Three billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

Martin McDonagh, 2017, UK/USA, 115 mins, Certificate: 15

Screening in collaboration with Sydenham Arts Summer Festival 2018 of “Heroes & Heroines”.

A tragic mother aggressively looking for answers to the brutal murder of her daughter.
This highly acclaimed multi-award winning film of the past season is a dark humoured drama by Irish filmmaker and playwright, Martin McDonagh. Frances McDormand gives one of the most multi-layered, powerful performances of recent times, as her character, Mildred, becomes an uncompromising, and at times controversial, modern-day heroine.

Two Oscars: Best Actress (Frances McDormand), Best Supporting Actor (Sam Rockwell)
Five BAFTAs: Best Film, Outstanding British Film of the Year, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress and Supporting Actor

Reviews:

★★★★★ “Funny, brutal and breathtakingly beautiful. Two exceptionally raw lead performances, supercharged by a bold script from Martin McDonagh… [it] dwells and squats in the ugly pain, the very fire of the grief, muddying preconceptions and presumptions beyond recognition, while still speaking to both small realities and profound truths. This is McDonagh at his most complex, painting entirely in greys as he surveys the cruelties born from barely buried hurts.” Terri White, Empire Online

★★★★★ “Give all the awards to McDormand, and then invent a bunch of new ones for her too. (…) It’s something of a cliché to even say it, but she has the ability to make you laugh and to make you cry. She makes you love Mildred and makes you loathe her too. She makes you understand her and disapprove of her. There is nothing easy in this life, and there are no answers to be had, so at the end of the day, you’ve just got to make your move and be done with it. She embodies the idea that a flawed human can still be deserving of love.” David Jenkins, Little White Lies

★★★★ “Martin McDonagh’s fiercely written, stabbingly pleasurable tragicomedy stars a magnificent Frances McDormand; watching it is like having your funny bone struck repeatedly, expertly and very much too hard by a karate super-black-belt capable of bringing a rhino to its knees with a single punch behind the ear.” Peter Bradshaw, The Observer

“…as a film that puts a middle-aged woman centre stage, and allows her to kick ass, it has to be terrific. There should be more Mildreds. Then we’d all sleep better in our beds.” Deborah Ross, The Spectator UK