BFI Southbank Programme Notes

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...

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

The Pathetic Fallacy

Ritwik Ghatak on ‘The Pathetic Fallacy (Ajantrik)’ For 12 long years, I had thought about this story before I made it into a film. When it first came my way, accidentally, I was a green boy, newly ...

June 2, 2026 | Revolutionary Cinema
The Passion of Ritwik Ghatak

Barren Lives

Walter Salles on ‘Barren Lives’ ‘This film singlehandedly founds and justifies a Nation. Brazil has, at last, been discovered. It is a masterpiece.’ These were the words of the writer Otto Lara Res...

June 2, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Nightmare Alley

It was 1993 when Guillermo del Toro first discovered Nightmare Alley. The 29-year-old Mexican director had just finished post-production on his debut film, the baroque vampire tale Cronos, and was ...

May 23, 2026 | Guillermo del Toro

Opening Night

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. An attempt to grapple with the mystery of John Cassavetes might usefully begin by noting that, at least during the director’s lifeti...

May 17, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Hellboy

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Few comic-book franchises have been brought to the screen by a creator as committed to honouring the original material as Mike Migno...

May 16, 2026 | Guillermo del Toro

The Flying Scot

An unusually unsympathetic pair of protagonists is only one of the distinguishing marks of this tense thriller set largely on an overnight train from Edinburgh to London. A tantalising opening sequ...

May 16, 2026 | Great Expectations
British Postwar Cinema 1945-1960

Cinema Novo

Director’s note In the words of Walter Benjamin, ‘There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on Earth. Like every generation that preceded us,...

May 16, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Mars One

Director’s statement: Gabriel Martins In the first scene of my sophomore film Mars One, Deivid, the young boy from the Martins family, is sitting in his backyard looking at the stars. He wonders, ‘...

May 15, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Lower City

Flickering flames and strumming guitars play over the opening credits of Lower City, a sure sign of the fevered passions that will be unleashed over the next 98 minutes. And with the first shot of ...

May 11, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Pan's Labyrinth

The screening on Sunday 10 May will include a Q&A with Guillermo del Toro Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth proves beyond doubt what fans of his previous films, such as Hellboy (2004) and B...

May 10, 2026 | Guillermo del Toro