AFTER the sell-out success of I, Daniel Blake and Bridget Jones’s Baby at Bridport Electric Palace, some of the biggest films of 2017 are set to grace the silver screen at the South Street venue.

This Friday, January 20 sees the screening of Indignation (15), an American drama film based on Philip Roth’s 2008 novel of the same name.

Set against the backdrop of the Korean War, a working-class Jewish student, Marcus (Logan Lerman), leaves Newark, New Jersey, to attend a small college in Ohio.

There, he experiences a sexual awakening after meeting the elegant and wealthy Olivia (Sarah Gadon), and confronts the school’s dean (Tracy Letts) over the role of religion in academic life.

Films coming up include Life, Animated on Saturday, February 11, a poignant documentary about a boy with autism who learned how to understand the world and communicate with it through Disney characters.

Roger Ross William’s (God Loves Uganda) remarkable new documentary has won awards and acclaim at festivals across the US.

A representative from Autism Wessex will be in attendance.

On Saturday, February 18, the Palace will be showing the film everyone is talking about: La La Land (12A).

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone give terrific performances in Whiplash director Damien Chazelle’s beguiling musical romance, which recently won six Golden Globes.

The setting is contemporary Hollywood, the tone light and airy, the story simple, but lent immense verve by the style of Chazelle’s direction and the chemistry and sheer charisma supplied by Stone and Gosling, who radiate charm, sincerity and vulnerability as they open up to each other.

They play wannabe movie star Mia and pianist Seb, both hobbled by frustrated ambition when they meet and fall in love.

But success, when it finally arrives, comes at a personal cost.

Rejecting cynicism in favour of sweet-natured, open-hearted romance and full of smartly choreographed musical numbers performed with grace by its stars, Chazelle’s musical is being hailed a masterpiece – a contemporary Singin’ in the Rain.

Saturday, March 11 sees the daytime showing of Sing (PG).

Scarlett Johansson and a star cast of animated animals belt out wall-to-wall pop hits in a film from Son of Rambow’s Garth Jennings which will entertain kids and parents alike.

In the evening, Timothy Spall and Rachel Weisz star in Denial (12A).

The film tells the compelling story of the legal battle between Jewish American historian Deborah Lipstadt and notorious Holocaust denier David Irving.

On Saturday, March 18, the Palace shows Manchester By The Sea (15), which stars Casey Affleck in a Golden Globe winning performance as Lee, a solitary Boston janitor who after a family tragedy must return to his North Shore hometown, Manchester-by-the-Sea to look after his brother Joe’s son Patrick, played by Lucas Hedges.

There he must deal with caring for his nephew, coming back into contact with his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and confronting the weight of the past. Set in and around the titular coastal community, Manchester By The Sea eloquently explores universal themes of grief, guilt and sexual awakening through the eyes of a 40-year-old handyman whose outlook on life is as threadbare and tattered as the winter jacket he wears atop his overalls.

Co-star Williams is a potent maternal force in her few scenes, desperate to salve the deep wounds of an accidental and tragic past.

On Saturday, March 25, the Palace has an exclusive film preview of A Quiet Passion (12A tbc), a biopic of the 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson.

It is an exceptional film with a searing central performance from Cynthia Nixon.

The film will be followed by a Q&A with Páraic Finnerty on Dickinson: Quietly Public and Passionately Private.

Páraic is reader in English and American Literature at the University of Portsmouth.

He is the author of Emily Dickinson’s Shakespeare (2006) and co-author of Victorian Celebrity Culture and Tennyson’s Circle (2013).

His next book, Dickinson and her British Contemporaries, is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press.

* For tickets and timings for all films, contact Bridport Electric Palace box office.