Our festive day of members' choice screenings will culminate in a party to celebrate the cinema's third anniversary with our most loyal supporters: The Garden Cinema membership.

Spread across the venue (including our new Atrium Bar) there are good times to be had, with commemorative badgemaking, mingling, and of course, complimentary (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) cocktails. We'll also have a very special beverage making an appearance on the bar menu for the occasion..

And what's a birthday without presents? Once you've taken a seat in any of the screens, you'll stand a chance to take home a prize in our complimentary raffle, which, besides free tickets and gift memberships, will feature an array of prizes from the wonderful local businesses we've partnered with over the past three years, including:

• A delicious Persian dinner for two for the value of £100 at Naroon Marylebone
• A delectable French pre-theatre meal for two at Le Garrick in Covent Garden
• A £100 voucher for a tasty tapas dinner at Barrafina
• A £50 gift card for mouth-watering gelato from Badiani 1932
• A 6-month membership giving access to MUBI's curated cinema platform
• A stunning bouquet from our floral friends at Bloomsbury Flowers
• A box of artisan chocolate creations from BRIK. Chocolate
• A scrumptious selection of pickled goodies from Shedletsky's Deli
• A selection of cinema-related reads from our film fanatic neighbours at FOPP Covent Garden
• A goodie bag of beers and merch from Lost & Grounded Brewers
• A voucher for 8 damn fine cups of Nine Bars Coffee
• A selection of fabulous sakes & Japanese gins from Sake Collective

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Garden Cinema party without a classic feature: Víctor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive. One of the most upvoted titles on the Members' Area over the last few weeks, the film, which was proposed by members Laura Jacobs and Jonathan Benaim, is a timeless ode to the monsters of cinema and a subversive attack on the real life monsters of Francoist Spain.

Event timings:

19:00  Birthday takeover with badgemaking, cocktails & members mingling

21:00  Doors open for Screens 1, 2, and 3 (seating unallocated)

21:10  Prize raffle across all screens

21:20  Screening of The Spirit of the Beehive

23:00  Estimated finish

Tickets are available to members only and are £15 each, which includes access to the party, a complimentary cocktail, a ticket for the prize raffle, and an unallocated seat for the screening. They are restricted to 2 per member, meaning you are welcome to bring a friend along for the occasion.

Please note we are unable to offer step-free access to the new Screen 3 and Atrium Bar while we await the installation of our platform lift. Access to the new bar & screen currently requires taking 4 steps up from the box office level, followed by 3 steps down. If you would like us to reserve you an accessible seat in Screen 1 or 2, please email membership@thegardencinema.co.uk prior to the event. 

About the film:

Víctor Erice’s spellbinding The Spirit of the Beehive (El espíritu de la colmena) is widely regarded as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s. In a small Castilian village in 1940, in the wake of the country's devastating civil war, six-year-old Ana attends a traveling movie show of Frankenstein and becomes possessed by the memory of it. Produced as Franco’s long regime was nearing its end, The Spirit of the Beehive is a bewitching portrait of a child’s haunted inner life and one of the most visually arresting movies ever made.

Director Patricia Ramos sets this film, her second feature and also written by her, in 2016 Havana. It was a time when Cuba featured regularly in the international media with Obama’s visit, a Chanel fashion show and the historic Rolling Stones concert. This film is not about that historical concert, rather that moment. Middle-aged Rita navigates troublesome relationships with her teenage son who wants to leave Cuba, her aging mother, her married lover, and her lifelong friend who is ill. On the eve of the concert, Rita she takes decisions that begin to give her some independence, as she hopes that something interesting is about to happen.

Described in the Cuban press as 'a film that seems simple, but in the end is also a treatise on what has gone and what has been lost, about the unbreakable will to cling to certain values, on the part of people who stay in their place, who are not going anywhere, animated by the crazy idea that they may find, very close to their home, what they have always been looking for.'

PLUS SHORT: Blue Pandora / Pandora Azul | Alan Gonzalez |2023, Cuba, ICAIC- Crisálida Producciones | 13m|18

Compelling award-winning fictional short. The white youth Roy regularly shows up at the doorstep of Pandora, a middle-aged Black transgender woman, in an attempt to convince her of how much he’s in love with her. She wants to stay out of trouble, and is reluctant because of past experiences with men. An interaction that transcends itself in a subtle yet poignant way, in which thoughts not spoken live in the smallest gesture or the exchange of a glance. The film delves into the complexities of love, self-acceptance, and the weight of societal judgment.

Screen Cuba: Films to Change the World is a collaborative project of the charity Music Fund for Cuba, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Cuban Embassy in the UK and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).

Proceeds from the Solidarity ticket will to go to Cuban film institute (ICAIC) projects including restoration of classic films.

Celebrating 100 years of MR James' A Warning to the Curious

1925 saw the publication of A Warning to the Curious and Other Stories, the fourth and final collection from Montague Rhodes James, the Cambridge scholar who became the master of the ghost story.

The title story is arguably James' last great work and certainly his most brutal. It's a story of undeserved death and the hope of not being forgotten. And that's as true for the ghost as it is the protagonist. As the first day of the narrative lands on 17 April, we've chosen to mirror that for this centenary event.

This unique event will see the spellbinding Robert Lloyd Parry perform the original tale before a screening of Lawrence Gordon Clark's celebrated 1972 adaptation. The event will be introduced by Jon Dear, author of the forthcoming book No Diggin' - The Story of the BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas.

Tickets for this celebration of James' work are £15.50 members/£17.50 non-members and includes an allocated seat for both the live performance and the film.

20:30 - Introduction to the evening

20:35 - Live performance

21:20 - Intermission

21:30 - Screening

22:20 - Q&A

22:35 - Finish

About the film:

An amateur archaeologist goes to a remote Norfolk town to search for the lost crown of Anglia, but at every turn he finds his movements tracked by a mysterious stranger dressed in black

The M. R. James Project:

The M. R. James project is an initiative by the Nunkie Theatre Company to bring back to life the eeriest and most entertaining of these enduringly brilliant tales, many of which were originally written to be performed by the James to his friends, in his rooms in King’s College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve, and are now performed by Robert Lloyd Parry, who bears a somewhat uncanny resemblance to the late author...  

Synopsis:

The Alps is a secret society including a nurse, a gym coach, a gymnast and a paramedic. They offer a unique service: the recently bereaved can hire them to act as surrogates for the deceased loved ones - wearing their clothes, adopting their mannerisms, etc. - in order to help them adjust to their loss.

'Both a companion piece to and in many ways a reversal of Dogtooth, Alps finds Lanthimos building on that film’s surreally terse style and notions of communication and identity without diluting its singularity or concentration. Working with cinematographer Christos Voudouris, he composes his images (with characters frequently decapitated by off-center framing or liquefied into out-of-focus background forms) to conjure up an atmosphere of dread that hangs over even the most deceptively tranquil scenes. By swathing every relationship in layers of hierarchical pretense and distortion, Lanthimos envisions social order itself as a continuous performance, an existential variation of Shakespeare’s dictum about the human race as players on the world’s stage. For him, the roles people assign each other can weigh as much as the stone masks of ancient Greek theater.' - Fernando F. Croce, Slant

Due to controversy surrounding the film’s director, An Officer and a Spy has not been screened in the UK. This gripping drama about the Dreyfus Affair, with a script by Robert Harris (who wrote the script for Conclave) deals with the prosecution of a Jewish officer, Alfed Dreyfus, on false charges of treason. It shows how the rapid rise of antisemitism in France in the 1890s penetrated powerful French institutions, especially the army and the Catholic church. For publishing his protest, J’Accuse!, in 1894, the great French novelist, Emile Zola, was prosecuted for defaming the army. He fled to England in 1898 where he remained for a year. Eventually, the truth was revealed but Dreyfus was never officially exonerated.

Repeatedly requested by Garden Cinema members, the film deserves to be seen. It won the Grand Jury prize at Venice and many other awards throughout the world. Zola said of his campaign in defence of Dreyfus: The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it. To show An Officer and a Spy allows this march to continue and adds an impressive film to the current campaign against antisemitism.

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The screening on Sunday 13 April will be followed by an in-person or Zoom Q&A with director Sophia Exarhou.

It will be introduced by film critic Savina Petkova.

Synopsis:

Under the hot Greek sun, the animators at an all-inclusive island resort prepare for the busy touristic season. Kalia is the group leader. As summer intensifies and the work pressure builds up, their nights become violent and Kalia's struggle is revealed in the darkness. But when the spotlights turn on again, the show must go on.

Curator's note:

The program concludes with Animal (2023) by Sophia Exarchou, which offers the non-Instagrammable aspect of Greek summer by focusing on the working conditions of entertainment labour in tourist resorts. Filmed with a handheld camera, the viewer can almost smell the cigarettes and alcohol seeping from the screen - an experience in stark contrast to the meticulously composed cinema of Tsangari and Lanthimos.

Savina Petkova is a Bulgarian film critic and programmer based in London, UK with a PhD in Film Studies (King's College London) and a Film Studies Master's Degree (UCL). As a critic and journalist, she has written for Cineuropa, Variety, Sight and Sound, MUBI Notebook, Little White Lies, and many others. Since 2024, she has served as the Programming Panel Lead (features) at the Cambridge Film Festival and as a Features Programmer at the Sofia International Film Festival.  Savina mentors young critics in one of the European Workshops for Film Criticism, being an alumna of Berlinale (2020) and Sarajevo (2020) Talents Press, as well as the Locarno Critics Academy (2023).

Anora, a young sex worker from Brooklyn, gets her chance at a Cinderella story when she meets and impulsively marries Vanya, the son of an oligarch. Once the news reaches Russia, her fairytale is threatened when Vanya's parents send their henchmen to annul the marriage, setting off a wild chase through the streets of New York.

Nominated for Best International Independent Film at the British Independent Film Awards 2024.

The Garden Cinema View:

Sean Baker obtained the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival with Anora, making him the first American filmmaker to win the prize since 2012.

Similarly to Baker's previous works (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket), Anora focuses on a deeply flawed yet captivating protagonist, brought to life with great humanity by Mikey Madison. What makes Baker's films so exhilarating is that despite his characters’ questionable decisions and political incorrectness, they always feel authentic. Anora commands our empathy from the start, and by the end, she also gains our respect.

Baker's casting and work with actors is clearly his forte. Beyond Madison's commanding central performance, Anora features masterfully orchestrated (and genuinely entertaining) ensemble work from the Russian mafia characters, including Compartment No. 6’s Yuriy Borisov.

True to form, Baker's directing appears effortless, unspooling intricate, lengthy shots, with a deceptive ease that undermines their complexity.

The screening on Sunday 9 March the screening will be introduced by Savina Petkova.

Synopsis:

Marina, an emotionally stunted 23-year-old, lives with her dying architect father in a seaside factory town. Finding humans strange and repellent, she keeps her distance, watching David Attenborough nature documentaries instead. Then a stranger arrives and challenges her to a foosball duel.

Curator's note:

In 2009, as the financial crisis broke and Grexit fears loomed, the Greek film industry was rocked by two cinematic grenades. First came Dogtooth (2009), by Yorgos Lanthimos, followed by Attenberg (2010) from emerging director Athina Rachel Tsangkari. Tsangari and Lanthimos reimagined Greece through an unconventional lens, deploying a cool gaze and a deadpan sense of humor that sharply diverged from traditional depictions of Zorba-esque mediterranean exuberance.

Savina Petkova is a Bulgarian film critic and programmer based in London, UK with a PhD in Film Studies (King's College London) and a Film Studies Master's Degree (UCL). As a critic and journalist, she has written for Cineuropa, Variety, Sight and Sound, MUBI Notebook, Little White Lies, and many others. Since 2024, she has served as the Programming Panel Lead (features) at the Cambridge Film Festival and as a Features Programmer at the Sofia International Film Festival.  Savina mentors young critics in one of the European Workshops for Film Criticism, being an alumna of Berlinale (2020) and Sarajevo (2020) Talents Press, as well as the Locarno Critics Academy (2023).

Babe, a pig raised by sheepdogs on a rural English farm, learns to herd sheep with a little help from Farmer Hoggett.

Babe is no ordinary pig - having been brought up alongside collies on the Hoggett Farm, he's mastered all the arts of the sheepdog, sparing him the mysterious fate of his relatives. But he's not the only animal in the barnyard with a personality: Ferdinand the duck wants to be a rooster, and Rex the sheepdog doesn't like sheep. As well as being fantastic entertainment with its cast of talking animals, there's a subtly delivered message to this delightful movie about not simply accepting your apparent role in life.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

This precisely wrought, emotionally penetrating romantic drama from Jacques Demy, set largely in the casinos of Nice, is a visually lovely but darkly realistic investigation into love and obsession. A bottle-blonde Jeanne Moreau is at her blithe best as a gorgeous gambling addict, and Claude Mann is the bank clerk drawn into her risky world. Featuring a mesmerising score by Michel Legrand, Bay of Angels is among Demy’s most somber works.

Best in Show was proposed for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Elli.

At the prestigious Mayflower Dog Show, a documentary film crew captures the excitement and tension displayed by the eccentric participants in the hilarious satire Best In Show.This biting send-up exposes the wondrously diverse dog owners who travel from all over America to showcase their four-legged contenders.

This screening will finish at 20:35.

This film was proposed by various members including Daniel Teruel Izquierdo, Karin Lock and Georgia Platt who writes: 'Emir Kusturica’s Black Cat, White Cat is a cult classic in my eyes, it is relentless in its humour and warmth. A spaghetti western of a rom-com! Fairly under the radar cult classic, those who know, adore it.

I would love to see it on a big screen so very much..'

Matko and his son Zare live on the banks of the Danube river and get by through hustling and basically doing anything to make a living. In order to pay off a business debt Matko agrees to marry off Zare to the sister of a local gangster.

Please note, the screening on Wednesday 12 March is our Free Members' Screening, while the one on Tuesday 18 March is a regular screening, which is open to the general public.

The screening on 21 April will be introduced by Chris Berry (KCL).

Among the most important films to come out of the Hong Kong New Wave, Ann Hui’s devastating Boat People focuses on the experiences of refugees forced to flee their country in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

A film with urgent contemporary resonance, Boat People sees Ann Hui documenting the hopelessness felt by many, and shows how the severity of life post-War led many people to take the dangerous decision to step into boats in hope of a better existence. For her fourth feature, which screened as part of the Official Selection at Cannes, the director takes a deeply humanistic approach to a harrowing and urgent subject.

Three years after the Communist takeover, a Japanese photojournalist (George Lam) travels to Vietnam to document the country’s seemingly triumphant rebirth. When he befriends a teenage girl (Season Ma) and her destitute family, however, he begins to discover what the government doesn’t want him to see: the brutal, often shocking reality of life in a country where political repression and poverty have forced many to resort to desperate measures in order to survive.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

A special event to mark publication of the new novel Call Me Ishmaelle, a dazzling female-led reimagining of Melville's Moby-Dick, by acclaimed writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo.

Host Gareth Evans will join Xiaolu after the screening of John Huston's impressive adaptation to talk about her novel's intentions, Melville's enduring influence, and the film itself. Call Me Ishmaelle will be for sale at the event and Xiaolu will be available to sign copies.

The most well-known English language film adaptation of Melville's hugely influential and complex novel, John Huston's 1956 Moby Dick is co-scripted with Ray Bradbury and was the latter's first feature work. Shot in Ireland, Madeira, and Wales, its character-led drama was heightened by off-screen tensions between Huston, Bradbury, and Peck (an imposing Captain Ahab). A vigorous, atmospheric, cinematically impressive, often haunting telling, the film was well-received when released. Many stories were attached to its making, which will be explored in the conversation.

Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick from a female perspective. As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle, orphaned and disguised as a cabin boy, boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a free Black man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest. Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick. Xiaolu Guo has crafted a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original, while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.

Xiaolu Guo was born in China. An acclaimed film-maker as well as a writer, she published six books in China before moving to Britain in 2002. Her books here include Village of Stone; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and I Am China. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her most recent novel A Lover's Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at the Free University in Berlin.

Please note, this screening will take place in our new Screen 3, which will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The screening on 8 March will be introduced by director Luka Yuanyuan Yang.

The screening on 16 March will be followed by in-person Q&A with the director and the launch of her new book about the making of the film and the Chinese diaspora, Dance in Herland.

To mark International Women's Day, the Chinese Cinema Project presents the debut documentary feature from visual artist and filmmaker Luka Yuanyuan Yang - a film that celebrates sisterhood, and the spirit of independent women.

Chinatown Cha-Cha originated from Yang’s research on Asian American women in show business. While tracing the films of Esther Eng, one of the earliest Asian American female directors, Yang discovered a group of former Chinatown nightclub dancers, who are deeply bonded by their passion for dancing.

As the second or third generation of Chinese immigrants in America (aged between 70-90) these dancers witnessed the rise and fall of the luminous nightclub era of San Francisco’s Chinatown. The film’s Chinese title, Women’s World, is itself a tribute to Esther Eng’s now lost 1939 film It’s A Women’s World, the world’s first all Chinese female cast movie.

The 92-year-old former owner of the illustrious ‘Forbidden City Nightclub’ and nightclub starlet Coby Yee decide to get back on stage again, after joining the senior dance troupe Grant Avenue Follies. Together they go on a final tour, bridging once isolated Chinese communities in the US, Cuba, and China.

Cinema Paradiso was suggested for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Noelle Pogue.

Giuseppe Tornatore's loving homage to the cinema tells the story of Salvatore, a successful film director, returning home for the funeral of Alfredo, his old friend who was the projectionist at the local cinema throughout his childhood. Soon memories of his first love affair with the beautiful Elena and all the highs and lows that shaped his life come flooding back, as Salvatore reconnects with the community he left 30 years earlier.

Please note, we will be screening the 174 minute director's cut.

This screening will finish at 18:04.

Let your little ones discover cinema through short films. The Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival is one of the largest short film festivals in the world. This is a special chance to see some of their favourite animated short films for children, in one jam-packed programme.

Suitable for ages 6+

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you  

Synopsis:

A father and a son long lost. Love and hate. Digging deep into mud to find their roots. Revenge and Redemption. A Western, revisited.

Curator's note:

Digger (2020), produced by Rachel Athina Tsangari, is another brilliant tragicomedy, set in the stunningly pictured damp woodlands of Northern Greece. Reminiscent of Rodrigo Sorogoyen's The Beasts, though distinctly its own film, conflict is at its core: between nature and machine, local community and so-called progress, and a father and his long-estranged son.

In this lovingly crafted, wildly eccentric adaptation of a classic French fairy tale, Jacques Demy casts Catherine Deneuve as a princess who must go into hiding as a scullery maid in order to fend off an unwanted marriage proposal—from her own father, the king (Jean Marais). A topsy-turvy riches-to-rags fable with songs by Michel Legrand, Donkey Skin creates a tactile fantasy world that’s perched on the border between the earnest and the satiric, and features Delphine Seyrig in a delicious supporting role as a fashionable fairy godmother.

Ernest Cole, a South African photographer was the first to expose the horrors of apartheid to a world audience. His book House of Bondage, published in 1967 when he was only 27 years old, led him into exile in NYC and Europe for the rest of his life, never to find his bearings. Raoul Peck recounts his wanderings, his turmoil as an artist and his anger, on a daily basis, at the silence or complicity of the Western world in the face of the horrors of the Apartheid regime. He also recounts how, in 2017, 60,000 negatives of his work were discovered in the safe of a Swedish bank.

The Garden Cinema View:

Raoul Peck’s best work since his James Baldwin documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, finds him again seeking to revive the spirit of a chronicler of 20th Century politics and life. Whilst Samuel L. Jackson gave voice to Baldwin, here LaKeith Stanfield provides a kind of poetic imaginary narration of South African photographer Ernest Cole’s life in exile. Peck moves from a global movement against the injustices of the apartheid system to a very intimate journey which becomes increasingly touching. Cole’s melancholy wanderings through the USA and Europe are illustrated by an incredible array of rediscovered photographs. As the film shifts to this individual focus, something of the wider global context becomes muted. Although, to quote Carol Hanisch, the personal here feels innately political.    

When a flood of biblical proportions washes its home away, a solitary cat must seek refuge with a motley crew of animals (including a dog, a capybara, a lemur and a secretarybird), who gradually learn to get along in this endearing, Oscar-winning animation.

The Garden Cinema View:

The standout animation from the winter awards cycle, Flow presents a non-human, yet charming and compassionate, Genesis flood narrative. In a refreshing departure from Hollywood animation clichés, these animal protagonists are remarkably animal-like. Indeed their most anthropomorphised scenes, whilst charming, are the weakest in the film.

Flow is a triumph of art direction, depicting a stunning and eerily posthuman world of megalithic geography and deserted architecture. There is surely a gaming influence here. Not least the Stray-esque movements of the feline ‘hero’, but also an echo of the Ozymandias type ruins of Team Ico games such as Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.  

Young viewers should find the perilous journey scary but involving; adults will respond to the sweeping water-world and themes of ecological catastrophe.

Winner of Best Animated Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards.

When a flood washes its home away, a solitary cat must seek refuge with a motley crew of animals (including a dog, a capybara, a lemur and a secretarybird), who gradually learn to get along in this endearing, Oscar-winning animation.

Gints Zilbalodis cements his position as a visionary director with this captivating, dialogue-free escapade, whose ambition and scope is breathtaking.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

We open our Planting Seeds strand with Foragers, Jumanna Manna's film depicting the dramas and stories around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine, with wry humour and a meditative pace.

Shot in the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Jerusalem, it moves between fiction, documentary and archival footage to portray the impact of Israeli nature protection laws on these customs. The restrictions prohibit the collection of the artichoke-like ’akkoub and za’atar (thyme), and have resulted in fines and trials for hundreds caught collecting these native plants. For Palestinians, these laws constitute an ecological veil for legislation that further alienates them from their land while Israeli state representatives insist on their scientific expertise and duty to protect.

The film will be introduced by filmmaker Zeina Ramadan.

The ticket price includes a cup of Palestinian sage tea, courtesy of Kaf of Palestine.

Screened in collaboration with AWAN, Films of Resistance, and Independent Film Association.

The film is screening as part of our Planting Seeds strand, which explores issues around nature and environmental activism.

The annual London Mountain Film Festival collection of shorter films to amaze, enlighten, surprise and inspire you! There really is something for everyone in this collection, so if your interest in adventure reaches far and wide then this is for you. Buckle up!

Many Small Steps 3’ (Rob Waugh) A young boy's passion for nature leads him to conquer his first Munro, offering a heartwarming metaphor for life's challenges and triumphs.

Eliot Jackson - Drop The Mic 2’ (Scott Secco) A thrilling ride with Eliot Jackson, a mountain biking legend with hidden superpowers.

Concrete Summer 14’ (Jacob Watson) We follow Robbo as he tries to reignite the fixed-gear scene in Liverpool, showing the sweeter side of the illegal sport of alleycat racing.

Wild Aerial 16’ (Trixie Pacis) Blending techniques from the disparate worlds of mountaineering and acrobatics, adventure aerialist Sasha Galitzki performs gravity-defying routines in subzero temperatures.

The Smoke That Thunders 4’ (Caleb Roberts) Brave the untamed Zambezi with Ben Marr as he battles upstream to conquer the legendary Minus rapids.

Tether 12’ (Laura Basil Duncan) From skateparks to sheep pastures, UK skateboarder Lois Pendlebury navigates an unplanned transition to shepherding.

Unplugged 4’ (Samuel McMahon) Liam Rivera carves through untouched snow in a breathtaking black-and-white free-ride film with only the mountains' ambient sounds.

The Road to No Man’s Land 7’ (Solomon Olsen) Will's quest for freedom leads him into the Sahara's heart, where a deteriorating motorbike tests his limits.

Defensoras 4’ (Eilidh Munro, Bethan John) A defiant and resilient collective of Bolivian indigenous female defenders risk their lives standing up to power.

My Wilderness 4’ (Rupert Shanks, Ana Norrie-Toch) Ana's passion for Scotland's wild terrains shapes her art, blending bikepacking and choreography.

Salt 12’ (Alice Ward) Unusually salty at birth, Alice is diagnosed for Cystic Fibrosis before becoming the first woman in Ireland to shoot surf films in water from a female perspective.

Travelling Home 5’ (Juliet Klottrup) A retired farrier’s heartfelt annual pilgrimage to the Appleby Horse Fair, capturing the essence of tradition and community in Cumbria.

Wolf of Wingsuit 4’ (Aaron Garcia) The beautiful and towering mountains of Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland - an off-season paradise for Wingsuit professionals.

(This programme may change)

Golden Eighties was suggested for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Kit.

You can almost smell the hairspray in Akerman’s exuberant but subversive musical about the many romantic entanglements of salon workers in a shopping mall basement. Its natty 1980s style, witty song lyrics, rapturous dance sequences, not to mention a gloriously bitchy male-suited quartet, deliver all the joys of the genre. At the same time, Akerman critiques the consumerist ‘paradise’ around them, questioning whether love, if it’s tied to conformity, really is the answer.

Restored by Royal Film Archive of Belgium (CINEMATEK), Fondation Chantal Akerman and L’Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna.

This screening will finish at 13:46.

Please note, this screening will take place in our new Screen 3, which will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Eva Aridjis Fuentes.

An intimate journey through the life of singer Diane Luckey aka Q Lazzarus, narrated through her own words and music. The exceptionally talented but vastly underappreciated Q, who sang the cult hit song 'Goodbye Horses', reveals the reason behind her mysterious 25-year-long disappearance and paves the way towards her re-emergence, with stories heartbreaking, hilarious, and moving.

Please note, this screening will take place in our new Screen 3, which will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Adriana Brownlee

DREAM AGAIN with Adriana Brownlee

Directed by Mathis Decroux

Adriana Brownlee is the youngest woman to climb all 14 of the world's tallest mountains that are over 8,000m high. The 23-year-old British mountaineer made history with her achievement. In this film she faces the formidable challenges of Gasherbrum I and Gasherbrum II. These two peaks, her 10th and 11th summits, mark her final climbs in Pakistan on this extraordinary journey.

In this phase, Adriana evolves her climbing style by striving for minimal assistance and forgoing supplemental oxygen, climbing alongside her trusted partner, Geljen Sherpa. This not only brings her incredible encounters, powerful emotions and painful moments, but it also opens her eyes on the 8000 industry.

This story is about more than reaching summits. It’s about a young woman chasing her dreams, rediscovering the joy and wonder of her childhood passion, and inspiring others to pursue their own aspirations. Adriana’s journey captures the essence of resilience, the power of dreaming big, and the drive to push beyond limits in pursuit of something extraordinary.

EVEREST REVISITED 1924-2024

Directed by John Porter and Dom Bush

Everest Revisited 1924-2024 explores the characters on the 1924 expeditions, both the British and those they hired to support the expedition - Sherpa, Bhotia and Tibetans. It uses extensive historical film and photographic material as well as interviews with Everest scholars and mountaineers. Moving from the past to the present, the film asks: What the mountain means to climbers and Nepalis 100 years on from this famous expedition that lost a Bhotia, a Ghurkha and of course Mallory and Irvine on the mountain.

Julie Summers, the great niece of Sandy Irvine and mountaineer Matt Sharman seek insights from many well-known climbers including Sir Chris Bonington, Rebecca Stephens, Krish Thapa, Stephen Venables, Dawson Stelfox and Leo Houlding. Observations on historical and social impacts are provided by Dr. Jonathan Westway and Ed Douglas, while Dr. Melanie Windridge talks about the beginnings of the science of Everest.

This screening will feature an introduction by Ben Arogundade, author of Hollywood Blackout. Copies of the book, signed by Ben, will be available to buy on the day.

In this Hollywood classic, A sheltered and manipulative Southern belle and a roguish profiteer face off in a turbulent romance as the society around them crumbles with the end of slavery and is rebuilt during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods.

On 29 February 1940, African American star Hattie McDaniel became the first non-white actor to win an Academy Award. The moment marked the beginning of Hollywood’s reluctant move toward diversity and inclusion. Since then, minorities and women have struggled to attain Academy Awards recognition within a system designed to discriminate against them. For the first time, Hollywood Blackout reveals the untold story of their tumultuous journey from exclusion to inclusion; from segregation to celebration.

BEN AROGUNDADE is an award-winning author, journalist, voiceover artist and broadcaster from London. His writing has featured in The Times, The Guardian, The Evening Standard, Elle and GQ, amongst others. He has authored and edited 12 books, and has voiced audiobooks for titles by George Orwell, Charles Darwin and Bernadine Evaristo to name a few. He also writes and presents radio shows for the BBC World Service. Ben’s new book, Hollywood Blackout: Race, Diversity and the Oscars, is out now.

For more context and background on the impact of Hattie McDaniel's win, you can read Ben's longform essay here.

Please note we are unable to offer step-free access to the new Screen 3 and Atrium Bar while we await the installation of our platform lift. Access to the new bar & screen currently requires taking 4 steps up from the box office level, followed by 3 steps down.

Walter Salles (Central Station, The Motorcycle Diaries) makes a triumphant return with an emotionally layered, visually rich account of family life under an oppressive regime.

It's 1971, Brazil faces the tightening grip of a military dictatorship. Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), a mother of five children, is forced to reinvent herself after her family suffers a violent and arbitrary act by the government.

I’m Still Here is based on Marcelo Rubens Paiva's biographical book and tells the true story that helped reconstruct an important part of Brazil’s hidden history.

The Garden Cinema View:

Director Walter Salles continues his exploration of political histories by offering a moving biography of a family enduring hardship after the father is arrested for resisting Brazil’s 1970s junta. Like his previous film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), I'm Still Here explores how activism impacts upper middle-class lives when educated individuals step beyond their comfort zones. And much like Steve McQueen’s recent Blitz (2024), the meticulous research and inspired production design elevate the experience, adding depth to what is otherwise a traditionally told, but powerful, narrative based on real events.  

The ensemble cast delivers a compelling portrayal of this extended family, capturing a warmth, and distinctly Latin sentiment, that is a joy to see on the big screen – and is especially refreshing after an abundance of cerebral political pieces. Fernanda Torres' performance is particularly remarkable, poised and utterly authentic, making her the standout of the film.

While not formally groundbreaking, I'm Still Here is deeply moving, heartwarming, and a valuable window into this chapter of Brazilian history.

Academy Award Winner: Best International Feature Film

Golden Globe Winner: Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture

This shorts programme features a collection of films that explore the complexities of life during the pandemic in China, reflecting on both personal and collective experiences of isolation, adaptation, and memory. From everyday life in quarantine to critical examinations of the system, these films offer a multifaceted view of a fractured society during unprecedented times.

My Quarantine Bear

China, France, 2021, dir. Ma Weijia, 35min.

Weijia Ma is working on an animation film in Strasbourg when COVID descends on France. She very quickly flees to Lyon before returning to Shanghai. From the flight to her quarantine in a hotel on arrival, this filmed diary with its airs of romantic comedy uses humour and great formal invention to retrace the experience of this journey.

The Memo

China, 2023, dir. Badlands Film Group, 30min.

This is a video diary of the surreal lockdown made by the filmmaker couple who are trapped in a small, rented apartment in Shanghai. In the face of endless madness, the camera gradually breaks free from the window and observes a vast social isolation unprecedented in the country’s history.

Shanghai Reset

China, 2022, dir. Hu Qiao, 5min.

The system appears to be discussing opinions with humans about something. The film came from three days of free travel permission and was shot on the streets of Shanghai at the end of April 2022.

Bye Bye Barrier!

China, 2022, dirs. Wan Qing & Zhang Hanlu, 14min

One early morning in November 2022, Guangzhou announced the unblocking of the east and west corners of Haizhu District, and the middle blocked area was surrounded by water-filled barriers and tin walls overnight - which was called 'one district, two regulations' by citizens. Hanlu, who lived in west Haizhu District, asks her friends if they need her supplies before she leaves Guangzhou, and Wan Qing, who lives in middle Haizhu, claims some of the ingredients. The two make an appointment to meet at the water-filled barriers at the blocked border and film along the way. After the editing of their own perspectives, they combine them to form this two-screen video.

Spring 23

China, 2024, dir. Wang Zhiyi, 13min.

A young man who has just finished handling the funeral of his parents attempts to purchase some fireworks for the 2023 Spring Festival, where fireworks are prohibited.

Ambiguity Film is a London-based film curation team dedicated to showcasing independent Chinese films. Established in 2023, we seek to spotlight the vibrant yet underrepresented underground Chinese films which captures essential narratives that confront and document the obscured realities and histories marginalized by mainstream discourse.

Supported by Film Hub London, managed by Film London. Proud to be a partner of the BFI Film Audience Network, funded by the National Lottery.

Our screening on Sunday 23 March will be introduced by film programmer Nathasha Orlando Kappler.

Agnès Varda’s tender evocation of the childhood of her husband, Jacques Demy - a dream project that she realised for him when he became too ill to direct it himself - is a wonder-filled portrait of the artist as a young man and an enchanting ode to the magic of cinema. Shot in Demy’s hometown of Nantes (including the house he grew up in), this imaginative blend of narrative and documentary traces his coming of age as he finds escape from the tumult of World War II in puppet shows, fairy tales, opera, and, above all, movies - the formative aesthetic experiences that would fuel his vivid Technicolor imagination and find unforgettable expression in his exuberant New Wave masterworks. Interspersing intimate footage of the older Demy reflecting on his life’s journey, Jacquot de Nantes is a poignant love letter from one visionary artist to another.

In anticipation of Bi Gan’s third feature Resurrection (following his Long Day's Journey Into Night), the Chinese Cinema Project revisits his aesthetically remarkable and poetry-filled debut Kaili Blues, which premiered at Locarno Film Festival 10 years ago. The film follows a small-town doctor who finds himself interacting with people from his past and future, whilst travelling the countryside to locate his nephew. Shot primarily in Kaili, Guizhou Province, Bi Gan’s hometown, using local dialect, the screening will have both Chinese and English subtitles.

A very brief greeting video from the director Bi Gan will be played before the screening.

This special screening also celebrates Chinese New Year 2025, and which is the third successive Garden Cinema CNY special event, following the UK Premiere of Kong Dashan’s Journey to the West in 2023, and an immersive screening of Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love in 2024. A very brief greeting video from director Bi Gan will play before each screening.

'The intense blues and greens, the saturated, tangibly thick light and shade of the settings, the impossible visions of twirling, ever-present disco mirror balls, defying space, are conjured into light and sound, and, via poetry, into cinema.' -  Cinema Scope

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

Mari Luz Canaquiri says her river is the “ɨa” – the center, life force and mother. Her river deep in Peru’s Amazon provides fish to eat, a transport route and a place to swim and relax. But it is also much more. Underneath the surface live the Karuara, which means “people of the river” in her native tongue.

The Karuara live in a parallel universe underwater and visit their human cousins in dreams. They lounge in hammocks made of boa constrictors, smoke sardines and wear crayfish watches, stingray hats and catfish shoes. Behind their playfulness, the Karuara are powerful spirits with healing powers and great knowledge.

But the Karuara and the old ways are in danger of being forgotten. Mari Luz says her people face cultural genocide. While foreign companies earn millions from the Amazon’s resources, indigenous communities lack basic development like schools, health care and clean water. She formed the Kukama Women’s Federation to fight back. We follow her valiant struggle to protect her people, river and the vibrant spirit world below.

Karuara, People of the River will remind viewers that each river, lake and stream is sacred and that our planet’s fragile water resources must be protected.

This vibrant, hand-painted animated film was screened at the 28 Festival Cine de Lima and Hot Docs Toronto.

The film will be followed by a Q&A with Emilsen Flores - Woman Kukama leader and Gabriel Salazar - Foro Solidaridad Peru.

The film is screening as part of our Planting Seeds season, which explores issues around nature and environmental activism. This screening is in partnership with the Peru Support Group.

Kim’s Video follows modern-day cinephile and filmmaker, David Redmon, on a seemingly quixotic quest to track down the whereabouts of the massive video collection of the now-defunct Kim’s Video, an iconic NYC video rental store with more than 55,000 beloved and rare movies.

Playing with the forms and tropes of cinema, David’s bizarre and increasingly obsessive quest takes him to Sicily, where he becomes entangled in a web of local politics, and to South Korea, where he tracks down the enigmatic Mr. Kim in the hope of influencing the collection’s future.

An ode to the love of cinema, this film will strike a chord with anyone who has ever rented a movie.

The film was in the official selection at the Sundance, Telluride, and Trebica Film Festivals.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director David Redmon, hosted by Dominic Hicks from the Nickel Cinema

Lawrence of Arabia was proposed for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Paul Testar.

One of cinema's grandest epics, this monumental story recounts the true life experiences of T.E. Lawrence, better known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia. A young, idealistic British officer in WWI, Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) is assigned to the camp of Prince Feisal (Alec Guinness), an Arab tribal chieftain and leader in a revolt against the Turks. In a series of brilliant tactical maneuvers, Lawrence leads fifty of Feisal's men in a tortured three week crossing of the Nefud Desert to attack the strategic Turkish held port of Aqaba. And following his successful raids against Turkish troops and trains, Lawrence’s triumphant leadership and unyielding courage gain him nearly god-like status among his Arab brothers.

This screening features a 15-minute intermission and will finish at 18:27.

Le Mépris is screening to celebrate the centenary of the great Georges Delerue, and will be introduced by Oscar nominated composer Gary Yershon.

Jean-Luc Godard’s subversive foray into commercial filmmaking is a star-studded Cinemascope epic. Le Mépris stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter torn between the demands of a proud European director (played by legendary director Fritz Lang), a crude and arrogant American producer (Jack Palance), and his disillusioned wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot), as he attempts to doctor the script for a new film version of The Odyssey.

Please note, this screening will take place in our new Screen 3, which will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

Jacques Demy’s crystalline debut gave birth to the fictional universe in which so many of his characters would live, play, and love. It’s among his most profoundly felt films, a tale of crisscrossing lives in Nantes (Demy’s hometown) that floats on waves of longing and desire. Heading the film’s ensemble is the enchanting Anouk Aimée as the title character, a cabaret chanteuse who’s awaiting the return of a long-lost lover and unwilling to entertain the adoration of another love-struck soul, the wanderer Roland (Marc Michel). Humane, wistful, and witty, Lola is a testament to the resilience of the heartbroken.

The screening on 19 April will be followed by an in-person Q&A with the director Ann Hui, moderated by Tony Rayns.

Following her 'Vietnamese Trilogy', one of the cornerstones of the Hong Kong New Wave, Ann Hui took her career in a different direction, and began adapting literary works. The first of these was Love in a Fallen City, based on the novella by Eileen Chang, whose writing Hui had long admired and wished to bring to the screen, followed by Eighteen Springs (1997) and Love After Love (2017).  

Beginning in Shanghai during the 1940s with the Japanese invasion looming, the film stars Cora Miao as a divorcee who falls for businessman Chow Yun-Fat and follows him to Hong Kong, where they repeatedly separate and get back together against the tense backdrop of the Pacific War. A grounded and movingly humanistic exploration of relationships and the desolation of war, the film saw Hui widening her scope and developing her creative approach and voice as director, while attempting to remain as faithful as possible to Chang’s text.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

The screening on Sunday 23 February will be followed by a Zoom Q&A with director Yannis Economides.

It will be introduced by season curator and Garden Cinema head programmer, Erifili Missiou.

Synopsis:

Dimitris, a grumpy middle-aged man, is having a hard time with his business partner on a particular decision as to opening a new business; and he’s also having a hell of a time with his family members. He has a really short temper, and the unpleasant behaviour of his nasty wife and his disrespectful children don’t contribute much to his health.

Curator's note:

Matchbox viscerally portrays the dark side of the Greek family. Taking the Greek audience by surprise, and now a cult classic, it was an outright slap in the face in 2002, and its heightened realism continues to shock audiences to this day.

Content warning: The film contains intense scenes of verbal abuse and violence some viewers might find upsetting.

Grace Pudel is a lonely misfit with an affinity for collecting ornamental snails and an intense love for books. At a young age, when Grace is separated from her fire-breathing twin brother Gilbert, she falls into a spiral of anxiety and angst. Despite a continued series of hardships, inspiration and hope emerge when she strikes up an enduring friendship with an elderly eccentric woman named Pinky, who is full of grit and lust for life. From Academy Award-winning animation writer and director Adam Elliot, Memoir of a Snail is a poignant, heartfelt, hilarious chronicle of the life of an outsider finding her confidence and silver linings amongst the clutter of everyday life.

Nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2025 Academy Awards.

Winner Best Film at London Film Festival 2024

The Garden Cinema View:

This delightful stop-motion feature contends with difficult subjects with easy going charm and idiosyncratically Aussie humour. Featuring a life narrated in (predominantly) flashback, Memoir of a Snail presents a bleakly hilarious vision of 1970s Melbourne and Canberra. Exploring surprisingly raw material, including suicide and child abuse, this is not a film for children. Nonetheless, the inventive Claymation evokes a kind of childlike wonder which channels a direct emotional response from the audience. The slimy trail of despair is addressed in an amusingly matter-of-fact tone, which is both funny and relatable. Eventually, its all quite moving.  

Bong Joon-ho's long awaited follow-up to the history making Parasite. An unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes (Robert Pattinson) has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer whodemands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living.

The Garden Cinema View:

It’s been six years since Bong Joon-ho altered the cinematic landscape with his all-conquering Parasite. His return is a seven-figure budgeted, epic sci-fi-mind-bender. Like his previous Hollywood work, Snowpiercer and Okja, Mickey 17 is, at heart, and anti-capitalist satire which hinges on a high concept central idea (work is literally killing you). As with those earlier films, there’s a sense that Bong doesn’t quite know where to take his narrative after the main point is made. Better then to enjoy the absurdity of his broad caricatures, cute/gross creature designs, and oddities of world building. A noble endeavour in a difficult political landscape, if not quite reaching the heights of Paul Verhoeven’s sci-fi satires Robocop and Starship Troopers.

Moana 2 is the thrilling sequel to Disney's beloved 2016 animated musical. This time, Moana, now a seasoned wayfinder, receives an unexpected call from her ancestors that leads her on a daring new adventure beyond the familiar shores of Motunui.

Accompanied by the ever-powerful demigod Maui and a fresh crew of unlikely seafarers, Moana embarks on a journey deep into the far seas of Oceania. Their mission: to break an ancient curse that threatens a long-lost island once vital to her ancestors. Along the way, Moana and her companions must face dangerous waters, hidden islands, and mysterious foes—including a formidable sea monster.

Featuring returning stars Auli’i Cravalho as Moana and Dwayne Johnson as Maui, Moana 2 promises a heart-pounding voyage filled with new songs, vibrant animation, and the signature Disney magic.

Moana 2 contains several sequences with flashing lights that may affect those who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or have other photosensitivities.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Pablo Navarrete's parents were forced to leave Chile after a military coup on 11 September 1973. They arrived in the UK as political refugees after spending time in the Pinochet dictatorship’s torture centres. They didn’t know it then, but Britain would be where they would settle, have a family, and still live, nearly 50 years later.

Filmed over more than three years, Mother, Country is a deeply personal film that follows the director as he travels to Chile with his parents in 2020 to witness a people’s uprising and finally confront their past.

The film was in the official selection at the Santiago Álvarez Documentary Film Festival, the ‘Other Cinema’ Human Rights Film Festival, and the Trieste Ibero-Latin American Film Festival.

The screening will be followed by a live Q&A with director Pablo Navarrete and his mother, Cristina Godoy-Navarrete, hosted by Mariela Kohon, Assistant Director, Strategy & Delivery, Trade Union Congress (TUC).

Click here to listen to a Q&A with them chaired by journalist Matt Kennard, after a sold-out September 2024 screening of the film at the Garden Cinema.

Told in flashbacks, the story introduces Mufasa as an orphaned cub, lost and alone until he meets a sympathetic lion named Taka - the heir to a royal bloodline. The chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of an extraordinary group of misfits searching for their destiny - their bonds will be tested as they work together to evade a threatening and deadly foe.

Blending live-action filmmaking techniques with photoreal computer-generated imagery, Mufasa: The Lion King is directed by Barry Jenkins and features songs by Grammy Award-winning songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

UK Premiere of 2K Restoration. The screening on 29 April will be introduced by Tom Cunliffe (UCL). This is the first time the 2K restoration will be shown in a cinema in the UK.

Hong Kong New Wave pioneer Patrick Tam’s final film in the movement, and his last until After This Our Exile in 2006, My Heart is that Eternal Rose is a dark and dreamy ode to doomed love. Tam’s romantic take on the emerging heroic bloodshed genre throws impassioned melodrama into the mix, as well as plenty of action, making for an intoxicating cinematic experience.

Set against an expressionistic backdrop of nightclubs, stunningly shot by the legendary Christoper Doyle, the film stars Tony Leung, Kenny Bee, and Joey Wong as three friends caught up in the criminal underworld, whose love triangle leads to heartbreaking consequences and bloody shootouts in classic neo-noir style. Through their tragic tale, Tam explores the changing identity of a Hong Kong with one eye on an idealised past and the other on an uncertain political future, set to a glorious synth score and the music from the immortal Anita Mui.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. Cantonese with English subtitles.

The screening on Sunday 30 March will be introduced by ethnomusicologist Ed Emery.

Synopsis:

The story of songwriter Eftyhia Papagiannopoulou (1893-1972), who escaped the burning of Smyrna and journeyed to Athens, Greece, where she became a major figure in Greek popular music and the beloved lyricist of the country.

Curator's note:

My Name is Eftuxia (2019) is the most "sane" film in this program. An engrossing biopic of Rebetiko genre songwriter Eftihia Papagianopoulou, it traces the life of this feisty woman whose life challenged societal norms, against the backdrop of tumultuous challenges - both the country’s and her own.

Ed Emery is an ethnomusicologist and Research Associate in the Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies [SOAS, London]. For 25 years he has been engaged with Rebetiko Studies both in London and in Greece (the annual Hydra Rebetiko Gathering). He is the organiser of the famous SOAS Rebetiko Band, where his chosen instruments are tzoura and baglama. In January 2025 he completed the editing of the SOAS Rebetiko Reader. Copies will be on display at the film showing. The book is freely downloadable from www.geocities.ws/soasrebetikoreader.

Screening in memory of the great Gene Hackman.

Arthur Penn’s haunting neo noir reimagines the hard-boiled detective film for the disillusioned, paranoid 1970s. In one of his greatest performances, Gene Hackman oozes world-weary cynicism as a private investigator whose search for an actress’ missing daughter (Melanie Griffith) leads him from the Hollywood Hills to the Florida Keys, where he is pulled into a sordid family drama and a sinister conspiracy he can hardly grasp. Bolstered by Alan Sharp’s genre-scrambling script and Dede Allen’s elliptical editing, the daringly labyrinthine Night Moves is a defining work of post-Watergate cinema - a silent scream of existential dread and moral decay whose legend has only grown with time.

Basel Adra, a young Palestinian activist from Masafer Yatta, has been fighting his community's mass expulsion by the Israeli occupation since childhood. Basel documents the gradual erasure of Masafer Yatta, as soldiers destroy the homes of families - the largest single act of forced transfer ever carried out in the occupied West Bank. He crosses paths with Yuval, an Israeli journalist who joins his struggle, and for over half a decade they fight against the expulsion while growing closer. Their complex bond is haunted by the extreme inequality between them: Basel, living under a brutal military occupation, and Yuval, unrestricted and free.

This film, by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four young activists, was co-created during the darkest, most terrifying times in the region, as an act of creative resistance to Apartheid and a search for a path towards equality and justice.

Nominated for Best International Independent Film at the British Independent Film Awards 2024.

Berlinale Documentary Award and Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film

The Garden Cinema View:

No Other Land follows frontline occupation/conflict documentaries such as For Sama, City of Ghosts, and 20 Days in Mariupol, in that it confronts us with the desperate immediacy of the situation in Gaza, whilst showcasing the extraordinary bravery of the filmmakers and journalists who record these atrocities. The footage is upsetting, and produces feelings of helplessness, and deep frustration and anger, as well as exhaustion. The efforts of Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham in telling this story are themselves commendable, and they show a collaborative pathway that might lead to a better future. That is until the terrifying coda that Basel filmed after the official end of the shoot, just after the recent escalation of Israel’s war with Hamas in October 2023.  

Nuts in May was proposed for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Sakie.

A couple’s quest to get away from it all comes with some unforeseen hazards in Mike Leigh’s classic tale of a camping holiday gone wrong. Their car packed to the gills, the punctilious Keith (Roger Sloman) and the more spontaneous Candice Marie (Alison Steadman) arrive at a Dorset campground for ten nights of idyllic bliss. It starts off pretty perfect: they go sightseeing, eat vegetarian food, and search for raw milk. Then a fellow with a loud radio pitches his tent near theirs. Things get worse when a couple arrive on a motorcycle, have noisy sex in their tent, and start an illegal campfire. Will Keith and Candice Marie find a peaceful corner, or are they doomed to brawl with the noisy and unwashed?

This screening will finish at 14:44.

Set against a landscape dominated by an algorithm-driven gig economy, in a world designed to keep us apart, On Falling explores the silent, vital struggle to find meaning and connection. It tells the story of Aurora, a Portuguese migrant working as a warehouse picker in Edinburgh, Scotland. Trapped between the confines of a vast distribution centre and the solitude of her own bedroom, Aurora seeks out every opportunity to resist the alienation and isolation that threaten her sense of self.

The Garden Cinema View:

Rarely does a film depict the grey monotony of working a dehumanising job with such accuracy as On Falling. Rather than extreme despair, it portrays this as a exhausting experience which strips a person away from their agency to think clearly and act rationally, leading to a spiral of embarrassment. The film also powerfully depicts cultural displacement, particularly of a family-oriented Mediterranean individual thrust into a cold and impersonal environment, and forced to cohabitate with strangers.

The script is tightly constructed, gradually building tension yet maintaining great nuance, with plenty of subtext and innuendo. Joana Santos gives a quietly excellent performance as Aurora, the exploited worker in a big warehouse in Scotland. This is a powerful debut from the Scotland-based Portuguese filmmaker Laura Carreira, and announces a new voice in new social realist cinema.

Winner: Best Director, San Sebastián International Film Festival 2024

Winner: Sutherland Award, BFI London Film Festival 2024, which recognises the most original and imaginative directorial debut.

The screening on Sunday 16 March will be followed by an in-person or Zoom Q&A with director Filipos Tsitos.

It will be introduced by Dr. Tonia Kazakopoulou.

Synopsis:

The title of Plato’s Academy is a little misleading because no Greek sages are in sight. Rather the film’s Greeks are four scruffy lay-abouts, three of whom own convenience stores at the same quiet Athens intersection. This allows them to sit and guzzle coffee or beer all day while studying the hard-working foreign laborers who have invaded “their” neighborhood.

Curator's note:

A hilarious satire, Plato's Academy (2009), is the purest comedy in this assembly. Released at a time when Albanian and Chinese immigrants flooded the country to take on low-paid jobs, it skewers Greeks’ xenophobic attitudes, and exposes their existential fears.

Tonia Kazakopoulou is a Lecturer in Film & Television at the University of Reading. Her research interests include women's cinema of small nations, and particularly of Greece; contemporary European and world cinemas; the politics of representation in film and television. She has been the curator of the international standing conference Contemporary Greek Film Cultures, and is the co-editor of the book Contemporary Greek Film Cultures form 1990s to the Present (Peter Lang, 2017). She has also published on women's cinema, on Greek women screenwriters, on contemporary Greek cinema and motherhood, as well as on the female characters in Yorgos Lanthimos's films.

Followed by an in person Q&A with the Quays Brothers, hosted by Gareth Evans

Gareth Evans, Quay Brothers series co-curator for Kinoteka writes: ‘Surely the world’s greatest practising stop-motion artist animators, the Quays Brothers have been painstakingly crafting their own unique, interlinked universe of astonishingly imagined animated worlds for over 45 years. Creating across the short, medium and long form, as well as in production design for opera, ballet and theatre, theirs is a startling cosmology, one informed and inhabited by the mystery and melancholy dreaming of Central and Eastern European artists, writers and wayward wanderers, most notably from the Polish constellation.'

Programme 1:

Stille Nacht I, 1’40’’

Street of Crocodiles ,21’30’’

Stille Nacht II, 3’30’’

In Absentia, 19’

Stille Nacht III, 3’30’’

Kinoteka Ident I, 30’’

Alice in Not so Wonderland, 3’30’’

Q&A with the Quays Brothers

In a London premiere – and a world first for an assembly at this scale – 23 of their immaculately hand-crafted puppet film sets by the Quays Brothers will be on display in Bloomsbury’s Swedenborg House.

Organised by the Polish Cultural Institute in London and supported by the Polish Film Institute, the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival is an annual celebration of Poland’s rich cinematic output that showcases not only the best of contemporary filmmakers but also classics that make up Poland’s rich filmography. Kinoteka will return to celebrate its 23rd year from 6 March - 25 April 2025, featuring over 30 cinema screenings in leading venues around London. Alongside New Polish Cinema, Documentaries and Polish Cinemas Classics, this year's edition will also feature a retrospective of films by Wojciech Has as well as exciting Special Events and screenings of selected films from the Kinotkea programme in 8 UK cities as part of Kinoteka On Tour.

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

This screening will be introduced in person by the Quays Brothers and Gareth Evans.

Gareth Evans, Quay Brothers series co-curator for Kinoteka writes: ‘Surely the world’s greatest practising stop-motion artist animators, the Quay Brothers have been painstakingly crafting their own unique, interlinked universe of astonishingly imagined animated worlds for over 45 years. Creating across the short, medium and long form, as well as in production design for opera, ballet and theatre, theirs is a startling cosmology, one informed and inhabited by the mystery and melancholy dreaming of Central and Eastern European artists, writers and wayward wanderers, most notably from the Polish constellation'.

Programme 2

The Calligrapher, 1’

Kinoteka Ident II, 30’’

This Unnameable Little Broom, 11’

Unmistaken Hands, 26’

The Comb, 18

In a London premiere – and a world first for an assembly at this scale – 23 of their immaculately hand-crafted puppet film sets by the Quay Brothers will be on display in Bloomsbury’s Swedenborg House.

Organised by the Polish Cultural Institute in London and supported by the Polish Film Institute, the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival is an annual celebration of Poland’s rich cinematic output that showcases not only the best of contemporary filmmakers but also classics that make up Poland’s rich filmography. Kinoteka will return to celebrate its 23rd year from 6 March - 25 April 2025, featuring over 30 cinema screenings in leading venues around London. Alongside New Polish Cinema, Documentaries and Polish Cinemas Classics, this year's edition will also feature a retrospective of films by Wojciech Has as well as exciting Special Events and screenings of selected films from the Kinotkea programme in 8 UK cities as part of Kinoteka On Tour.

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

To really set the tone for our mini celebration of Jacques Demy's films, join us on Sunday 9 March for a colourful, sweeping & refreshing members' event.

From 15:00, we will wait for you in the Garden Bar, where we'll be serving suitably themed cocktails, the first of which will be complimentary. Meanwhile, you'll be able to enjoy the uplifting tunes composed by Demy's favourite musical collaborator, Michel Legrand. 

Following the cocktail hour we'll head into the screen, where friend of the cinema Ariane will delight us with a live music performance, which of course will feature the film's iconic theme song. After this, please have your tissues at the ready, and prepare yourself to be swept away by the screening of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Possibly Demy's most renowned feature, it's a great entry-point into his work if you're not familiar already, and you'll be sure to recognise its phenomenal visuals if you've previously perched down in the cinema's 'Den', also lovingly referred to as the 'Deneuve room'.

Event timings:

15:00  Cocktail hour in the Garden Bar

16:00  Screen doors open

16:15  Live music performance

16:30  Screening of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

18:10  Expected finish

Tickets can be booked by members only, but you are welcome to purchase up to 2, meaning you can invite along a compagnon, even if they're not a member. They are available for £18 each, and include a complimentary (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) themed cocktail, as well as an unallocated seat for both the live music performance and the film screening.

About the performance:

Ariane is a versatile singer and choir leader with a passion for exploring a range of genres, from jazz to Balkan music, with a special love for Chanson Française. Inspired by the music of Michel Legrand, she grew up singing his songs and immersing herself in the Demy/Legrand musicals time and again.

A government scheme sees newly widowed Santosh inherit her husband’s job as a police constable in the rural badlands of Northern India. When a lowcaste girl is murdered, Santosh is pulled into the investigation by charismatic feminist inspector Sharma.

The Garden Cinema View:

A UK made, Indian set police procedural, that slowly tightens into a troublingly dark film noir. Perhaps the best depiction of small town law enforcement corruption and ineptitude since Bong Joon ho’s great Memories of Murder, Santosh contains its own powerful statements of Indian misogyny and caste prejudice. Gripping and bleak, this is a mature film that never over explains, and is confident to tell an often elliptical narrative.  

When a bomb endangers the Pha Tang temple, 'Satu' an orphan child laborer decides to head north through the rich and feral landscape of Laos in search of his long lost mother with his new photojournalist friend 'Bo'.

The film was self-funded and shot on location in Laos in Southeast Asia in January 2022, right in the middle of the pandemic, in just 26 days over six weeks. Of those, the crew had to spend ten days in quarantine. Shot on 16mm, the visuals capture Laos’ vibrant beauty, adding depth to this warm, heartfelt narrative.    

The film was nominated at the British Independent Film Awards and the Raindance Film Festival, and won the Grand Prix at the Nara International Film Festival in Japan, as well as two awards at the Cambodia International Film Festival.

'Trigg beautifully captures the beauty and simplicity of Laos' - Film Threat.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Joshua Trigg.

This celebrated film won multiple awards, having started out as a movie-workshop for a group of students in Havana. With echoes of Ken Loach’s Kes, 11-year-old Chala keeps pigeons and illegally trains fighting dogs in order to support himself and his alcoholic mother. Chala is understood by his teacher Carmela, but when a new less experienced teacher sends him to a school for children with behavioural problems, controversy breaks out. Broader issues are exposed when intolerance and bureaucracy overtake the wellbeing and needs of the child. The movie kindled an intense social debate and the Ministry of Education promoted its discussion in schools.

 'A restrained portrayal of the tenderness between Chala and Carmela, who care for each other when family members who should cannot.” '

PLUS Short: An adventure of Elpidio Valdes | Una Aventura de Elpidio Valdes | Juan Padron | 1974, Cuba, ICAIC | animation | 7m |

Juan Padrón is the godfather of animation in Cuba and also revered across Latin America. Elpidio Valdés is a famous and much loved cartoon character in Cuban culture, who entertained generations of Cuban children as a symbol of rebellion against colonialism and imperialism. Recently restored by ICAIC in collaboration with Screen Cuba.

Screen Cuba: Films to Change the World is a collaborative project of the charity Music Fund for Cuba, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Cuban Embassy in the UK and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).

Proceeds from the Solidarity ticket will to go to Cuban film institute (ICAIC) projects including restoration of classic films.

Please bear in mind that the age and rarity of this film means that the quality may not be what you are used to, however this is the last remaining version and a rare opportunity to see a hugely important and influential Cuban film of the 1970s.

A crisis between husband and wife in a working class marriage is the focus for a dramatic examination of the changes generated by the Revolution as many more women entered the workforce. This film sparked a widespread debate throughout Cuban society. The Family Code (1975) had declared household chores and childcare should be shared equally. The film depicts Teresa’s exhausting double shift and when she takes on extra duties as a factory union delegate, her husband berates her for neglecting her family. Yet she persists in her quest for control over her life.

Today an unmissable classic, at the time a very controversial film, it showed the Revolution was an ongoing struggle against entrenched attitudes for everyone. It also marked a turning point in filmmaking, shifting away from the fast moving close-ups of the 1960s to more documentary-style shots.

Screen Cuba: Films to Change the World is a collaborative project of the charity Music Fund for Cuba, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Cuban Embassy in the UK and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).

Proceeds from the Solidarity ticket will to go to Cuban film institute (ICAIC) projects including restoration of classic films.

In 2018 an exciting historic artistic exchange took place hosted by the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC. For the first time, up to 400 Cuban artists (living on and outside the island) were set to perform together in a festival. Planning began when Obama was US president and talks were taking place between the US and Cuba. By the time of the festival, Trump was president and busy increasing the unilateral US blockade against the island. When Inti and his team finally arrived they were refused permission to film so instead delved into the artistic ties that connect the two countries. The resulting documentary is a moving collective testimony of artists and musicians, historians and politicians. As the hopeful director says 'In the future, what unites us will prevail over what separates us'.

Includes interviews with Cuban musicians Arturo O’Farril, Aymée Nuviola, Yissy García, Aldo López-Gavilán, Yosvany Terry, artists José Parlá and Manuel Mendive and many more.

Screen Cuba: Films to Change the World is a collaborative project of the charity Music Fund for Cuba, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Cuban Embassy in the UK and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).

Proceeds from the Solidarity ticket will to go to Cuban film institute (ICAIC) projects including restoration of classic films.

Please bear in mind that the age and rarity of this film means that the quality may not be what you are used to, however this is the last remaining version and a rare opportunity to see a hugely important and influential Cuban film of the 1980s.

It’s Havana, a year before the 1959 revolution, and a group of young people are fighting against President Batista's tyranny in a clandestine action cell. A dramatic story of love, solidarity, illusions and sacrifice based on real events. An incredible first film, with a tight script like a thriller, by the most important current Cuban director. The fictional characters of Nereida and Ernesto made the actors, Isabel Santos and Luis Alberto García, an inseparable part of the history of Cuban cinema.

Pérez commented on his multiple award winning feature: 'I always knew that my first film was going to be about [this], because at the age of fifteen, when I was discovering cinema, I discovered that people my age were fighting for the Revolution. I felt that there was an epic that I had to tell…I did not participate in the armed struggle…but my memory was what most marked the film. I always tried to make every image alive, credible.'

Content Warning: Contains some scenes of violence

Screen Cuba: Films to Change the World is a collaborative project of the charity Music Fund for Cuba, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Cuban Embassy in the UK and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).

Proceeds from the Solidarity ticket will to go to Cuban film institute (ICAIC) projects including restoration of classic films.

In his latest film Fernando Pérez, Cuba’s most important contemporary director, has created a dark comedy drama exploring perception and imagination through the eyes of a disabled autistic teenager with little means to communicate. When Nelsito is involved in an accident he observes life from his hospital bed, and imagines the dark, hidden and sometimes humorous sides of those around him - wicked children, murderous women, runaway grandmas, a swindler. Characters like these feature in five stories in the film that play with melodrama, absurdity, and black humour, and the director ensures that the spectator is never able to differentiate what is reality or the imagination of the protagonist-narrator.

Cuba selected the film for the 96th Academy Awards (2024).

Screen Cuba: Films to Change the World is a collaborative project of the charity Music Fund for Cuba, the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the Cuban Embassy in the UK and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).

Proceeds from the Solidarity ticket will to go to Cuban film institute (ICAIC) projects including restoration of classic films.

Seconds was proposed for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Elli.

Rock Hudson is a revelation in this sinister, science-fiction-inflected dispatch from the fractured 1960s. Seconds, directed by John Frankenheimer, concerns a middle-aged banker who, dissatisfied with his suburban existence, elects to undergo a strange and elaborate procedure that will grant him a new life. Starting over in America, however, is not as easy as it sounds. This paranoiac symphony of canted camera angles (courtesy of famed cinematographer James Wong Howe), fragmented editing, and layered sound design is a remarkably risk-taking Hollywood film that ranks high on the list of its legendary director’s achievements.

This screening will finish at 20:41.

Please note, this screening will take place in our new Screen 3, which will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

Sicily, early 2000s. After serving several years in prison for Mafia-related crimes, Catello, a long-serving politician, has lost everything. When the Italian Secret Service “persuades” him to help capture Matteo, the last major Mafia boss still on the run, whom Catello has known since he was a boy, he sees an opportunity to stage a comeback. A shrewd man of a hundred masks, a tireless illusionist who turns truth into falsehood and falsehood into truth, Catello begins a correspondence with the fugitive, as unique as it is improbable, exploiting the younger man’s emotional emptiness. A gamble which, with one of the most wanted criminals in the world, is always going to involve a degree of risk…

World Premiere: Venice IFF - Official Competition 2024

From a small cabin deep in the Białowieża Forest Simona Kossak (1943 - 2007) studied nature and made history, largely on her own terms. Adrian Panek’s engaging dramatised biography of the pioneering scientist (played by Sandra Drzymalska, EO) centres on her journey from family misfit (her grandfather was artist Wojciech Kossak) to ecological activist. Jakub Gierszał (Doppelganger, Ultima Thule) is her freedom loving photographer companion Lech Wilczek. The natural landscape, especially the deer, plays a pivotal role, exposing issues still relevant today around the position of women in science and our need to take care of the planet.

Followed by a Q&A with actress Sandra Drzymalska (TBC)

Organised by the Polish Cultural Institute in London and supported by the Polish Film Institute, the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival is an annual celebration of Poland’s rich cinematic output that showcases not only the best of contemporary filmmakers but also classics that make up Poland’s rich filmography. Kinoteka will return to celebrate its 23rd year from 6 March - 25 April 2025, featuring over 30 cinema screenings in leading venues around London. Alongside New Polish Cinema, Documentaries and Polish Cinemas Classics, this year's edition will also feature a retrospective of films by Wojciech Has as well as exciting Special Events and screenings of selected films from the Kinotkea programme in 8 UK cities as part of Kinoteka On Tour.

A newly arranged marriage. An oddball couple shoved together in a small Mumbai shack with paper-thin walls. They are awkward and alone-together. Unpredictable Uma does her best to cope with the heat, her total lack of domestic skills, nosy neighbours and her bumbling spouse until the nocturnal world of Mumbai and its inhabitants lead her to face her own strange behaviours.

A newly arranged marriage. An oddball couple shoved together in a small Mumbai shack with paper-thin walls. They are awkward and alone-together. Unpredictable Uma does her best to cope with the heat, her total lack of domestic skills, nosy neighbours and her bumbling spouse until the nocturnal world of Mumbai and its inhabitants lead her to face her own strange behaviours.

This event is followed by a post-screening discussion hosted by South Asian Sisters Speak. 

South Asian Sisters Speak creates spaces for South Asian women to connect, learn and share their experiences. They run regular workshops, panel events and are also the home of the Brown Girls’ Book Club – helping South Asian women find belonging and community so they feel empowered to be their whole selves.

Stalker was proposed for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Demetrios Matheou.

Andrei Tarkovsky’s final Soviet feature is a metaphys­ical journey through an enigmatic postapocalyptic landscape, and a rarefied cinematic experience like no other. A hired guide - the Stalker - leads a writer and a professor into the heart of the Zone, the restricted site of a long-ago disaster, where the three men eventually zero in on the Room, a place rumored to fulfill one’s most deeply held desires. Adapting a science-fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Tarkovsky created an immersive world with a wealth of material detail and a sense of organic atmosphere. A religious allegory, a reflection of contemporaneous political anxieties, and a meditation on film itself - Stalker envelops the viewer by opening up a multitude of possible meanings.

This screening will finish at 18:11.

Please note, this screening will take place in our new Screen 3, which will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The screening on Sunday 2 March will be followed by an in-person Q&A with director Panos Koutras.

It will be introduced by Prof. Dimitris Papanikolaou.  

Synopsis:

Yiorgos is released from prison after 14 years of incarceration for a murder he committed in his small Greek village. He spends his first night out in a cheap downtown hotel in Athens. There he meets Strella, a young transsexual prostitute. They spend the night together and soon they fall in love. But the past is catching up with Yiorgos. With Strella on his side he will have to find a new way out. An extraordinary and spellbinding relationship, a post-modern Greek tragedy in the glowing nights of Athens.

"I think that Strella is perhaps the most important cultural contribution in recent years to thinking about oedipalization within queer kinship, as well as about contemporary challenges to understandings of sexuality and kinship, all through a meditation on very contemporary modes of living and loving that nevertheless draw on ancient norms." - Judith Butler, Dispossession: The Performative in the Political (with A. Athanasiou, 2013)

Content warning: The film contains scenes of violence and transphobic language.

Dimitris Papanikolaou is Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Cultural Studies and Fellow of St. Cross College, University of Oxford. He studied Classics, Modern Greek and Comparative Literature at the University of Athens and University College London (London).

The screening on Thursday 23 March will be followed by a live Zoom Q&A with director Argyris Papadimitropoulos.

Synopsis:

Kostis is a 40-year-old doctor that finds himself in the small island of Antiparos, in order to take over the local clinic. His whole life and routine will turn upside down when he meets an international group of young and beautiful tourists and he falls in love with Anna, a 19-year-old goddess.

Curator's note:
A brilliantly idiosyncratic film that sits slightly outside of the Weird Wave constellation, SUNTAN (2016), resists classification. Half uproarious comedy, half thriller, the film shares the bleak satirical undertones of Dogtooth and Attenberg whilst turning expectations for a typical Greek island holiday story on their head.

Content warning: The film contains scenes of violence some viewers might find upsetting.

Tampopo was proposed for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema members Tom H. and Jackie Yap.

The tale of an eccentric band of culinary ronin who guide the widow of a noodle-shop owner on her quest for the perfect recipe, this rapturous 'ramen western' by Japanese director Juzo Itami is an entertaining, genre-bending adventure underpinned by a deft satire of the way social conventions distort the most natural of human urges-our appetites. Interspersing the efforts of Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) and friends to make her café a success with the erotic exploits of a gastronome gangster and glimpses of food culture both high and low, the sweet, sexy, and surreal Tampopo is a lavishly inclusive paean to the sensual joys of nourishment, and one of the most mouthwatering examples of food on film ever made.

This screening will finish at 20:39.

This screening will be the London premiere of the film and will be followed by a Q&A with director Lyne Charlebois.

Brother Marie-Victorin (Le Jardin Botanique, La Flore Laurentienne) was 46 when he met 23-year-old Marcelle Gauvreau. Both have been close to death and share the same love of God and Nature. He becomes her teacher, later she becomes his assistant. Their friendship evolves. Marie-Victorin offers Marcelle different readings on sexuality that she hastens to comment on from her own intimate experiences. In an epistolary exchange that will last until the death of Marie-Victorin, they explore human desires and "biology without a veil". This great chaste love, the love of Quebec's flora, pushes them to question their own relationship with love and Nature. The film is produced by Roger Frappier (The Decline of the American Empire).

Grand Prix winner at the 41st Abitibi–Tamiscamingue: International FF

Nominated, Canadian Cinema Editors Award

"Disconcerting in its form, but delicate, sensual, witty and joyful, Tell Me Why These Things Are So Beautiful is a gem that is both a period film and a poem."

Le Soleil

We will be adding Quebec Old Fashioned cocktails to our menu on the night to mark the film's premiere.

When visionary architect László Toth and his wife Erzsébet flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America, their lives are changed forever by a mysterious and wealthy client.

Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Directing.

The Garden Cinema View:

Starting with an overture and a strikingly unique credits sequence, The Brutalist boldly presents itself as a monumental work of cinema. This is an immigrant story and an exploration of American capitalism that can be compared to Citizen Kane, The Godfather Part II, and There Will Be Blood (time will tell whether it belongs alongside such luminous company). Undoubtedly, there is something indelibly energising about watching this attempt at serious, epic drama. A series of committed and intense performances play out across a sprawling canvas made cohesive by the production design and Lol Crawley’s cinematography, that moves from claustrophobic intimacy to massive images which rival the work of Victor Kossakovsky. Embelishing and guiding the experience is Daniel Blumberg’s extraordinary, and partially improvised, score.

Watching The Brutalist is exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, and is a viewing experience that feels pulled from an older age of film.

Includes a 15 minute intermission

The screening on 11 April will be introduced by Tom Cunliffe (UCL).

Tsui Hark made an immediate impact and established himself as a cinematic visionary with his directorial debut The Butterfly Murders, a pioneering and ‘futuristic’ Hong Kong New Wave take on the traditional wuxia. Combining swordplay, mystery, science fiction, and more, Hark’s first film is breathlessly creative, packed full of stunningly fluid camerawork, gorgeously surreal sets, and hyper-stylised visuals.

Tied together by a dark sense of ironic humour, the film is narrated by Lau Siu-ming’s scholar Fong, who weaves the tale of his investigation into a series of murders seemingly committed by killer butterflies. Enlisting the help of a woman called Green Shadow and a martial arts clan leader, Fong is led to a deserted castle where a conspiracy unfolds, and where a mysterious figure clad in black armour seems to be on a killing spree. Groundbreaking in every sense of the word, the film sees Hark gleefully deconstructing the wuxia form, throwing in a dizzying array of cinematic nods to Hitchcock, spaghetti westerns, Italian giallo cinema, and Japanese crime thrillers along the way.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. 2K restoration, in Cantonese with English subtitles.

A gang of kids try to stop ruthless property developers from building a golf course on their beloved den - and somehow get mixed up in an adventure involving treasure maps, human skulls, crazy gadgets, snogging, murderous crooks and a pirate king called One-Eyed Willie! Can the Goonies survive Willie's booby traps and get their hands on the old rogue's hidden riches? Or will the scheming Fratelli gang get there first - and make our heroes walk the plank?

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

The story of a judge against the mafia, Cesare Terranova. The first magistrate to have sensed the dangers of organized crime and to have instructed the first trials against Mafia bosses, when the word mafia was still spoken in a whisper. Terranova was killed on September 25, 1979 with his collaborator, Marshal Lenin Mancuso.

Q&A  presented by multimedia reporter and producer Giorgia Scaturro with actor Marco Gambino who plays Cianuzzu Raia in the film The Judge and the Boss.

As Marco Gambino said about his role:

'Portraying the mindset of a tormented man, a father, an accomplice of criminals, and a repentant (perhaps unwillingly) witness was both wonderful and complex for me. It’s not often that a role shakes you to the core. When it does, it means it’s yours, and for that one time , you are an “irreplaceable” actor"

The film was proposed by our member Seraphina Bewick, who writes: 'I would love the opportunity to see the animated film The Last Unicorn on the big screen.'

In this animated musical, the villainous King Haggard (Christopher Lee) plots to destroy all the world's unicorns. When a young unicorn (Mia Farrow) learns that she's in danger and that she may soon be the last of her kind, she leaves the safety of her protected forest and enlists the help of Schmendrick (Alan Arkin), a gentle, albeit clumsy, sorcerer. Together, they embark on a long and dangerous journey with one goal: to defeat Haggard and save the unicorns from extinction.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Please note, screenings taking place in our new Screen 3 will not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

The screening on Sunday 30 March will be followed by a Q&A with the director Armel Hostiou and the producer Jasmina Sijerčić.

One day French filmmaker Armel Hostiou discovers he has a second Facebook account: a fake Armel who has photos of the real one and many, many female friends, all of whom live in Kinshasa. Fake Armel invites them to audition for his next film, which is supposedly set in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Faced with the impossibility of closing this account, the filmmaker decides to go looking for his double.

Part twisty surreal journey, part thorough investigative report into the murky world of online content creating, The Other Profile is Hostiou’s second feature-length documentary, and picked up the Work in Progress Award at last year’s Visions du Reel documentary film festival in Nyon.

The Palm Beach Story was proposed for our 3rd birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Jocelyn Carr.

This wild tale of wacky wedlock from Preston Sturges takes off like a rocket and never lets up. Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert play Tom and Gerry, a married New York couple on the skids, financially and romantically. With Tom hot on her trail, Gerry takes off for Florida on a mission to solve the pair’s money troubles, which she accomplishes in a highly unorthodox manner. A mix of the witty and the utterly absurd, The Palm Beach Story is a high watermark of Sturges’s brand of physical comedy and verbal repartee, featuring sparkling performances from its leads as well as hilarious supporting turns from Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor as a brother and a sister ensnared in Tom and Gerry’s high jinks.

This screening will finish at 14:08.

To compliment and enrich your experience of Contemporary Cinema: Beyond The Weird Wave, on Saturday 12 April we will be hosting an editing masterclass led by the one and only Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Yorgos Lanthimos' long-time editor.

Schedule:

10:30 - 11:00 Walk-in

11:00 - 12:30 Start of the masterclass

12:30 - 13:30 Break

13:30 - 15:00 Continuation of the masterclass and Q&A

15:00 - 16:00 Networking in the bar area

The masterclass will focus on the logic and philosophy behind Mavropsaridis' editing choices rather than technical aspects. He will speak about the different editing approaches he took for the various films of Yorgos Lanthimos, showcasing specific examples from scenes ranging from Dogtooth (2009) to Kinds of Kindness (2024).

Mavropsaridis will elaborate on the rationale and philosophy behind his editing choices and artistic decisions. This will provide participants with a unique opportunity to engage with his evolution and variation throughout Yorgos Lanthimos' distinctive filmography.

At the end of the session, there will be an open discussion and an opportunity to socialise with Mavropsaridis and other participants.

Yorgos Mavropsaridis is one of the most innovative film editors of his generation, renowned for his distinctive editing style and significant contributions to the film industry, particularly in European cinema. He is the long-term collaborator of director Yorgos Lanthimos for whom he edited all his feature films — starting with Kinetta in 2005. Since then, they worked together on Dogtooth (2009), The Lobster (2015), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), The Favourite (2018), Poor Things (2023) and recently Kinds of Kindness (2024). He is also the editor of Monos (2019), Chevalier (2015), Park (2016) and She Will (2021) amongst other critically acclaimed titles. He has received multiple nominations and awards, including two Academy Award nominations (The Favourite, Poor Things) and two BAFTA nominations. For his work on The Favourite, he received the ACE Eddie Award.

The screening on 18 April will be preceded by a reception at the cinema's Atrium Bar and followed by an in-person Q&A with the director Ann Hui, moderated by Chris Berry (KCL).

Ann Hui began her career shining a light on the plight of the illegal Vietnamese immigrants who had been flocking to Hong Kong since the mid-1970s with the 1978 TV drama Below the Lion Rock: The Boy From Vietnam, which she followed with her third feature The Story of Woo Viet in 1981, before completing her ‘Vietnam Trilogy’ in 1982 with Boat People. Deeply humanistic and compassionate, while never shying away from the harshness of reality, the first two entries in the trilogy both follow the stories of the immigrants themselves, and the increasing controversy around the issue in Hong Kong.

This theme was applied in The Story of Woo Viet, with Chow Yun-Fat’s Vietnamese immigrant forced to become a Triad assassin to protect the woman he loves, which combines action, romance and character drama, and through its tale of refugees also meditates on the experiences of the Hong Kong diaspora overseas.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

An angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through the lilting songs of the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox screen musicals of all time.

Our screening on 4 April will be introduced by Oscar nominated composer Gary Yershon.

Jacques Demy followed up The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with another musical about missed connections and second chances, this one a more effervescent confection. Twins Delphine and Solange, a dance instructor and a music teacher (played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac), long for big-city life; when a fair comes through their quiet port town, so does the possibility of escape. With its jazzy Michel Legrand score, pastel paradise of costumes, and divine supporting cast (George Chakiris, Grover Dale, Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, and Gene Kelly), The Young Girls of Rochefort is a tribute to Hollywood optimism from sixties French cinema’s preeminent dreamer.

When artist Maggie Barrett (75) breaks her femur, her husband Joel Meyerowitz (84), a world-famous photographer, becomes her caregiver. In the shadow of mortality, each with a long and

dramatic life behind them, the hard truths of life together provoke in Maggie and Joel an attempt to find a shared inner-peace while there is still time.

Join Video Bazaar in the hypnotic, fever-dream world of Arrebato, a mind-bending journey through obsession. A rarely screened hidden gem of Spanish horror and an underground masterpiece, Iván Zulueta’s Arrebato is a film unlike any other, blurring the lines between addiction, creativity, and the eerie power of the moving image.

Follow a struggling horror filmmaker as he’s drawn into a surreal descent, haunted by a mysterious artist whose experiments with film reel him into a vortex of time, perception, and something far more sinister. Blending psychological horror, surrealism, and meta-cinema, Arrebato tells the story of José, a struggling horror filmmaker drowning in drugs and creative stagnation. His life is upended when he reconnects a reclusive experimental filmmaker obsessed with capturing a mysterious 'rapture' on film - an unexplained phenomenon that causes those who experience it to disappear entirely, consumed by the cinematic medium itself.

Praised as Spain’s answer to Eraserhead and an uncanny precursor to films such as Kyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse and David Lynch’s Lost Highway, few films capture the hypnotic power of cinema quite like Arrebato. The magnum opus of Iván Zulueta, a visionary but elusive figure in Spanish film history, this is more than just a horror film, it's an intoxicating descent into addiction, artistic obsession, and the eerie nature of the moving image itself.

Revered by directors like Pedro Almodóvar, Iván Zulueta’s masterpiece has grown into near-mythic status over the decades. Seize this rare opportunity to experience it as it was meant to be seen, immersed in the dark embrace of the cinema.

This screening is presented by the cult film collective, Video Bazaar, who are proud to show this rarely screened film, and are dedicated to bringing the weird and the obscure to London audiences at The Garden Cinema. Please note that this film will feature an introduction and carefully curated pre show material.

It's time for the annual Giant Vegetable Fete, and it's vitally important that the extra large carrots are protected - so Wallace and Gromit are on duty keeping hungry bunnies out of the way without harming them. Everything seems under control until the appearance of the dreaded Were-Rabbit. Will Wallace's inventions and Gromit's good sense save the day? This is the first Wallace and Gromit adventure at full movie length, but it's every bit as good as the earlier, shorter ones.

On Sunday mornings our Family Screenings are followed by a free activity for Children.

The screening is Pay What You Can, which means you’re free to pay as much or as little as you can afford. By paying for a ticket, you will enable us to keep offering Pay What You Can screenings to families struggling with the cost of living. Thank you

Eliza Kubarska (The Wall of Shadows) returns to the mountains for this award winning exploration of the life and disappearance of mountaineering icon Wanda Rutkiewicz. The first woman (and the first Pole) to climb Everest, Rutkiewicz’s independent spirit drew antagonism and dissent from the media and set her apart from the largely male climbing community. Using previously unseen extensive archives alongside interviews with family, climbers and monks this film explores the price she paid for success, and asks if she might in fact still be alive. Her body was never found after she vanished in the Himalayas in 1992.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film's producer Monika Braid.

Organised by the Polish Cultural Institute in London and supported by the Polish Film Institute, the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival is an annual celebration of Poland’s rich cinematic output that showcases not only the best of contemporary filmmakers but also classics that make up Poland’s rich filmography. Kinoteka will return to celebrate its 23rd year from 6 March - 25 April 2025, featuring over 30 cinema screenings in leading venues around London. Alongside New Polish Cinema, Documentaries and Polish Cinemas Classics, this year's edition will also feature a retrospective of films by Wojciech Has as well as exciting Special Events and screenings of selected films from the Kinotkea programme in 8 UK cities as part of Kinoteka On Tour.

Please join We Are Doc Women for this screening of Motherboard.

Afterwards there will be a Q&A with director Victoria Mapplebeck. The Q&A will be hosted by Annamaria Craparotta. We would like to invite all attendees to join for drinks in The Garden bar from 7pm.

Motherboard is a smartphone feature exploring motherhood, filmed over 20 years by BAFTA award-winning director Victoria Mapplebeck. At the age of 38, Victoria found herself single, pregnant and broke. Motherboard charts the joy, pain and comedy of raising her son Jim alone. Victoria recorded hundreds of hours of footage, capturing each twist and turn in Jim’s life, from the thumbs-up he gave during her first scan, to his first day at college. Over two decades, Victoria captures a life where breast cancer, absent fathers and depression are part of the package, but where life still wins every time.

WADW Presents is a series of documentary screenings featuring Q&As with the women creatives behind the camera. It comes from the team behind We Are Doc Women, a group that was founded in 2017 to provide peer support for women directors working in factual television in the UK. They have grown to become a collective of directors, producers, assistant producers and executive producers advocating for equal opportunities, greater support and fair recognition within the industry.