HOLOCAUST Memorial Day on Tuesday will be marked with a programme of events around York. One night later, City Screen will participate in the commemoration with a special screening of Mark Herman's The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas (12A).

The York screenwriter and director will introduce Wednesday's 6.15pm show and take questions from the audience afterwards. His 2008 film is set in the Second World War and its Holocaust story is seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno (Asa Butterfield), the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence, has startling consequences.

Dave Taylor, City Screen's marketing manager, says: “It seems only right to have Mark Herman back at City Screen to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. His film is adapted from John Boyne's novel, and although a fictional story, it offers a unique and powerful perspective on how prejudice, hatred and violence affect innocent people during wartime. City Screen is further pleased to bring you this event in conjunction with York Minster.”

Canon Chris Collingwood says of York Minster's Holocaust Memorial Day programme: “The Holocaust shook humanity to its very core and continues to serve as a powerful reminder of the scale of human cruelty but also our resilience and our capacity for recovery and reconciliation.

"We are living through a period of history in which intolerance, injustice and breath-taking cruelty continues to occur on a scale which is unimaginable and deeply distressing.

"This year’s commemoration of Holocaust Memorial week provides an acute reminder to people of good will, people of faith and people of compassion everywhere that we must continue to raise up our voices and fight inhumanity wherever it occurs.”

Tickets for Wednesday's film event can be booked on 0871 902 5726 or at picturehouses.co.uk/york