BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Culloden

Watkins’ strikingly original reconstruction of the 1746 Battle of Culloden strips away any sense of noble pageantry to confront the brutality inflicted on Highland soldiers and civilians by the Bri...

August 9, 2026 | System Critical
The Radical Films of Peter Watkins

Privilege

In 1966, following the collapse of a film which I hoped to develop with Albert Finney’s production company, on the 1916 Easter uprising in Dublin, I was approached by John Heyman, a British artists...

August 8, 2026 | System Critical
The Radical Films of Peter Watkins

La notte

A disaffected novelist and his wife drift through Milan for a day and night in Antonioni’s sublimely chilly masterpiece. Vitti plays a key foil to Mastroianni and Moreau’s characters, as a rich you...

August 8, 2026 | Monica Vitti
Creative Force

The Sacrifice

He was a giant for work, and a highly disciplined man who hated disorder and would only come to the set after much preparation. Quite often I found it strenuous to keep up with his pace – which is ...

August 7, 2026 | Re-releases

To Catch a Thief

Hitchcock on ‘To Catch a Thief’ Straightening out the zigzag course conversations are apt to take, especially when prompted by questions, I find that in the main my talk with Alfred Hitchcock after...

August 6, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Hôtel du Nord

The film of Hôtel du Nord was inspired by a book written in 1928 by Eugene Dabit, a gifted young writer who died in 1936 in tragic and mysterious circumstances. Dabit’s L’Hôtel du Nord is a collect...

August 4, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

The Double Life of Véronique

With its obsessive brooding on objects – their unearthly light, their depths of emotive resonance, their portentous presence – it would be fair to say that The Double Life of Véronique is concerned...

August 4, 2026 | No Strings Attached
Puppets on Film

Red Desert

Against the backdrop of a bleak industrial landscape, a traumatised woman embarks on an affair. Antonioni’s first colour film critiques industrialisation and reflects on fragmented human connection...

August 2, 2026 | Monica Vitti
Creative Force

Somewhere

Sofia Coppola on ‘Somewhere’ Somewhere is your most pared-down, restrained film yet: the camera’s often held at a distance and there’s not much dialogue. How did you arrive at that approach? Afte...

August 1, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Clever Girls

In 1950s Rome, three girls use all their wiles to trick their reluctant boyfriends into marriage. This early and little-seen Vitti film showcases a battle of the sexes in which only one side will t...

August 1, 2026 | Monica Vitti
Creative Force

Hamlet

Riz Ahmed and Aneil Karia on ‘Hamlet’ What drew you to tell this story, and why Hamlet now? RA: When I first connected with the material, I was in a really raw place as a teenager, going through ...

July 25, 2026 | Film Wallahs

Nostalgia

How could I have imagined as I was making Nostalgia that the stifling sense of longing that fills the screen space of that film was to become my lot for the rest of my life; that from now until the...

July 24, 2026 | Re-releases

Tickets

Three Palme d’Or winners share the directing credit, but I’ve yet to find anyone who has seen this film. (Aside from the stranger in the Japanese restaurant who alerted me to its existence – my tha...

July 23, 2026 | Station to Station
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top Ten Train Films

Radio On

In an interview accompanying the DVD release of Radio On, director/writer Chris Petit uses the word ‘autistic’ on three separate occasions to describe the mood he was aiming for. Embarking on his d...

July 23, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Kings of the Road

A three-hour study of two men who are on the road, servicing the projectors in failing movie theatres, Kings of the Road is full of film references and the situation of a Hawksian bond tested again...

July 19, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Bhaji on the Beach

About a third of the way through Bhaji on the Beach, one of the film’s most dayglo characters, the Bombay-based, Chanel-clad Rekha, clambers down from the coach, totters around the corner on her pi...

July 15, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Runaway Train

Two convicts break out of a hellish prison to find themselves trapped on a speeding train they can’t control. Is this Jon Voight’s finest moment? (He and Roberts both received Oscar nominations.) O...

July 11, 2026 | Station to Station
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top Ten Train Films

The Girls

One of the defining auteurs of Sri Lankan cinema, Sumitra Peries was also one of the few international figures from the island nation. Her films capture, in all their nuances and complexities, the ...

July 10, 2026 | Re-releases

Stranger than Paradise

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Jim Jarmusch is remarkable for having achieved both critical and a degree of commercial success with work that in many respects bear...

July 9, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Bashu, the Little Stranger

+ intro by film curator Ehsan Khoshbakht Jafar Panahi: Maestro Bahram Beyzaie is not only a filmmaker in the Iranian tradition. He is a writer, a scholar, and an artist who has made an unrivalled...

July 8, 2026 | UK Premiere of 4K Restoration