ALSO RELEASED
AN CAILÍN CIÚIN (THE QUIET GIRL) (12A, 95 mins)
ADAPTED from Claire Keegan's short story Foster, writer-director Colm Bairead's debut feature is a coming-of-age story set in 1981 rural Ireland.
Shy, neglected Cait (Catherine Clinch) is separated from her dysfunctional family for the summer and sent to live with foster parents.
Childless older couple Sean and Eibhlin Kinsella (Andrew Bennett, Carrie Crowley) welcome Cait to their country farm and provide her with the support she needs to edge closer to womanhood.
Far from the pain of the past, Cait blossoms but she gradually realises that even in her new idyll, there are discomfiting secrets waiting to be unearthed.
FIRESTARTER (15, 94 mins)
STEPHEN King's celebrated 1980 novel kindled a film adaptation four years later starring David Keith and a cherubic Drew Barrymore.
Screenwriter Scott Teems revamps the source material for a supernatural horror, which tests the bond between a father and daughter on the run from a shadowy agency.
Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben) is director of The Shop, a top-secret government off-shoot, which intends to capture one of its test subjects, Andrew McGee (Zac Efron), who developed telepathic abilities in response to an experimental drug.
Andrew's daughter Charlene (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is blessed – or perhaps cursed – with devastating pyrokinetic powers.
Andrew joins her on the run from assassin John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) and other nefarious individuals who seek to weaponise Charlene.
PARALLEL MOTHERS (Cert 15, 123 mins, Pathe Distribution, Drama/Romance, available to stream now and on DVD from May 16)
PHOTOGRAPHER Janis Martinez (Penelope Cruz) meets charming forensic archaeologist Arturo (Israel Elejalde) and seeks his advice about excavating a Spanish Civil War mass grave close to her home village.
Arturo has a wife undergoing chemotherapy for cancer but he is attracted to Janis and they sleep together.
Soon after, Janis falls pregnant and chooses to raise the child alone without Arturo's involvement.
Before Janis gives birth with support from her magazine editor pal Elena (Rossy de Palma), she befriends pregnant teenager Ana Manso (Milena Smit) and her mother Teresa (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon) at the hospital.
Janis and Ana deliver daughters on the same night and agree to keep in touch as they embark on journeys as single parents.
Parallel Mothers is a slow-burning and melodramatic portrait of parenthood, which reunites Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodovar with luminous screen muses Cruz and de Palma.
A simple yet effective script provides Oscar nominee Cruz with another complex, emotionally demanding role that veers into unexpectedly discomfiting territory as telenovela plot mechanisms whir into place with a palpable erotic charge.
Men are largely absent, some by cruel circumstance rather than choice, but women are by no means model custodians.
When they stumble and fall, they defiantly dust themselves off and do not instinctively reach out a hand for a man to help them to their feet.
