BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Alma's Rainbow

‘I could write a book on the response to Alma’s Rainbow. The film took a long time to make. I raised all the money independently. Distributors came and looked at the film, and there was a real spli...

August 2, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

Fantastic Mr Fox

The hero of Wes Anderson’s animated film Fantastic Mr Fox gazes into his wife’s eyes. ‘I’m just dying to tell you the truth about myself,’ he says, apologising for the trouble he’s caused. ‘I’m a w...

August 1, 2024 | STOP MOTION
CELEBRATING HANDMADE ANIMATION
ON THE BIG SCREEN

In a Lonely Place

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. ‘I was infatuated with her, but I didn’t like her very much’: so began director Nicholas Ray’s relationship with Gloria Grahame, wh...

July 29, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

Eraserhead

Content warning: Contains strong gore and disturbing surreal imagery. David Lynch’s debut feature takes us into the heart of a bleak industrial wasteland, exploring the grotesque underbelly of m...

July 29, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

I Saw the TV Glow

Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show – a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the...

July 26, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Faya Dayi

A film ten years in the making, Faya Dayi was conceived by director Jessica Beshir as an act of reconnecting with the Ethiopian homeland she left at the age of 16, when her family fled to Mexico to...

July 26, 2024 | TIGRITUDES
A PAN-AFRICAN FILM CYCLE 1956-2024

About Dry Grasses

The latest work from the Turkish auteur behind Once upon a Time in Anatolia and Winter Sleep is an arresting, character-driven study of loneliness and self-interest. Samet, an art teacher assigned ...

July 26, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Audition

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Our habitual tools for categorising films and filmmakers seem woefully inadequate for an encompassing approach to Takashi Miike (and...

July 24, 2024 | DISCOMFORT MOVIES

The Verdict

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Some 25 Years on from 12 Angry Men Sidney Lumet returned to the drama of the court room and provided Paul Newman with his most vuln...

July 22, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

F for Fake

In 1970 François Reichenbach, with the British journalist Richard Drewett, made Elmyr: The True Picture?, a 40-minute BBC documentary about Elmyr de Hory, the Hungarian faker of 20th-century master...

July 22, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Daughters of the Dust

The ascension of Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust to recognition as one of the greatest films of all time hardly comes as a surprise to Black women moviegoers, who championed the film from its ea...

July 22, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

12 Angry Men

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the plot. Lumet’s landmark courtroom drama – which actually takes place in the jury’s deliberation chamber – centres on Henry Fonda, typecast but supe...

July 22, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

Crossing

Istanbul is a place people go when they want to disappear. At least, that’s how it seems to Lia (Mzia Arabuli), a retired history teacher who travels from Georgia to search for Tekla (Tako Kurdovan...

July 19, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

Climax

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. As Climax opens to the sound of Gary Numan’s recording of Satie’s Gymnopédies, and an overhead shot of a bloodied, barely dressed wo...

July 16, 2024 | DISCOMFORT MOVIES

The Third Man

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. It is hard now to credit that there was a time when Carol Reed was seriously touted as the world’s greatest living director. Still, ...

July 15, 2024 | MEMBER MONDAYS

Possession

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Andrzej Zulawski’s first and only English-language feature was originally released in the UK in 1982, around a year after its Cannes...

July 15, 2024 | DISCOMFORT MOVIES

Funny Games

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Michael Haneke on ‘Funny Games’ How have audiences reacted to Funny Games so far? Some people really related to the film because o...