Cinema On The Square at Millennium Square Leeds
Tom Grieve, Cinema Editor
The movies move outside in Leeds this summer, as Cinema On The Square brings a superb selection of films to Millennium Square. Featuring cult classics, indie darlings, family favourites and a celebration of Paris timed to coincide with this year’s Olympics, this three-day, eleven-film event is impeccably curated.
Cinema On The Square is billed as an opportunity to watch a movie, concert style — so it’s fitting that there’s more than a couple of opportunities to get your foot tapping. From the Bohemian cabaret of Moulin Rouge, to a singalong showing of Disney’s Encanto, and Jonathan Demme’s thunderous Talking Heads doc Stop Making Sense, there’s an effort to bring audiences together with a bit of festival spirit.
Scheduled from Wednesday 24 – Friday 26 July, the films themselves are split into collections. The gorgeous Aretha Franklin concert film Amazing Grace joins Demme’s film in Classic Concerts. While Family Films includes a showing of 2023’s Wonka alongside Pixar’s Ratatouille, which bridges the gap into Paris Stories, a diverse collection of movies that showcase the City of Light in its many guises.
For those looking for Parisian charm, Amélie delivers a romanticised vision of the city. A screening of Mathieu Kassovitz’s explosive 1995 classic La haine and a 10th anniversary showing of Céline Sciamma’s evocative Girlhood offer vital, gritty counters to the romantic stereotype.
Sciamma’s film kicks off a Friday finale dedicated to films made by and about women. It’s followed by Agnès Varda’s landmark 1962 film Cléo from 5 to 7, about a young singer wandering Paris in near real time as she awaits the results of a biopsy. That’s before Greta Gerwig’s smash hit Barbie rounds out proceedings on the Friday night.
