Katherine MacAlister journeys around the world to look at the Phoenix Picturehouse’s global programme

The Phoenix Picturehouse is launching a World Cinema Series, a global tour of the best in foreign cinema, in a selection of Saturday matinees designed to tease the curiosity of filmgoers.

Clara Blackings, the marketing manager at The Phoenix, explains why the Jericho art house cinema has chosen to screen these international classics.

“While we have always pushed to offer a wide variety of cinema experiences, it’s all too easy for audiences to miss out on something truly brilliant.

“That’s why, with the World Cinema Series, we are not only revisiting classics but also those particularly recent films that are still causing intrigue with critics and awards.

“So, if you’ve felt in the dark, or fancy seeing something new or different, the World Cinema Series is certainly worth checking out.”

The first offering on the bill — showing this coming Saturday afternoon — is Au Revoir Les Enfants, winner of the Golden Lion at Venice in 1987.

Set in Nazi-occupied France, Louis Malle’s drama tells of schoolboy Julien’s friendship with three Jewish classmates as they try to evade capture.

In a film of tremendous emotional power, boarding school pupil Julien befriends a new boy, but his childhood innocence ends when Gestapo agents arrive to arrest the Jewish children.

After that, the season sets off for Israel, on March 14, with a gripping documentary, The Green Prince.

It is the story of Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a founding leader of Hamas, who became a spy for the Israelis.

Set against the chaotic backdrop of recent events in the Middle East, Nadav Schirman’s film is relayed in the style of a tense psychological thriller.

This extraordinary documentary recounts the story of a man who emerged as one of Israel’s prized informants and also tells of the Shin Bet agent who risked his career to protect him.

As a defiant teenager growing up in Palestine, Mosab Hassan Yousef’s fervour against Israel was unquestionable, ultimately landing him in prison.

But shaken by Hamas’s brutality within the prison’s walls and a growing disgust for the organisation’s methods, particularly suicide bombing, he had an unexpected change of heart and began to see Hamas as more of a problem than a solution.

Recruited by the Shin Bet — Israel’s internal security agency — and given the code name Green Prince, he spied on the Hamas elite for more than a decade, constantly risking exposure and death, while grappling with the perception that he had betrayed his own family and people.

Poland is the next destination, on March 21, for Ida, a drama about a nun who is about to take her vows when she learns from her only relative that she is Jewish and embarks on a journey to discover her family story.

On March 28, the season ventures into the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo with the Oscar-nominated Virunga, a documentary about the work of rangers in Virunga National Park, who risk their lives to protect the last mountain gorillas.

Finally, on April 7, the journey is completed in Japan, with Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, a look into the life of aviation engineer Jiro Horikoshi, who designed Japanese fighter planes during the Second World War.

See www.picturehouses.com/cinema/Phoenix_Picturehouse or call 0871 902 5736.