The 21st Cinecity Festival takes place in 10 venues over 10 days from Friday 10th to Sunday 19th November. The organisers promise the very best in international cinema with a diverse programme of premieres and previews and a quick scan of the programme bears that out.

The festival opens at the Duke of York’s with Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’ much-anticipated follow-up to The Favourite and closes at the same venue with All Of Us Strangers, starring leading Irish actors Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in a haunting story of love and loss.

If we were to choose our favourites, the stand out films would be the latest bittersweet comedy from Finland’s finest Aki Kaurismaki, Fallen Leaves – he can do no wrong in our eyes – and the new documentary celebrating London’s legendary and most infamous cinema, Scala!!! (Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world’s wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits). For those not in the know this King’s Cross den of inequity was where you could spend a day (or all-nighter) watching the best vintage and contemporary mondo, trashy, horror and porn films from the leading lights of underground cinema. There’s a Q&A with former Scala programmer and director, Jane Giles, after the screening on Monday 13th November.

For the cineastes out there, Powell & Pressburger are celebrated with a multisensory screening of Black Narcissus at Fabrica on Sunday 12th, the still-shocking Peeping Tom, which is followed by a (probably needed) discussion with a forensic psychiatrist and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, and their ravishing masterpiece The Red Shoes, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary.

There are a number of festival events and screenings celebrating the life and work of legendary Brighton-based artist film-maker Jeff Keen (the “Peckinpah of the South Downs”). He was a pioneer of experimental film whose rapid-fire animations, multiple screen projections and raucous performances redefined multimedia art in Britain. Current local film-making talent features in a showcase of short dramas and docs selected from open submissions to the festival in Cinecity Open and the New Voices programme for young film-makers aged 25 and under.

ACCA presents films with live scores including Dorothy Towers, the story of a social housing development, built in 1971 and located adjacent to Birmingham’s Gay Village. This screening will be accompanied by a live score, composed and performed by Sean Burns and Lai Power and will be followed by a conversation with film-maker Sean Burns.

There are many interactive screenings and events, taking place across Brighton & Hove and at Depot, Lewes, with a wide-ranging programme to suit all tastes.

For full details and to book tickets click here.