2020. It perhaps feels this way with every new decade but 2020 very much feels like the future. 

Cinema often speculates about both near and distant futures. As such it becomes a neat way of checking on how we’re doing. So what’s to come? 2021 has Johnny Mnemonic for the Keanu stans; 2022 - Soylent Green; by 2027 we’ve passed Her and arrived at Children of Men; 2029 is when Skynet sends the T-1000 back in Terminator 2. 

It doesn’t paint a particularly optimistic picture, but cinematic visions of the future rarely do. And although science fiction can be morally muddy and ethically challenging it usually – with stress on usually – ends in a humanity which somehow endures... 

In this brochure, aside from Star Wars, much of our offering looks back on realities past and present, rather than far away. Jojo Rabbit from Taika Waititi sends up the Hitler Youth, while Sam Mendes’ 1917 takes the more traditional route on the war film – it is a tight and technical thriller set in the World War One trenches. Terence Malick uses his own ethereal style to frame a WW2 drama set in Austria in A Hidden Life.

Armando Iannucci assembles a huge ensemble for The Personal History of David Copperfield. It arrives after opening the BFI London Film Festival and sits neatly alongside Greta Gerwig’s Little Women which continues into January. Robert Eggers’  The Lighthouse exists in a very different 19th Century New England to Little Women. Altogether otherworldly, it is not to be missed.

We stray closer to those aforementioned dystopias with films rooted in the present. Documentaries Citizen K and The Kingmaker tread into the politics of Russia and The Philippines, while Bombshell looks at the allegations against Fox News’s Roger Ailes for sexual harassment. Bong Joon-ho’s incredibly well received Parasite examines greed, wealth and class discrimination in South Korea.

Continuing with contemporaneousness, we present a short season chosen by photographer Martin Parr in conjunction with Aberdeen Art Gallery. His Think of Scotland exhibition is currently at the Gallery and we hope these 4 wonderful films in Martin Parr: Think of Film form part of that landscape. Our other seasons include Scotland Loves Anime and a Dark Fantasy season in Kino Bar for a dark January. Welcome to 2020...