TICKETS for the 16th Borderlines Film Festival go on sale from 10am tomorrow (Friday, January 19). The Festival will run from Friday 23 February to Sunday 11 March and take place in 25 venues across four counties on the English/Welsh borders: Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire (Malvern) and Powys.

Borderlines will comprise 257 screenings, a significant increase from 224 last year, with venues like Malvern Theatres, The Conquest Theatre in Bromyard and Presteigne Screen upping the number of shows they are putting on in true festival spirit.

The 76 film titles on offer include 30 previews, films showing to Borderlines audiences in advance of their UK cinema release. They range from the red carpet reception, Opening Gala screening of the 2017 Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Square, a savagely funny satire on the art world, and Sweet Country, aboriginal director Warwick Thornton’s magnificent follow up to Samson and Delilah, a western set in the Australian outback, to the re-release of Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 joyful and sublime version of The Magic Flute, one of the greatest screen operas ever made.

Borderlines is also delighted to announce four UK premieres: three of these, Free and Easy from China, The Gulls from Kalmykia, and Heavenly Nomadic from Kyrgyztan, come courtesy of partnership with Wales One World Film Festival in a strand inspired by the ancient trade network, the Silk Road, from China, through Mongolia and Central Asia to the Mediterranean. The fourth premiere will be The Bookshop, a film adaptation of Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1998 novel, set in an English seaside town in the late 50s where a widow faces local opposition to the bookshop she plans to open. It stars Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy, and the premiere aptly screens at Richard Booth’s Bookshop Cinema in Hay-on-Wye with additional screenings at Malvern and The Courtyard, Hereford.

Borderlines joins in celebrating the centenary of the birth of Ingmar Bergman, one of the most influential directors in the history of cinema. The short retrospective incorporates some of his most powerful movies from the 50s and 60s: Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, and Persona alongside The Magic Flute.

It’s 50 years since May 1968 when a series of demonstrations and protests brought France to a standstill, and changed the wider cultural and social landscape for decades to come. Broadcaster and Festival Patron Francine Stock has selected films around the preview of the Jean-Luc Godard biopic Redoutable by Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) to pay tribute to the spirit of ‘68. Borderlines will screen Godard’s own La Chinoise, Milou en Mai, director Louis Malle’s 1990 look back at the era, as well as the new documentary Faces Places by Godard friend and collaborator Agnes Varda.

Meanwhile, the pioneering rockumentary Monterey Pop (1968) brings to life the unforgettable music of the “summer of lov”: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, The Who, Ravi Shankar. Unavailable to view for years in any format until its restoration last year, the documentary is, with Buena Vista Social Club: Adios, one of two fabulous music experiences that will be screened outdoors at Hereford’s convivial riverside Left Bank on two consecutive nights. Food, drink and firepits will be on hand for sustenance.

Prospective award-winners are also very much in evidence in the Festival programme, notably Guillermo de Toros (Pan’s Labyrinth) The Shape of Water, which has picked up no less than 12 BAFTA nominations as well as the British film that debunks the American Dream once and for all, Martin McDonagh’s multiple Golden Globe winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

Other awards contenders screening at Borderlines are Phantom Thread, a dark love story set in the 1950s London fashion world, with Daniel Day-Lewis in perhaps his final acting role, and US Indie star Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut Lady Bird, an immensely enjoyable coming-of-age story, starring Saorsie Ronan.

Of course, Borderlines would not be the same without its numerous village hall screenings across the region with new venues in Knighton, Powys, and Leintwardine in South Shropshire. For the first time, there will be a two special festival screenings of Notes on Blindness at the Royal National College for the Blind.

Tickets for all venues can be purchased via the Central Box Office at The Courtyard Hereford on 01432 340555, with the exception of Malvern Theatres, Ludlow Assembly Rooms, Booth’s Bookshop Cinema in Hay and The Conquest Theatre in Bromyard, where customers need to contact these venues directly.

For full details visit www.borderlines filmfestival.org from tomorrow.