Entertainment

Geographical features: Belfast Film Festival's new Landforms season

LANDFORMS is a new series of world cinema screenings at Belfast Film Festival's Beanbag Cinema. There will be different seasons featuring premieres of four contemporary films from countries through which a particular geographical feature extends.

Starting next week at the Exchange Place venue, the January season showcases new films from the Sahara. Clash (January 19, 8pm) is a thriller which places viewers within the confines of an Egyptian police van in 2013 as post-revolution tensions boil over.

The Double Steps (January 22, 6pm) follows French artist François Augiéras' alter ego, a wandering ex-soldier, along with an assortment of pilgrims and bandits as they hunt for his fresco in the dunes of northern Mali. This surreal film offers a glimpse of West African culture not commonly seen in cinema.

Banned in its native Morocco as "a flagrant attack on the kingdom's image", Nabil Ayouch's Much Loved (January 26, 8pm) depicts the lives of four high class prostitutes in Marrakech.

Their sisterhood and defiant spirit are their defences against a society which exploits and condemns them.

Finally for January, A Screaming Man (January 29, 6pm) is a story of fatherhood shot against the backdrop of Chad's escalating civil war as personal and political tensions begin to merge.

This Jury Prize-winner at Cannes was the first film from sub-Saharan Africa to compete for the festival's top awards for 13 years.

:: Tickets available via Belfastfilmfestival.org