Fire Will Come creates a powerful portrait of the Gallician countryside against which human drama unfolds. Convicted for starting a fire, Amador is released from prison. With no one waiting for him, he returns home to a small village, to live with his mother Benedicta and their three cows. Life goes on at the peaceful pace of nature. Until the night, when a fire starts to devastate the region.

Set in 1950s Rio de Janeiro, the film follows Eurídice, 18, and Guida, 20 – two inseparable sisters living at home with their conservative parents. Although immersed in a traditional life, each one nourishes a dream: Eurídice of becoming a renowned pianist, Guida of finding true love. In a dramatic turn, they are separated by their father and forced to live apart. They take control of their separate destinies, while never giving up hope of finding each other.

Esteve Soler adapts his own theatre work, taking a caustic and nihilistic approach to contemporary western society. His brilliant, dark humour is not suitable for the faint-hearted, and the surrealism that impregnates it recalls Buñuel at his most acerbic. Reminiscent, too, of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (with which it shares several similarities), it is divided into seven chapters, each named after a social value. Beyond the laughter, we are left with much to reflect on.

Peter Bradshaw’s new book The Films That Made Me… is a selection of his reviews and essays for The Guardian, for which he has been chief film critic since 1999. These are the films that made him laugh, the films that made him cry, the films that made him feel good – and the films that made him feel the opposite. It’s a record of a filmgoing life, and a paean to the sheer sensual enjoyment of bathing in brilliant images, sounds and stories.

For this event, Peter will be introducing a selection of clips from classic films and talking about what they mean to him, and then we will settle down to the Powell/Pressburger classic Black Narcissus.

Buddha in Africa is a moving observational documentary focused on the experiences of Enock Alu, who has been brought up in a Buddhist orphanage in Ghana. Enock is now at a crossroads; he must decide whether to return to his relatives in a rural village in Ghana or go to school in Taiwan. This is the captivating story of a young boy’s struggle to hold on to his own culture in a context in which China is seeking to expand its soft power within Africa.

A film about death, reincarnation and immortality, where Hindu and Buddhist traditions mix. A film about memory, colonialism, discovery, loss of innocence and the demise of all sanctuaries and unexplored territories. A road film on elephants, a sound oriented film guided by a monologue voice over. The amazing sounds of the jungle and a deep sound research on the sonic language of the elephant. The film is a requiem for the unknown, the undiscovered and for our own Shangri-La.