BFI Southbank Programme Notes

After Life

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. One of the visual motifs which runs through After Life turns out in retrospect to be a kind of running gag. Limbo staff-members pass...

December 3, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Passenger

The screening on Saturday 2 December will include a pre-recorded introduction by Jason Wood, BFI Executive Director of Public Programmes & Audiences SPOILER WARNING The following notes give aw...

December 2, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Odds against Tomorrow

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Harry Belafonte shines as a mercurial gambler uncertain of bourgeois respectability, indebted to loan-sharks, who threaten his job a...

December 2, 2023 | HARRY BELAFONTE
MOVIES RACE DEFIANCE

Lazybones +
Her Last Affaire

The lazybones of Powell’s amiable comedy is idle, penniless aristocrat Sir ‘Reggie’ Ford, who is shaken into a more productive existence when a criminal plot forces him to prove his worth to his Am...

December 2, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg enjoys a legendary place as an all-but-unique curiosity in French cinema – the film for which the epithet ‘bittersweet’ was invented, less a musical (though French examp...

December 1, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Tish

+ Q&A with director Paul Sng, contributor Ella Murtha and producer Jen Corcoran Paul Sng, the BIFA-winning director of Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché and Dispossession: The Great Social Housing ...

December 1, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Queendom

No one quite uses the term ‘degenerate art’ in Queendom, but the sentiment is nigh. Russia, it seems, is not a country big enough to hold both a chest-baring Kremlin folk saviour, who bombs his nei...

December 1, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Fallen Leaves

Coming six years after Aki Kaurismäki announced his retirement from filmmaking, Fallen Leaves feels like a return to very familiar territory. The director’s last two features were unusually explici...

December 1, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Vigil

+ Q&A with Suranne Jones, Rose Leslie, Romola Garai, Dougray Scott, writer Tom Edge and executive producer Jake Lushington Following multiple unexplained fatalities at a Scottish military faci...

November 27, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

Run Lola Run

+ intro and discussion Who said time travel had to be about science-fiction? Tom Tykwer responds with this thrilling crime drama that saw the re-emergence of a vital German cinema. With its punk...

November 27, 2023 | RELAXED SCREENING

The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger

Event Schedule 12:00-12:05 Welcome and introduction by Claire Smith and Nathalie Morris 12:05-12:50 New Land, New Boundaries, New Worlds: Exiles and Outsiders in the Films of Powell and Pressburg...

November 25, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

The Eternal Daughter

Joanna Hogg is interested in how we are shaped by the rooms we occupy. The starkest example is Exhibition (2014), set in the unique home that architect James Melvin designed with so many nooks and ...

November 24, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Anatomy of a Fall

The protagonist of Justine Triet’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall is no easy or ingratiating character, but the woman who plays the role is unequivocal about her. ‘I love her,’ says Sandra Hülle...

November 24, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

BUG 65

BUG is back! A whole 12 months since we were last at BFI Southbank, your favourite night of big screen music video awesomeness, internet nonsense (good nonsense not the other stuff) has returned, w...

November 23, 2023 | EVENTS

Twilight

+ intro by Jason Wood, BFI Executive Director of Public Programmes and Audiences, and Second Run’s Mehelli Modi. An occasional colleague of both Miklós Jancsó (as an actor) and Béla Tarr (as a pro...

November 21, 2023 | RESTORED

Miracle in Soho

In a Rank publicity hand out, Emeric Pressburger summarised his intentions of Miracle in Soho: ‘The more I saw of the district the more extraordinary it began to appear to me. But soon I noticed th...

November 20, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Wish

What’s it about? + Q&A with directors Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn, songwriter Julia Michaels, voice actor Ariana DeBose, producers Peter Del Vecho, Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones and wri...

November 19, 2023 | BFI FAMILIES

Behold a Pale Horse

Set 20 years after the Spanish Civil War, Pressburger’s perspective-shifting first novel Killing a Mouse on Sunday, published in 1961, characteristically avoided simplistic moral judgments. He wrot...

November 19, 2023 | CINEMA UNBOUND
THE CREATIVE WORLDS OF POWELL + PRESSBURGER

Predestination

In Greek mythology, it is precisely Oedipus’s attempts to avoid murdering his own father and marrying his own mother that drive him to fulfil that predicted fate. Yet in dramatising this clash of f...

November 18, 2023 | DESTINATION TIME TRAVEL
PLAYING WITH TIME IN FILM AND TV

Mami Wata

+ intro and panel discussion with director C.J. ‘Fiery’ Obasi and producer Oge Obasi, hosted by Jumoké Fashola Filmgoers outside Africa may never have heard of Mami Wata, the supernatural being wh...

November 18, 2023 | AFRICAN ODYSSEY

After Life

The Passenger

Odds against Tomorrow

Lazybones + Her Last Affaire

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Tish

Queendom

Fallen Leaves

Vigil

Run Lola Run

The Creative Worlds of Powell + Pressburger

The Eternal Daughter

Anatomy of a Fall

BUG 65

Twilight

Miracle in Soho

Wish

Behold a Pale Horse

Predestination

Mami Wata

FEATURED TAGS

Lazybones +
Her Last Affaire