On the heels of the World Cup, the Sunrise Theater’s SunFlix series presents a movie about football (soccer), “Looking for Eric,” a 2009 British film about escaping from the trials of modern life via football and its heroes.

Written by screenwriter Paul Laverty and directed by English director Ken Loach, the film’s cast includes former Manchester United midfielder Eric Cantona and former bassist with The Fall, Steve Evets. The film also stars Gerard Kearns, Stefan Gumbs, Stephanie Bishop and Lucy-Jo Hudson.

This comedy/drama begins its run Thursday, July 22, and continues through Monday, July 26, with shows weekdays at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday presentations at 2:30, 5 and 7:30 p.m. This British film is unrated and runs for 1 hour and 56 minutes.

A.O.Scott, film critic for The New York Times, provides the following plot summary: “There are two Erics in ‘Looking for Eric.’ One is Eric Bishop (Steve Evets), a middle-aged Manchester, England, postal worker whose existence has been a chronicle of hardship and disappointment, much of it self-inflicted. We first see him driving the wrong way around a traffic circle, as if trying to outrun decades of accumulated anxiety. The inevitable accident is almost redundant, since he was already pretty much a wreck.

“Eric lives in a messy house with two teenage stepsons (Gerard Kearns and Stefan Gumbs) who seem to be en route from ordinary adolescent sullenness to outright criminality. He also has an infant granddaughter and a grown-up daughter (Lucy-Jo Hudson), whose mother, Lily (Stephanie Bishop), he abandoned many years before, but who is enough of a presence in Eric’s life to keep him in a perpetual state of guilt.

“Once upon a time, he was young and handsome, a gifted dancer full of potential. (He met Lily at a dance contest glimpsed in lyrical flashbacks.) Now he is angry, stressed out and miserable, in spite of his friends’ efforts to cheer him up with jokes and self-help exercises. The other Eric, who becomes this Eric’s confidant and guru (though he is also a hallucination), is Eric Cantona, the real-life former star of the Manchester United soccer team.”

The historic Sunrise Theater, located at 250 NW Broad St. in Southern Pines, is nonprofit. Ticket prices are $7 for evening shows and $6 for the matinees. Refreshments, including beer and wine, are available, and all movies are commercial free.

Contact the theater at (910) 692-3611 or at www.sunrisetheater.com.