The Summer BookPG

Directed by Charlie McDowell | Finland/UK/USA | 2024 | 1h 35m | Starring Glenn Close, Anders Danielsen Lie, Emily Matthews, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Sophia Heikkilä

Eight-year-old Sophia spends the summer with her father and grandmother on her family’s island in Finland’s Gulf, learning about the natural world around her. All three are grieving the recent death of Sophia’s mother, each in their own way. Directed by Charlie McDowell and starring Glenn Close, this drama is based on Tove Jansson’s novel and follows the quiet rhythms of a family coming to terms with loss.

Reviews

‘It is a haiku of a movie, conveying profound thoughts about time, memory, loss, and nature through a simplified, meditative, cinematic language of exquisite images and gentle music.’
★★★★ Nell Minow, RogerEbert.com

‘Attentive to characterful details of accent and posture, Close plays this tender-tough old bird beautifully, resisting twinkly sentimentality while maintaining a palpably affectionate rapport with Matthews.’
Guy Lodge, Variety

Sorry - you missed it!

We showed The Summer Book between August 14, 2026 and September 3, 2026.

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Tomorrow (Friday 9th October)
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17:30

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20:30

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Saturday 10th October
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15:15

Remake 15
1h 56m
After his son Adrian dies, filmmaker Ross McElwee revisits his home movie archive and asks whether his camera brought him closer to Adrian or got in the way. A searching, self-questioning look at documenting a life versus understanding it.

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18:00

Onibaba 15
35mm Screening + Intro
1h 38m | Japanese w/ English subtitles
35mm: Films On Film
A woman and her daughter-in-law kill lost samurai in the marshes of war-torn medieval Japan, selling their belongings to survive. See Kaneto Shindo's 1964 folk horror on 35mm film, with an introduction from Dr Alexander Jacoby, hosted with Oxford Talking Movies.

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20:30

Sense and Sensibility U
2h 12m
Mrs Dashwood and her daughters lose their Sussex home to her stepson and move to a Devon cottage, finding love and heartbreak. Georgia Oakley (Blue Jean) directs Jane Austen's story, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Fiona Shaw and George MacKay.

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Our beautiful art deco inspired auditorium can be found just off East Oxford's Cowley Road.We are open 7 days a week. We open the cinema and box office 30 minutes before the scheduled start time of each film, and the Box Office then closes 10 minutes after the film starts. We only show a few adverts – less than most cinemas – and we only play a couple of trailers, so please don’t be late as the film itself starts very close to the advertised time!

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