Empire of Light
Early 1980s: in the southern English seaside town of Margate stands the Empire, a fine old cinema. Every morning the cinema is opened by Hillary, a sombre and unstable woman who sells the tickets there, checks the receipts and cleans the halls. She has fine colleagues, but her boss is a different story: he regularly asks her for sexual favours. One day, she gets a new colleague, Stephan, someone she gets on well with, someone with whom she begins an affair. But Stephan, a black man, increasingly faces overt racism. This and her unsteady state of mind do not help the fledgling relationship.
Director Sam Mendes, who won an Oscar in 1999 with American Beauty, touches in this fine drama on a number of topical issues such as sexual transgression and racism, but above all, he pays tribute to the magic of film theatres and cinema. Starring Olivia Colman, Michael Ward and Colin Firth.