BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Rome Express

German star Conrad Veidt and ace Austrian cameraman Günther Krampf bring a near-expressionist Weimar sensibility to this riveting British thriller, set aboard a train filled with enjoyably stiff-up...

July 1, 2026 | Station to Station
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top Ten Train Films

Candy Mountain

Beginning in New York City before meandering to Canada, Candy Mountain follows a musician (Kevin J. O’Connor) whose ambition leads him to feign an association with the J.D. Salinger of guitar-makin...

July 1, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Blue Heron

In one of her early short films, Grandma’s House (2018), Sophy Romvari documented her late grandmother’s flat in Budapest. Each shot showed a different room, all of them eerily quiet, in grainy dig...

July 1, 2026 | Seniors

Iracema - Uma Transa Amazônica

A young Indigenous woman travels a newly opened highway with a truck driver, witnessing exploitation along the route. Blending documentary and fiction, the film exposes the human cost of Amazonian ...

June 20, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Wadjda

‘My name is Haifaa al Mansour and I’m working on a script about a young Saudi girl.’ So began the 2007 email plea Saudi director al Mansour sent to as many Western film companies she could find onl...

June 17, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

The Second Mother

The tensions in the life of the enterprising and affectionate housekeeper-cum-nanny protagonist of Anna Muylaert’s accomplished The Second Mother are identified from the very opening of the film. S...

June 16, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Babenco - Tell Me When I Die

Director’s Statement: Bárbara Paz I decided to make the documentary when I saw my much-loved companion one day in one of the many hospital beds he occupied, and became fearful that there would not ...

June 13, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Grace of My Heart

+ intro by Grace Barber-Plentie, BFI Festivals Film Programmer Playing Edna Buxton/Denise Waverly, a songwriter whose career is closely based on that of Carole King, Illeanna Douglas brings such a...

June 12, 2026 | Woman with a Movie Camera

Latin Quarter

+ intro by Jason Morell, actor and son of Joan Greenwood When a young dancer has her career cut short by illness, she marries an eminent sculptor whose cruelty drives her into the arms of another ...

June 9, 2026 | Projecting the Archive

Barbara

Christian Petzold’s Barbara opens in a nameless no man’s land somewhere in rural Germany. Heavily made-up, clad in a mid-length denim skirt and neat heels, the eponymous heroine gets off a bus and ...

June 9, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Shorts and Documentaries

Rendezvous Ghatak supervised this diploma film made by students at the Film Institute of India. The Chhau Dance of Purulia A folk-cultural form, Purulia’s Chhau fuses myth and martial rhythm. The...

June 7, 2026 | Revolutionary Cinema
The Passion of Ritwik Ghatak

Film Society 38

+ intro by BFI National Archive curator Bryony Dixon and guests We have been proudly championing the work of women filmmakers for many years at the BFI. But we were not the first to do so. The Fil...

June 7, 2026 | Silent Cinema

Call Me by Your Name

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Many critics were enamoured of Luca Guadagnino’s last two features, I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015), both of which set T...

June 7, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Some Like It Hot

The year 1959 was a good one for motion pictures in the United States. Rio Bravo, Imitation of Life, Sleeping Beauty, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Horse Soldiers, The Nun’s Story, Anatomy of a Murd...

June 5, 2026 | Marilyn Monroe
Self-Made Star

The Misfits

‘Help.’ Marilyn Monroe’s Roslyn utters this simple yet profound plea with a mixture of worry, exhaustion and sadness, but also a mysterious strength. For she, whether she wants it or not, is the c...

June 5, 2026 | Re-releases

Hiroshima mon amour

When chance brought together Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras, he found in the writer that essential which he had been looking for in the commentaries to all his films – a kind of unforced lyrici...

June 5, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão

Director’s statement I was deeply moved when I discovered the book. It triggered vivid memories of my own life. I was raised in the conservative Brazilian Northeast in the 60’s, in a family with a ...

June 4, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Tuner

Leo Woodall impresses as a shy piano tuner whose perfect pitch and hearing prove invaluable to a group of thieves. Niki (another superb turn by White Lotus and One Day star Woodall), a piano tuner,...

June 3, 2026 | Seniors’ Matinee

Reason, Debate and a Story

Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (Reason, Debate and a Story) was officially dated a year later than A River Called Titas (1973) but in fact started before that project. It was specifically the story of a gro...

June 3, 2026 | Revolutionary Cinema
The Passion of Ritwik Ghatak

Incomplete Works

Bagala’s Discovery of Bengal A comedy on mistaken identity, this film remained incomplete a week after filming. The Knave of Trumps A compassionate portrait of the trials and tribulations of women...