supper can be booked at the popular Café@All Saints to precede both this screening, and that of Leaning into the Wind, the documentary about acclaimed British artist Andy Goldsworthy, showing in the Church the following evening.

More classic cinema features in a retrospective of the work of influential German director Margarethe von Trotta, the first female winner in 1981 of Venice’s Golden Lion. Four of her films, produced from the mid 1970s through to the early ’80s – The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, The Second Awakening of Christa Klages, The German Sisters and Rosa Luxemburg – evoke the political upheaval and excitement of the time. Context is provided by an introduction to Rosa Luxemburg by feminist programmer and writer Selina Robertson.

Tickets for all venues can be purchased via the Central Box Office at The Courtyard Hereford, in person or by phone on 01432 340555 apart from Malvern Theatres, Ludlow Assembly Rooms, Booth’s Bookshop Cinema in Hay, kinokulture Cinema in Oswestry and The Conquest Theatre in Bromyard; customers should contact these venues directly. See www.borderlinesfilmfestival.org.