BSFI Free Movies -- NOVEMBER 2026 at BSPAC

Here are the movies coming in November:

Wednesday, November 4, 2026 at 7pm – Babette’s Feast – 1987 – Rated G – 1h 42m

Babette's Feast , known in Danish as Babettes Gæstebud , is a film of rare and almost transcendent beauty — a deeply moving meditation on art, grace, generosity, and the redemptive power of sensual pleasure.

Directed by Gabriel Axel, who also wrote the screenplay based on the 1958 short story by Isak Dinesen, the pen name of Karen Blixen, the film was produced with funding from the Danish Film Institute.

The title character, Babette, was initially offered to Catherine Deneuve, but when Deneuve deliberated overnight, Axel met with French actress Stéphane Audran, who called back within two hours and accepted the role. The next day Deneuve declined, and Audran was officially cast.

The cast also includes Bodil Kjer — considered the first lady of Danish theater — as the sisters' elder, Philippa, and Birgitte Federspiel, best known from Carl Dreyer's 1955 classic Ordet , as the younger sister Martine, with Swedish actors Bibi Andersson and Jarl Kulle in supporting roles.

The story, set in a remote Lutheran village on the coast of Jutland in late nineteenth-century Denmark, follows two devout and self-sacrificing sisters who take in Babette, a French refugee whose husband and son were killed during the Paris Commune uprising of 1871.

Years later, after winning the lottery, Babette spends her entire winnings preparing a magnificent French feast for the sisters and their austere congregation — a meal of such astonishing beauty and luxury that it quietly dissolves old grudges and opens the pious villagers to a joy they had long suppressed.

Axel had struggled for fifteen years to bring the project to the screen, as Danish backers were unconvinced by the source material. The story itself had originally been written by Blixen on a bet that she couldn't write a story for The Saturday Evening Post entirely about food. However, it was rejected by The Post and instead appeared in Ladies' Home Journal in 1950.

Critically, Babette’s Feast was celebrated as a masterpiece, and the Criterion Collection calls it “at once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food.”

The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1987 ceremony — Denmark's first Oscar in that category — and has since become one of the most cherished films in the history of world cinema, praised by figures as varied as film scholars and Pope Francis, who cited the film in his writings as an example of the joy found in bringing delight to others.

In French, Danish, and Swedish with English subtitles.

Wednesday, November 18, 2026 at 7pm – The Daytrippers – 1997 – Rated R – 1h 27m

The Daytrippers is a wry, bittersweet, and thoroughly charming indie comedy-drama that announced the arrival of a fresh voice in American independent cinema.

Written and directed by Greg Mottola in his feature directorial debut, the film stars Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, Anne Meara, Parker Posey, and Liev Schreiber, with Campbell Scott in a key supporting role.

The story begins on the morning after Thanksgiving when the distraught Eliza, played by Davis, discovers a love letter written to her husband Louis, played by Tucci, by an unknown woman and turns to her tight-knit Long Island family for advice.

Soon the entire clan — strong-willed mom, taciturn dad, and jaded sister Jo with her pretentious, aspiring-novelist boyfriend in tow — has squeezed into a station wagon and headed into Manhattan to track down the truth, setting off a one-day odyssey full of unexpected detours and life-changing revelations.

The Daytrippers works beautifully as an ensemble piece, with each character thrown into relief by the pressure-cooker confines of a station wagon and a day of searching. Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle called it “low-budget perfection, a comedy without a false note and without a flat joke.”

The film was produced by Steven Soderbergh, among others, and premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 1996, where it won the festival's first Grand Jury Prize. Critics praised the superb cast and Mottola's deft, assured touch with character and tone.

The Daytrippers remains a gem of 1990s American independent cinema — a small, perfectly shaped film about the stories families tell themselves and the moment they can no longer keep telling them.

And looking forward, here are the scheduled movies coming in December:

Wednesday, December 2, 2026 at 7pm – Brief Encounter – 1945 – Not Rated – 1h 26m

Directed by David Lean and adapted from Noël Coward's one-act play Still Life , the film stars Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard as two married strangers who fall into a fleeting, unconsummated love affair after a chance meeting at a railway station, told largely in flashback through Johnson's internal narration.

Restrained, quietly devastating, and shot in stark black-and-white with Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto as its emotional backbone, Brief Encounter became a landmark of British cinema for its portrayal of repressed longing and moral duty.

It was widely praised on release — earning the Grand Prix at the first Cannes Film Festival in 1946 and Academy Award nominations for Lean's direction, Johnson's performance, and the screenplay — and it continues to be regarded by critics as one of the finest British films ever made, frequently topping “greatest films” lists for its emotional precision and understatement.

Wednesday, December 16, 2026 at 7pm – The Holdovers – 2023 – Rated R – 2h 13m

Directed by Alexander Payne, the film is set at a New England boarding school over the 1970 Christmas break, where curmudgeonly ancient history teacher Paul Hunham, played by Paul Giamatti, is stuck supervising the handful of students with nowhere else to go.

As the group dwindles to just one, sharp-tongued troublemaker Angus Tully, played by Dominic Sessa, Paul and the school's head cook, Mary Lamb, played by Da'Vine Joy Randolph, who is grieving the loss of her son, form an unlikely bond over their shared isolation.

Written by David Hemingson, The Holdovers was a major critical success, earning five Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, with Randolph winning Best Supporting Actress.

Critics praised its warmth, wit, and old-fashioned craftsmanship, with many calling it one of the finest films of the year and a worthy heir to the character-driven dramas of the era it evokes.

Wednesday, December 30, 2026 at 7pm – The Thin Man – 1934 – Not Rated – 1h 33m

Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the film stars William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, a witty, hard-drinking former detective and his wealthy wife who are pulled back into sleuthing when an old acquaintance's inventor father goes missing amid a string of murders.

Their affectionate, wisecracking rapport, as much as the mystery itself, became the heart of the film, setting the template for the screwball detective comedy.

Based on Dashiell Hammett's novel of the same name, The Thin Man was a critical and commercial sensation on release, earning four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Powell.

It remains a landmark of 1930s Hollywood, celebrated for launching a beloved franchise and for Powell and Loy's chemistry, still considered one of the great screen partnerships in film history.

This season’s BSFI movie screenings are being generously underwritten by the Borrego Valley Endowment Fund (BVEF).

And don’t forget about the 14th annual Borrego Springs Film Festival coming in January 2027!

See you at the movies!