Buy tickets: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/thamecinema
Friday, 3rd of October, 8pm
The Marching Band
France 2024, 103 minutes, 15 certificate
Directed by Emmanuel Courcol, Starring Pierre Lottin and Benjamin Lavernhe
Tibaut is a distinguished orchestral conductor at the peak of his career, raised by an affluent, middle class family. During a rehearsal in Paris he collapses; subsequent investigations reveal that he has leukaemia and will need a bone marrow transplant. His immediate family can provide no suitable match: Tibaut was adopted as a child. So, his best chance at survival means he must track down his biological brother: Jimmy, a factory worker in a distant and depleted industrial town. Jimmy, as it happens, also has an interest in music – he plays the trombone very well in the factory’s own brass band, and he has a passion for collecting jazz on vinyl. Events unfold: the transplant, its outcomes, the fate of the brass band and who will lead it.
Meanwhile, the two brothers get to know and kind-of love each other, each viewing his own life through the prism of the other’s experience, and the ‘what-might-have-beens’ shaped by chance, class, aspiration and opportunity. A box office sensation in its native France, this funny, tender, heartwarming and poignant comedy drama is a real treat – sweet but never saccharine, full of feeling but unsentimental, with plenty of grit and realism. It wears it’s heart unashamedly on its sleeve, but what a lot of heart this small gem has to share. Join us to kick off the new season. Watch the trailer here.
