Featuring a slate of extraordinary movies, the Red Deer Independent Film Group has kicked off its spring season at Galaxy Cinema.

‘Reel Movie Mondays’ is a partnership of Red Deer College Motion Picture Arts, the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery and the Toronto International Film Circuit in cooperation with Cineplex Galaxy Theatre.

Screenings are at 7 p.m.

Showing April 4 is Another Year, an acutely observed drama following a year in the life of a contented middle-class couple in their early 60s and the friends and family who cross their path. Playing April 18 is Of Gods and Men, winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes. The movie is based on the true story of the kidnapping and murder of seven French monks in Algeria in 1996.

Screening May 2, Biutiful was nominated for Best Actor (Javier Bardem) and Best Foreign Language Film at the recent Academy Awards.

Bardem plays Uxbal, a single father living in Barcelona and struggling to support his two children. It is a tale of fatherhood under extreme duress and made devastatingly worse when Uxbal learns he has cancer and only months to live. He then sets out to get his messy affairs in order and provide for his children with a future he won’t be part of.

The final film of the series showing May 16 is The First Grader.

In a remote mountain top primary school in the Kenyan bush, hundreds of children are jostling for a chance for the free education promised by the Kenyan government. One new applicant causes astonishment when he knocks on the door to the school. He is Maruge, an old Mau Mau veteran in his 80s, who is desperate to learn to read at this stage of his life.

Tickets at the door are $8 for members and $10 for non-members.

Memberships and advance tickets can be purchased from the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery. A membership costs $10 and entitles the holder to discount on ticket prices throughout the 2010-2011 season.

Ticket packages for the Spring Series are available at $35 for members and $45 for non-members.

Check out www.reelmoviemondays.ca

-Weber