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...  

UK Premiere of 4K Restoration. The screening on 6 May will be introduced by the season curator Millie Zhou.

One of the most acclaimed, though underseen films of the Hong Kong New Wave, Allen Fong’s Ah Ying is an almost documentary-like work which takes a more realistic and intimate approach than many of the more genre-based or experimental offerings of the movement. The winner of multiple awards and nominations at the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Berlin International Film Festival, Ah Ying uses real life for its inspiration, portraying authentic living conditions and flourishing film scene in Hong Kong in the early 1980s.

Based on the autobiographical story of lead actress Hui So-Ying, the film follows Ah Ying, who yearns to be an actress, but is stuck working at her parents’ wet market fish stall while living in a cramped apartment in a rundown housing estate. Taking a job at the Film Culture Centre in return for being allowed to sit in on acting classes, she strikes up a friendship with her Chinese-American teacher, who takes an interest in her life and becomes determined that they should make a film together. 

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

The screening on 3 May will be introduced by Tony Rayns.

Feature debut from Eddie Fong with fiercely feminist and erotic New Wave take on the classical Chinese historical drama. Produced by the Shaw Brothers, the film is a provocative exploration of passion and oppression, which won awards for its gorgeous art direction and a slew of nominations for its score and cast.

Yu Xuanji, a freethinking young scholar, becomes a Taoist priestess to avoid the traditional roles designated to her as a woman by the society during the Tang Dynasty. However, while this allows Yu to continue her studies and to achieve fame as a poet, her affairs with a wandering swordsman and her maid gradually lead her to scandal and self-destruction. Turning the usual gender roles on their heads, the film is powerful tale of desire and rebellion that plays out against a backdrop of sensual visual poetry. 

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Courtesy of Celestial Pictures Limited. In Cantonese with Chinese and English subtitles.

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).

Nina is a skilled obstetrician at a maternity hospital in Eastern Georgia. After a tragedy strikes in the delivery room, the grief stricken father demands an inquiry into her methods. The resulting scrutiny threatens to bring to light Nina’s other, secret job - driving, through the stunningly beautiful countryside, to the village homes of pregnant girls and women to provide unsanctioned abortions – and to destroy the work that is the only source of meaning in her life.

Dea Kulumbegashvili's highly anticipated second feature won the Special Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival and reunites Kulumbegashvili with key collaborators from her debut feature Beginning (2020), including award-winning actors Ia Sukhitashvili and Kakha Kintsurashvili.

We celebrate the 30th anniversary of Babe about a young piglet with very special skills.

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

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 celebrate the launch of their new book Intimate Animation, Skwigly Editor in Chief Ben Mitchell and Dr. Laura-Beth Cowley have curated a programme of animated films that explore the sensitive, sensual - and sometimes saucy - side of animation. Based on the long-running Skwigly podcast of the same name, Intimate Animation tours the landscape of contemporary animated films that deal with themes of love, intimacy, relationships, anatomy and sexuality – and the incredible artists behind them. Following the screening there will be a panel discussion with participating filmmakers hosted by Chris Shepherd. Books will be available for purchase at an exclusive Bar Shorts discount. Films so far included in the programme are....

Le Clitoris (Dir. Lori Malépart-Traversy), Canada, 2016, 3:17

Venus (Dir. Tor Fruergaard), Denmark, 2010, 8:10

SUMMER'S PUKE IS WINTER'S DELIGHT, (Dir. Sawako Kabuki), Japan, 2016, 2:59

I'll Be Your Kettle (Dir. Tobias Rud), Denmark, 2021, 9:24

Hold Me (Ca Caw Ca Caw) (Dir. Renee Zhan), USA, 2016, 11:25

Soft Animals (Dir. Renee Zhan), UK, 2021, 3:35

Master Blaster (Dir. Sawako Kabuki), Japan, 2015, 4:00

More to be confirmed shortly

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.

Alan Parker’s BAFTA-winning ganster musical Bugsy Malone might seem an unlikely idea for a film- a musical comedy set in the 1930s criminal underworld with a cast made up entirely of young teens - but it works brilliantly. 13-year-old Jodie Foster gives an incredible performance as Tallulah.

In late-20s New York, rival gangs led by Fat Sam (John Cassisi) and Dandy Dan fight to control the city. Bugsy Malone (Scott Baio) and his sweetheart Blousey dream of a new life in Hollywood but get caught in the – custard-filled – crossfire.

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

To celebrate the start of our new season of Hong Kong New Wave features, we're hosting a members' cocktail hour featuring Butterfly Pea G&Ts (a non-alcoholic alternative will be available), with an alluring twist.. The cocktail hour will be followed by a screening of The Butterfly Murders, which will be introduced by Tom Cunliffe (UCL). Digitally restored and presented in 2K, shown in the UK for the first time.

Timings:

17:30 - 18:30  Cocktail hour

18:30 - 18:40  Intro by Tom Cunliffe

18:40 - 20:10  Screening of The Butterfly Murders

About the film:

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.

Tickets are restricted to 2 per member, meaning you can bring a date or a mate, and include a Butterfly Pea gin & tonic (or a non-alcoholic alternative), as well as access to the screening. Seating will be unallocated, so you'll be able to sit with friends, old and new. 

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 film is screening as part of our LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production programme, in partnership with the ICA.

Cinema Novo godfather Carlos Diegues directed films that were an integral part of the cultural and sociopolitical struggles facing Brazil in the 1960s, particularly the country’s underexplored Afro-Brazilian heritage. One of his most essential works, Bye Bye Brazil concerns a motley crew of traveling performers (led by José Wilker, the devilish spirit of Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands) entertaining various audiences across Brazil’s northwestern Amazonian landscape. Accordionist Ciço (Fábio Júnior) and his wife Dasdô (Zaira Zambelli) join the rollicking caravan, leading to a string of adventures and good songs. Diegues’s low-key road movie-cum-musical captures the country’s changing times—both the myth and the reality of Brazil’s underdevelopment—with documentary-like specificity. Upon its release, Vincent Canby in The New York Times called it “a psychological inventory of a country on the verge of extraordinary economic and industrial development, a travelogue through a nation that doesn’t yet exist.

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 23 April will be preceded by a live dance performance from the senior dancers of Grand Avenue Follies troupe featured in the documentary, and followed by a signing session with the director for her new book 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.

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

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

This programme features five shorts made by visual artist and filmmaker Luka Yuanyuan Yang between 2019-2022, that derive from her multifaceted research on Chinese diasporas. By crafting stories where fact and fiction exist, these films challenge conventional historical interpretation, amplify the voices of the forgotten, and preserve the fragmented memories of Chinese immigrant communities.

The screening will be followed by a signing session of the director’s new book, Dance in Herland.

Tales of Chinatown 中国城轶事 (2019) 19’11’’

The film opens with a walking tour in San Francisco Chinatown: walking into the last surviving theater following the scene from the 1940s film “Lady from Shanghai” directed by Orson Welles; wandering from “Shanghai Low” to “Forbidden City Nightclub” – the camera follows the pace of Chinese American nightclub dancer Cynthia Yee, historians Wylie Wong and David Lei onto a journey across time and space.

The Lady from Shanghai 上海来的女士 (2019) 16’24’’

*UK Premiere*

Despite living in San Francisco for her entire adult life, the 78-year-old Ceecee Wu has always considered herself as "the lady from Shanghai", so does her 101-year-old mother with amnesia who always muttered “Where is this? Am I in Shanghai?”   In this film, Ceecee shares a love journal between her and her ex-husband from Shanghai, the two met each other through a dating website in the millennium and formed a relationship that defeats the obstacle of language and geographical boundaries.

Coby and Stephen Are in Love 相爱的柯比与史蒂芬 (2019) 30’41’’

dir. Luka Yuanyuan Yang and Carlo Nasisse

Coby Yee, a 92-year-old retired nightclub dancer and icon from San Francisco Chinatown’s golden age, and Stephen King, a man 20 years her junior who has been an experimental filmmaker since the 1960s anti-war movement. They have found an unlikely love in each other through matching outfits, dance, and art.  Coby updated Stephen’s wardrobe soon after they started dating, she hand-makes all of their clothes and ensures that they never leave the house without matching outfits from head to toe. Stephen has become Coby’s personal archivist, he creates photo albums and collages constructed from glamorous images of Coby, from the past and the present. As their final performance in Las Vegas approaches, Coby and Stephen start to prepare their last dance on the curtain call.

Cantonese Tunes on Mott Street 勿街粤曲 (2022) 16’28’’

*UK Premiere*

"Cantonese Tunes on Mott Street" follows three Cantonese opera enthusiasts in New York: a Chinese immigrant from a Cantonese opera family, a Hong Kong immigrant who moved to New York as a child, and a Chinese refugee from Cuba. For them, Cantonese opera performances serve as a sanctuary.

American Relative 美国亲戚 (2022) 26’28’’

*UK Premiere*

Set in San Francisco and Toisan, "The American Relative" follows Pat Chu Nishimoto as she uncovers her late father's secret. In 1980, she visits China for the first time and discovers a family of half-relatives. The film then shifts to these Chinese relatives, who recount the history of their ancestral home, highlighting the erosion of history and culture amidst rapid modernization.

One of the most endearing children's films of all time, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was also one of the most lavish movies of its era. Based on Ian Fleming’s novel, adapted to the screen by Roald Dahl and produced by the team behind Mary Poppins,  it's a truly magical, musical adventure for the whole family. Dick Van Dyke stars as an inventor who rescues an old car which acquires magical properties.

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.

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.

The films won't have any dialogue and are suitable for children 6+.

Mojappi -It's Mine! (Nijitaro, Japan, 2024)

Mojappi, a trio of naughty kids who live in the forest, just love being naughty. One day, they find out that their friends are baking pancakes! They will do anything to get those pancakes!

Hoofs on skates (Ignas Meilūnas, Lithunia, 2024)

In a winter wonderland two friends are having a blast ice-skating on a frozen lake when suddenly a strange and unfamiliar world cracks open underneath them: now they must learn how to deal with the otherness, not letting the fear rule.

La Légende du colibri (Morgan Devos, France, 2024)

A fire breaks out in the Amazon rainforest, and frightened animals leave their habitat to take refuge on the other bank.

The Night Tunnel (Annechien Strouven, Belgium, France, 2024)

After digging a tunnel on the beach, two kids from different sides of the world meet each other. Together, they dig their way to the North Pole, where they discover a magical way to return home.

Los Carpinchos (Alfredo Soderguit, France, Chili, Uruguay, 2024)

Hunting season has begun. A family of capybaras seek refuge in a chicken coop, but the hens don't trust them. The curiosity of the youngest members of the families will create a union with unexpected consequences.

Yuck! (Loïc Espuche, France, 2024)

Yuck! Couples kissing on the mouth are gross. And the worst is, you can’t miss them: when people are about to kiss, their lips become all pink and shiny.

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 Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival presents highlights and prize winners from this year's National Selection. The festival is one of the largest and most prestigious short film festivals in the world.

The films will be preceded by an introduction by the Clermont-Ferrand programming team.

Join us in the bar afterwards for networking drinks.

FILMS SCREENING:

Papillon (Butterfly)

A man swims in the sea. As he does so, memories come flooding back. From his early childhood to his adult life, all the memories are connected to water. Some are happy, some glorious, some traumatic. This story will be the story of his last swim.

Annecy Animated Film Festival - Andre-Martin Award Winner - 2024

dir. Florence Miailhe | France | 2024 | 15min

Généalogie de la violence (Genealogy of Violence)

Without an apparent reason, a young man of North African origin, sitting in his car with his girlfriend, is violently searched by the police. Thanks to the use of modern techniques, such as 3D scan and AI, the film restores the experience of dispossession of one’s own body and the humiliation of the young man, witnessed by his incredulous girlfriend.

Grand Prix Winner - 2025

Special Effects Award (ADOBE) Winner - 2025

dir. Mohamed Bourouissa | France | 2024 | 15min

Mort d'un acteur (Death of an Actor)

One day, actor Philippe Rebbot hears on the radio news that he has been found dead. Even though he is alive and well, he can't stop the news from spreading.

Male Actor Award Winner - 2025

Fernand Raynaud Comedy Award Winner - 2025

dir. Ambroise Rateau | France | 2024 | 22min

Ni Dieu Ni Père (No God No Father)

This fiction documentary explores the intimate and unusual relationship a young man forms with the Internet. Where the absence of a father figure left him searching for guidance, he finds an unexpected mentor in Google.

Lab Competition Audience Award Winner - 2025

dir. Kermarec Paul | France | 2024 | 11min

Beurk ! (Yuck!)

Yuck. Couples kissing on the mouth are gross. And the worst is, you can't miss them: when people are about to kiss, their lips become all pink and shiny.

National Competition Audience Prize Winner - 2025

Cesar for Best Animated Short - 2025

dir. Loïc Espuche | France | 2024 | 13min

The Clermont-Ferrand International Film Festival presents highlights from this year's international competition. The festival is one of the largest and most prestigious short film festivals in the world.

The screening will include an introduction by the programming team.

Join us in the bar for networking before the screening.  

FILMS SCREENING:  

Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

1993, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A passenger train is stopped by paramilitary forces in an ethnic cleansing operation. As they haul off innocent civilians, only one man out of 500 passengers dares to stand up to them.

dir. Nebojsa Slijepcevic | Croatia | 2024 | 14min

Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think that You Might Fail?

Navigating the aftermath of top surgery, Mad grapples with emotional upheaval at home, supported by their partner and mother.

dir. Bec Pecaut | Canada | 2024 | 18min

Unspoken

1979. As volatile protests for Croatian independence break out across the city of Sydney, Croatian-born Marina is forced to expose a secretive love affair with her Australian boyfriend, as an escalating political storm spills into her childhood home with devastating consequences.

dir. Damian Walshe-Howling | Australia | 2024 | 21min

What if They Bomb Here Tonight?

Samir and Nadyn, a Lebanese couple, spend a sleepless night anxious and fearing an Israeli airstrike could shatter the glass walls of their home. With their children peacefully asleep, they battle with whether to flee or risk the worst and stay.

dir.Samir Syriani | Lebanon | 2024 | 16min

Last film TBC

The Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival presents the UK highlights from this year's edition. The festival is one of the largest and most prestigious short film festivals in the world, taking place in France with an audience of 200,000 visitors every year.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film directors

FILMS SCREENING:

Progress Mining

Feed the monster, have a cup of tea, and if it's your first day - don't pay attention to anything peculiar in Sector 3. Nick shows a new worker around the crumbling Progress Mining Company, while Mary tries to get it shut for repairs.

dir. Gabriel Böhmer | United Kingdom | 2024 | 16min

milk

One filmmaker sets out on a journey to discover the mother she never knew.

BAFTA Award nominee

dir. Miranda Stern | United Kingdom | 2024 | 21min

Bunnyhood

Mum would never lie to me, would she?" Innocent Bobby discovers the answer to this question when she is surprised by a last minute trip to the hospital.

Cannes La Cinef Award Winner

dir. Mansi Maheshwari | United Kingdom | 2024 | 9min

A Bear Remembers

Local boy, Peter, is trying to find the source of the metallic sound that haunts the village. When he shares his footage with an old woman it sparks memories of a bear that roamed the hills during her childhood.

Canal+ Award Winner

European Film Award Winner

dir. Linden Feng, Hannah Palumbo, Zhang & Knight | United Kingdom | 2024 | 20min

Borrowing its title from the nebulous internet entity that has forcefully entered our daily lives in recent years, Cloud delves into the sinister undercurrents of modern society where digital anonymity fuels real-world malice.

The story centres on Ryosuke Yoshii (Masaki Suda), a factory worker in Tokyo who makes extra money reselling goods online under a pseudonym. After a successful haul, he quits his job and relocates to the countryside with his girlfriend, hiring a local young man to help with his reselling business. However, Yoshii’s seemingly idyllic life is shattered by mysterious attacks from unknown assailants, dismantling his peace as he discovers multiple enemies targeting him.

The Garden Cinema View:

Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to select themes from his masterful Pulse (2001) with this slippery morality play on the seedy underbelly of internet reselling. Cloud revels in unpredictability and an ever-shifting tone (and even genre). The slow-burn pace of the first act, and slowly ratcheting tension recall something of the bleak chills of Pascal Plante’s Red Rooms. Then the mood snaps, perspectives switch, and Cloud morphs into an anarchic (sort of) action film. The overall effect might feel less joined-up when compared to Kurosawa’s best work, but events are tied together by a prevailing critique of exploitation, loneliness, and mob-justice. And there is a sense that, in his late 60s now, Kurosawa retains an uncanny knack of responding to the zeitgeist.  

We’re all haunted – by lost loves, past selves, secrets and societal demands. In this dynamic programme, queer characters and communities dance with the ghosts that haunt them. Should they embrace spectral coexistence or fight for an exorcised future? This collection of short films is a call to action imbued with warmth and spectacle, from the playful tone and dazzling palette of Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites, to the tender surrealism of 302 and the cheeky rebellion of If I Were a Voice. Get ready to expose the truth, reject expectations, and defend what matters the most, with rhythm and style.

Curatorial idea by Lu Etienne and Gareth Mattey, as part of Up Next: Future Film Curators Lab 2024/25

Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites

Grandma Nai sneaks away from the peaceful afterlife after overhearing that her queer grandson is getting engaged to a woman.

Dir. Chheangkea | Cambodia, France, USA | 2025 | 19min

Thunder Bird

The reigning Mother of Myanmar’s Thunder Bird dance troupe reflects on her journey.

Dir. Yadanar Oo | Myanmar | 2025 | 16min

Farewell, Saranghae, Farewell

Hitomi's peaceful life is shaken when her girlfriend Naho's dream of becoming a K-Pop idol comes true.

Dir. Sunhye Hong | South Korea, Japan | 2024 | 26min

302

An officer cadet declares his homosexuality to the Singaporean army.

Dir. Leon Cheo | Singapore | 2024 | 16min

If I Were A Voice

Suspended from the choir, Ralph must figure out how to expose his corrupt school.

Dir. Denbert Tiamson | Philippines | 2024 | 20min

UK Premiere of 2K Restoration [International Version]. The screening on 14 April will be introduced by Victor Fan (KCL) and followed by a post-film discussion in the den of The Garden Bar.

Banned by the colonial government censors on its original release, Tsui Hark’s third feature Dangerous Encounter of the First Kind remains one of the most controversial films of the New Wave and of contemporary Hong Kong cinema in general. Previously only available in cut, or drastically-altered versions, the incendiary film has finally been restored to its full glory for the big screen, and still retains its power to shock and amaze nearly fifty years later.

Inspired by real life events, the film follows three students and bombmakers who are blackmailed by a mysterious young woman called Pearl after she threatens to expose them to the police. Joining their gang, Pearl pushes them into more and more extreme and violent action, bringing them up against the corrupt authorities, the Triads and gun runners as society seems to crumble around them. 

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.

Trigger Warning: The film includes scenes of animal cruelty.

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.

The screening will be introduced by Oscar-nominated editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis, editor of Dogtooth and Lanthimos' longtime collaborator.

After months of anticipation due to its digital restoration, we are excited to inform you that Dogtooth will screen at The Garden Cinema as a one-off screening ahead of its official re-release!

This disturbing and provocative pitch-black satire put Yorgos Lanthimos’ name on the map after it won the Un Certain Regard Prize in Cannes and Best International Film at the Oscars.

'Stirring, violent, and more than a little bit bizarre, Dogtooth is perhaps the foremost example of the new wave of Greek cinema. Ominous, provocative, and surreal, [...] Yorgos Lanthimos laces his debut with the slightest hint of mordant humour. Much like that of Lars von Trier, his work inspires the sort of laughter that comes with a flinch.' - Christina Newland, Sight & Sound

Synopsis:

In an effort to protect their children from the corrupting influence of the outside world, a couple transforms their home into a gated compound of cultural deprivation. When the father invites a trusted outsider into their home their reality begins to crumble, with devastating consequences.

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.

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.

Four Days in September is screening as part of our LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production programme, in partnership with the ICA.

Fernando and César join rebel group MR8 in order to fight Brazilian dictatorial regime during the late 1960s. When César is captured during a bank holdup, Fernando decides to kidnap the American ambassador in Brazil and ask for the release of fifteen political prisoners.

The Brazilian thriller was directed by Bruno Barreto and produced by his parents Lucy and Luiz Carlos Barreto. It is a dramatisation of the 1969 kidnapping of the US Ambassador to Brazil, Charles Burke Elbrick, by members of Revolutionary Movement 8th October (MR-8) and Ação Libertadora Nacional (ALN). The film is loosely based on the memoirs of a politician Fernando Gabeira who was a member of the MR-8 and stars Oscar nominee and Golden Globe winner Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here.).

Nominated as Best Foreign Language Film at the 70th Academy Awards.

Edward (James McArdle), a talented novelist on the cusp of literary success, is juggling his work with the responsibility of caring for his elderly mother, Alma (Fionnula Flanagan). As the excitement of a US book tour builds, he is suddenly faced with an unexpected twist as his three friends decide to take an impromptu Pride getaway to Spain, leaving their mothers in his care.

Winner of the BFI London Film Festival Audience Award, this uplifting comedy-drama follows an unlikely found family on an emotionally charged journey of self-discovery and acceptance.

The Garden Cinema View:

Based on the Italian comedy Mid-August Lunch (2008), Darren Thornton's sophomore film Four Mothers is a heartwarming, bittersweet comedy from Ireland that will put a smile on your face.

While it narrowly escapes becoming another sugary Hollywood-esque film, there's something precise and nuanced in the dialogues and authentic in the performances that becomes, by the end, quite moving.

Enriched by a strong lead performance by James McArdle, this protagonist’s conflicts feel entirely believable, as do the obstacles created by his own personality and his hilariously fussy disabled mother (Fionnula Flanagan). The film explores stereotypical themes - the imposing Irish mother, Catholic guilt, and middle-aged queer identity - but with sensitivity and nuance.

As the story progresses, Thornton skilfully emphasises the importance of community, creating a work that brims with empathy for all of its hilariously flawed characters.

This screening is held in conjunction with the exhibition The Hands That Shut the Sun, at Hollybush Gardens, running from 14 March - 26 April 2025. This is a group exhibition tracing the entanglement of humans, animals, plants, and the land we share.

This screening event accompanies the exhibition The Hands that Shut the Sun, which considers the human hand in nature in many instances and propositions, sometimes extractive and hopeless, other times joyful and full of potential, poetry and resistance.

1. Cecilia Vicuña and Robert Kolodny, Death of the Pollinators, 2021

A film by Robert Kolodny using poems and sounds of Cecilia Vicuña and auditory landscapes of musician Ricardo Gallo, telling the story of the death of the Earth's pollinating insects.

2. Eline McGeorge, Fieldnote video - to be part to be many, 2024

McGeorge’s project documents places and situations of various scales – from gigantic open pit coal mining landscapes in Colombia and adjacent hotspots for bird biodiversity, to tiny succulent plants native to a diamond-mined region of the Namib desert.

3. Lucy Beech, Flush, 2023

Blending documentary, reenactment and poetry Flush focuses on flows of bodily waste in and out of hum/animal bodies in the making of reproductive science.

4. Dani Leventhal & Jared Buckhiester, Hard as Opal, 2015

A soldier's trip to Syria is complicated when he accidentally impregnates a friend. Meanwhile, a horse breeder from Ohio is driven away from home by her own desire to become pregnant.

5. Charlie Prodger, LHB, 2017

Fluctuating between the macro of geopolitical land use and the micro of the personal-political body, Prodger explores the complex relationships between bodies, identity, technology and time.

6. Stephanie Comilang, Search for Life I, 2024

Search for Life is a visual adventure and a profound reflection on history, identity and interconnection among different forms of life on our planet.

In the wake of the ban on women's football in 2014, the national team in Pakistan faced an uncertain and turbulent period. Despite immense cultural barriers, these determined players had fought for their place both on and off the field. The ban disrupted their progress, pushing players to seek alternative income sources and abandon their dreams. After 8 long years, in 2020, FIFA's intervention led to the formation of a normalisation committee, marking a fresh start for the team. Her Right to Play follows the journey of these athletes to the Olympic qualifiers. Fraught with intense training, struggling with injuries and with a desire to prove themselves, the story follows the women’s grit and determination in service of the sport and the flag.

The screening will be preceded by an Introduction and followed by a Q/A session (TBC).

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, prior to the screening.

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.

We recommend arriving slightly earlier to get a copy of the book!

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.

18-year-old Totone spends most of his time drinking beer and partying in the Jura region with his group of friends until reality catches up with him when he has to take care of his 7-year-old sister and find a way to make a living. He sets out to make the best Comté cheese in the region in an attempt to win the gold medal at the agricultural competition and 30,000 euros.

The screening on 27 April will be introduced by Dr Ruby Cheung (University of Southampton).

One of the most acclaimed works by Yim Ho, a leading figure of the Hong Kong New Wave, Homecoming is a thoughtful and moving reflection of an increasingly anxious time when the future of the then-colony was being negotiated as part of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, signed in 1984. Winner of six awards at the Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director, the film was the first Hong Kong production to be shot entirely on location in the Mainland, giving many audiences their first glimpse of a China which had been closed to the outside world.

The film follows Shan Shan, a young businesswoman who returns to her small village in Guangdong in southern China after becoming exhausted by the pressure and materialistic life in Hong Kong. There she reunites with her childhood friend Ah Zhen, whose life is the opposite of hers, happily married and the headmistress of the local school, though the bond they shared in the past has changed due to the cultural gap that has arisen between them over the years. Exploring the real and imagined differences between the capitalist rat-race of modern Hong Kong and the peaceful and romantic nostalgia of Shan Shan’s Chinese roots, Yim Ho seeks to also find commonality and connection, looking to a shared past as well as an uncertain future.

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

Join us at the peak of springtime for a sticky & sweet event on Sunday 4 May, which is part of our Planting Seeds strand, and organised in partnership with The Wild Bee Co.

We'll start the afternoon with a honey tasting in the new Atrium Bar, where Moni Dajee (The Wild Bee Co) and Sameer Ghai (The London Bee Co) will take us on a journey through the changing seasons and vibrant flavours of the city, brought to life by their honey bee colonies across London and beyond. You'll also have the unique opportunity to savour honey crafted by the inspiring Women Beekeeping Initiative projects they support in East Africa - celebrating sustainability, community and the art of beekeeping across continents.

After the tasting, there will be a chance to purchase products from their pop-up shop, and you'll also receive a complimentary cocktail - made with their honey - to sip on during the screening of the visually spectacular documentary Honeyland.

Event timings:

14:00-15:30  Guided honey tasting

15:30-16:00  Pop-up shopping & honey cocktails

16:00-17:30  Screening of Honeyland

Tickets are £22 each, and include access to the tasting, a complimentary (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) honey cocktail, and an unallocated seat for the screening. They are restricted to 2 per member, meaning you can bring a friend, even if they're not a member.

The Wild Bee Co. have also generously provided us with a special discount code for their online shop - if you use the code GCVIP15 you'll receive 15% off items on their website (excluding workshops).

About the film:

In a deserted Macedonian village, Hatidze, a 50-something woman, trudges up a hillside to check her bee colonies nestled in the rocks. Serenading them with a secret chant, she gently manoeuvers the honeycomb without netting or gloves. Back at her homestead, Hatidze tends to her handmade hives and her bedridden mother, occasionally heading to the capital to market her wares. One day, an itinerant family installs itself next door, and Hatidze’s peaceful kingdom gives way to roaring engines, seven shrieking children, and 150 cows.

Some words from The Wild Bee Co.'s director, Moni Dajee:

The Wild Bee Co. is a female founded, owned and led company based in Surrey, which supports people, planet, and pollinators. Our bees are lovingly cared for in apiaries located in wild flower gardens, parks and rooftops located around London and Surrey. We dedicate a lot of time and energy to the welfare of our pollinator friends so we can harvest our honey in a sustainable and responsible way. By respectfully sharing the magic of the hive and planet, we can help reverse declining Honey Bee populations and help conserve the UK’s threatened pollinators.

Like Honeyland, we celebrate the strength and perseverance of women in the face of adversity. As a female of colour and guardian of bees, I’m passionate about supporting women beekeepers who face unique challenges. Beekeeping has traditionally been an all male-domain in African communities but we're here to change that! Having spent time in East Africa, I’ve seen first hand how self-sufficient initiatives in beekeeping can be transformative for women and their communities. A portion of all our sales go directly to empowering women beekeepers in East Africa. We're giving them the tools to create their own buzz - from equipment and bee suits to training and education.

These incredible women get the chance to gain economic independence, generate a self-sufficient income and become self-sustainable entrepreneurs through the skilful craft of beekeeping. This not only boosts status in the community, but also allows them to focus on what matters most - providing for their families with food, security, medicine and education, all while making a positive impact on the environment. You can learn more about this here.

Invisibility has often been a key survival technique for queer individuals, allowing them to blend seamlessly into a straight world by day and building underground communities by night. But in an age when queer representation is increasingly spotlighted in the media, is all this visibility good visibility? From times when we need to make our voices heard, to moments when we choose to escape into metaphors and opacity, these short films examine the multifaceted and contradictory notion of queer visibility.

Curatorial idea by Emily Jisoo Bowles.

Listen to Your Love for Me

A Chinese immigrant in Paris clashes with his French boyfriend over immigration politics.

Dir. Kai Xu | China, France | 2024 | 23min

Three

A mother attempts to hide her daughter’s secrets from her new friends.

Dir. Amie Song | USA | 2024 | 15min

The Parisian in Bali Village

A Chinese girl’s obsession with Paris drives her parents crazy.

Dir. Bingxing Cen | China | 2023 | 15min

The Performance

A chorister at a church must make a difficult choice.

Dir. Claire Zhou | Netherlands | 2023 | 20min

Chaehwa

Suspended from the choir, Ralph must figure out how to expose his corrupt school.

Dir. Hong Seung-gi | South Korea | 2024 | 21min

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

As The Garden Cinema members community is not just made up of cinema enthusiasts, but also covers a large range of film creatives, we like to help connect our members working across all departments of the industry.

For our regular industry panels, we invite knowledgeable speakers to discuss their specific branch of the industry, leaving plenty of time for asking questions. After the discussion, we all head into the Garden Bar, to network with fellow members.

On Thursday 23 April we will be joined by art director Lydia Fry and set decorator Charlotte Dirickx, who will discuss their respective roles and experiences, as well as the relationship between set decoration and art direction.

Tickets are restricted to 1 per member, and available for just £5, which includes a token for a complimentary house wine, beer or soft/hot drink.

About the speakers:

Lydia Fry

Starting out as a prop designer, Lydia Fry has been working in Art Departments for fifteen years on some of the industry’s most acclaimed movies and franchises. Recent art direction credits include Blade Runner 2049, Cruella, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, Rogue One, and Spectre.

Charlotte Dirickx

Having trained at Goldsmiths and Kingston Art School, Charlotte Dirickx has worked as an art director in TV, and is now a set decorator for films, such as Saltburn, Hard Truths, and most recently, The Thing with Feathers.

Check out our Youtube channel for videos of our previous industry panels, which have included:

• Trailer editing, with Dan Noall and Kate Miller
• Screenwriting, with Luna Carmoon (Hoard) and Daniel Kokotajlo (Starve Acre)
• Casting, with Rebecca Wright (Chuck Chuck Baby) and Lucy Jordan (Kinds of Kindness, Poor Things)
• Animation, with Michaël Dudok de Wit (The Red Turtle) and Alexandra Sasha Balan (The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse)
• Cinematography, with Evelin van Rei (Passenger), Bebe Dierken (Midas Man) and Nanu Segal (Hoard)
• Costume, with Joanna Johnston (Lincoln) and Charlotte Finlay (Barbie)
• Documentary, with Edward Lovelace (Name Me Lawand) and Tom Howson (Dogwoof)
• Film festivals, with Christina Papasotiriou (Raindance Film Festival) and Philip Ilson (London Short Film Festival)
• Film journalism, with Jacob Stolworthy (The Independent) and Jack Shepherd (Total Film)
• Production, with Georgia Goggin (Pretty Red Dress) and Susan Simnett (Fadia's Tree)

Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it's no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her Emotions:  Joy (Amy Poehler); Fear (Bill Hader); Anger (Lewis Black); Disgust (Mindy Kaling); and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). The Emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday. This hilarious, exciting adventure story shows Pixar on top form. As well as being hugely entertaining, the film comes with a poignant message, helping us to understand our own emotions and face up to some of the challenges involved in growing up.

Some flashing lights sequences or patterns may affect photosensitive viewers.

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

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.

After years of only a single 35mm print available for screenings, Leslie Harris’ ground-breaking Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. has finally been digitally restored.

Brooklyn teenager Chantel (played with naturalistic verve by Ariyan A Johnson) dreams of becoming a doctor - which she sees as a route out from the life her working-class parents lead in their housing projects home. Intelligent and sharp-tongued, Chantel thinks she has it all worked out, until she falls for Tyrone (Kevin Thigpen) and discovers she is pregnant. Leslie Harris’ only feature film to date is as ambitious as its central character. Like Boyz N The Hood the previous year, Harris realistically considers the tough choices faced by teenage African-Americans of the period, this time with a female focus.

Winner Special Jury Prize 1993 Sundance Film Festival

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.

Kids Fight narrates the story of Bilal and his friends who are struggling to survive drug addiction and poverty on the streets in Charrar Pind, one of the most dangerous slums of Pakistan. Here, Shaheen Gym, a charity MMA gym, opens, offering the children a way out of drug addiction and poverty. The documentary follows the children through 8 years of their childhood, and shows what is at stake at the brinks of survival, where MMA can be the very fight for the children’s lives.

The screening will be preceded by an Introduction and followed by a Q&A session (TBC).

This heartwarming Indian drama is about the struggles of a loving gay couple, Kartik and Aman, who live in Mumbai. Their relationship comes under strain when one of them has a fling, resulting in a domestic crisis. Meanwhile, Kartik's parents also face a personal dilemma after they have an argument. Will these two couples ever be able resolve their differences - and can their relationships stand the test of time? A follow-up film to the acclaimed Evening Shadows, Kuch Sapney Apne sensitively explores what happens when relationships are challenged by uncomfortable truths. Boasting fantastic songs by acclaimed Indian composers and singers, this insightful drama explores love’s complicated realities.

Sridhar Rangayan is an Indian producer, director, and writer. For over two decades, he has consistently strived to give a voice to social issues in India through his films, writings, and public speaking. The Pink Mirror, Yours Emotionally, 68 Pages, Purple Skies, Breaking Free, Evening Shadows and Raja Bro are at the forefront of India’s emergent queer cinema movement.

Amidst the lunch rush of a frantic Manhattan restaurant, a series of events threaten to bring the kitchen to a crashing halt.

While food orders flood in and pressure mounts to boiling point, the passionate relationship between chef Pedro (Raul Briones) and waitress Julia (Rooney Mara) is starting to fray. But when missing money and shocking revelations cause things to spiral out of control, it’s not long before one of New York’s busiest kitchens is on the verge of imploding.

Featuring an array of outstanding performances led by Briones and Mara, La Cocina is a gripping, exhilarating, and truly cinematic new film from acclaimed director Alonso Ruizpalacios.

The Garden Cinema View:

La Cocina will inevitably draw comparisons to the likes of Boiling Point and The Bear but, high-kitchen-anxiety aside, this is quite a different concoction. Alonso Ruizpalacios is less interested in the success of a restaurant than he is in presenting a convincing demonstration of a soul-grinding capitalist system and addressing the specific immigrant experiences of those who staff many hospitality establishments. The film’s stage origins, the limited location, and single day setting, all allow Ruizpalacios the foundation to (albeit didactically) showcase these sobering themes.

The restaurant featured here is a masterful labyrinth of service corridors, industrial fridges, and frozen back alleys; the kitchen area itself is a kind of broiling hellscape, ever on the edge of ignition. This space is explored by Juan Pablo Ramirez's fluid and serpentine monochrome cinematography. This ultra stylised sheen turns the set piece ‘service rush’ sequences into surreally graceful choreography, closer to the likes of Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover than films such as Boiling Point. Such formalism removes us from the stress of the action, and to a degree some of the emotion, but again serves to bring us closer to the director’s key themes.

In the summer of 2001, in a small town in the Philippines, 16-year-old Andoy searches for his long-lost father: in VHS tapes. Together with his best friend Pido, a fellow film buff, he browses the local video store and attends communal TV viewing sessions; by watching movies together, the pair cement their friendship and gain moments of respite from the harsh realities of life. But for Andoy, video also serves to fuel his sexual awakening and emerging queer desire. When he befriends charismatic hairdresser Ariel and mysterious newcomer Isidro, Andoy begins to ask himself who he wants to be. Ryan Machado’s first feature is a dreamlike coming-of-age tale that uses magic realism to depict the teenager’s journey of self-discovery. It tenderly evokes the Philippines’ bygone VHS culture which is - like Andoy’s childhood - on the brink of disappearing forever.

Tagalog, Onhan with English Subtitles

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. Courtesy of Celestial Pictures Limited. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

'Kumba', a shona word from Zimbabawe meaning 'Home'.

Kumba is a dynamic African short film cinema program that serves as a bridge to home, transcending borders to connect African and Diaspora communities. It celebrates identity, culture, and heritage through the powerful medium of film, offering a rich tapestry of stories told from an authentic African perspective. Showcasing a diverse range of narratives, Kumba highlights the vibrancy of African traditions and lived experiences, fostering a sense of belonging across continents.

Thoughtfully curated by Tatenda Jamera of Maona Art, this program brings audiences closer to home through the lens of African filmmakers, creating a space for cultural expression and shared storytelling.

Beutset

ALICIA MENDY, 29 MIN, SENEGAL, 2024

When a parasite contaminates all the drinking water in Dakar, pills are developed to neutralize it. Alioune, a young man, can no longer afford the pills and begins to experience the parasite’s symptoms: madness and insanity. As the days go by, he realizes he has never been more clear-minded. He embarks on a journey of political and spiritual awakening..

The Incredible Sensational Fiancée of Sèyí Àjàyí

ABBESI AKHAMIE, 16 MIN, NIGERIA, 2024

In the whimsical Pan-African society of Alkebulan, the brilliant yet overlooked scholar, Dr. Constance Moumie, discovers that her fiancé, Sèyí Àjàyí, is engaged to Princess Ada, throwing the town into a frenzy. With her bestie Bibi, Constance devises a daring plan to expose her unfaithful lover at his engagement ceremony, seeking both revenge and the recognition she has long deserved.

Alazar

BEZA HAILU LEMMA, 35 MIN, ETHIOPIA, 2024

A farming community in Ethiopia grapples with existential questions when a family patriarch's body mysteriously vanishes from his grave. Beza Hailu Lemma's profoundly affecting drama explores the aftermath.

Bahr

BELAL ABOSAMRA, 8 MIN, EGYPT, 2024

While grieving the loss of his wife, a father struggles with faith in a chance to reconnect with her; the journey is portrayed as death being a beginning rather than an end, a simple line separating two worlds.

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.

Returning to Saint-Martial for his late boss's funeral, Jérémie's stay with widow Martine becomes entangled in a disappearance, a threatening neighbor, and an abbot's shady intentions.

Winner of the Prix Louis-Delluc for Best French Film of 2024 and and hailed as the ‘Best Film of the Year' by Les Cahiers du cinéma.

The Garden Cinema View:

Alain Guiraudie's (Stranger By The Lake) films blend mischievous queer narratives with an almost Chabrolian attraction to deviance and macabre humour. Misericordia is perhaps his most enigmatic film to date – albeit one that has received rapturous acclaim in France. And perhaps this is, in part, due to the immediate ‘Frenchness’ of the setting. The superbly talented cinematographer Claire Mathon (Atlantics, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Spencer, Saint Omer, Guiraudie’s own Stranger by the Lake) captures the Occitanian location in probing mid-shots and steady-cam takes which often keep action and characters at a slight distance. The imposing stone walls and ever shuttered windows imbue the village with a sense of desertion; something is trapped inside.

This is a ‘cuckoo-in-the-nest’ narrative which neither moves into the pure genre thrills of The Talented Mr Ripley or the more transcendental/political sphere of Passolini’s Teorema. Rather, this quiet world turns out to be a seething nest of repressed desire, violence, and (ultimately quite funny) amorality.    

To celebrate 80 years since the publication of the first Moomin book we present Moomins on the Riviera.

Based of Tove Jansson's beloved Moomin characters, this delightful tales follows our Finnish favourites as they set off on holiday in France. In search of adventure, the Moomins, Snorkmaiden and Little My set sail for the Riviera. But the delights of the Riviera soon threaten our beloved group’s unity as they struggle to resist temptation.

Over at the Southbank Centre you can also visit the iconic moomin house. 

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 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 Christopher 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. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

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

It will be followed by a live Zoom Q&A with director Angelos Frantzis.

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.

The screening on 1 April is in tribute of Leslie Cheung and will be introduced by Victor Fan (KCL). Radiance Films, who released the film on Blu-ray, will have a pop-up shop at the screening.

The screening on 13 April will be introduced by Tony Rayns. 

Hailed as one of the very best films of the Hong Kong New Wave, Patrick Tam’s 1982 classic Nomad returns to the screen in a stunning new restoration, re-edited by Tam himself after having been heavily censored on its original release.

Starring the immortal Leslie Cheung in a breakthrough role, the film follows a group of youths in Hong Kong as they try to find their place in the world, flitting between their apartments and the beach, getting caught up in romance, politics, and gangs. At once colourful and cynical, the film is a mix of rebellion, burgeoning sexuality and culture clash, coming at a time when Hong Kong was still under British Colonial rule, though was looking both to China and Japan for its identity.

This screening is in partnership with the Chinese Cinema Project and Focus Hong Kong. Supported by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office London. 4K restoration, in Cantonese with English subtitles.

Alessandro is an Italian writer-filmmaker making a film on the Narmada Parikrama—an age-old pilgrimage along the holy river Narmada. During the cinematic journey, Alessandro meets a village boy, Lala, who has fled home to secure dignity and land for his displaced peasant family. Lala is almost at the same age as his son Francesco, who lost his mother in the recent past. The narrative unfolds the story of two boys—one without his mother, the other without his motherland. Alessandro’s narrative takes a new turn as the river Narmada flows by.

The screening will be preceded by an Introduction and followed by a Q/A session (TBC).

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.

Puss in Boots gets his own animated adventure film in this Shrek spin-off. Long before meeting Shrek, Puss in Boots (Antonio Banderas) is run out of town on suspicion of bank robbery, even though the real villain is Puss' friend, Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifianakis). Though there is still animosity between them, Puss and Humpty reunite to steal a goose that lays golden eggs. Joining them for the adventure of nine lifetimes is notorious cat burglar, Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek).

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 film is screening as part of our LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production programme, in partnership with the ICA.

Bruno Barreto’s romantic drama, set in the 1950s–60s, follows Pulitzer Prize–winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop and her affair with architect Lota de Macedo Soares, designer of Rio’s Flamengo Park. Miranda Otto (Lord of the Rings) portrays Bishop as icy yet vulnerable, while Glória Pires embodies the passionate Lota. The film juxtaposes Bishop’s alcoholism with Lota’s park obsession against the backdrop of Brazil’s brewing military coup. As their relationship unravels and Bishop returns to New York, the film explores the quest for inspiration and is a cautionary tale on relationship dynamics and the art of losing. Marcelo Zarvos’s score draws the audience into the complexity of the main character’s feelings.

Iconic Brazilian songs by Humberto Teixeira, Antônio Carlos Jobim, and Vinicius de Moraes, along with classics by Irving Berlin and Billie Holiday are featured in the soundtrack.

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 screening on Friday 21 March will be introduced by Aashna Thakkar from Reclaim The Frame

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.

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.

The Garden Cinema View:

The tradition of arranged marriage in India becomes director's Karan Kandhari inspiration for this fun and feral, genre-bending, and post-feminist punk tale set in the vibrant streets of Mumbai. The highly independent protagonist, utterly unequipped for the traditional role of wife, releases her frustrations in unpredictable, animalistic ways that place her firmly in the tradition of the grotesque and monstrous feminine.

Radhika Apte’s lead performance elevates the film, and is complemented by thoughtful cinematography by Sverre Sørdal that beautifully captures Mumbai's warmth and chaotic energy. Though the film slightly loses steam toward the end, as certain jokes and metaphors become repetitive, this completely distinctive feminist narrative is well worth the wild ride.

Site & Sound is an event series that explores the relationship between architecture and film. Each session will feature curated clips and short films around a chosen theme, inviting discussion around particular elements of representation and the different techniques employed by filmmakers. Themes will examine a multitude of perspectives on architecture, ranging from varying building types to their individual component parts and how these are interpreted by the viewer as they see the world through the lens of the built environment.

The fourth iteration of the series will delve into the art of World Building, exploring the ways that writers, directors and set designers craft imagined landscapes that extend far beyond mere backdrops. They shape narrative and deepen our understanding of the worlds they inhabit. From towering dystopias to intimate domestic spaces, architecture in film becomes a storytelling tool in of itself - evoking emotion and placing characters within environments that both define and challenge them. Drawing motifs from the ‘real’ world, filmmakers reimagine familiar structures to construct new realms, offering us insight not just into their own stories but also our relationship with the spaces we move through every day.

Speakers include: 

Nada Maktari, designer and architect

Will Wiles, author and critic

Adam Richards, architect

Site&Sound is very grateful for the graphic support from TM (TsevdosMcNeil) who have provided the branding and identity.

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.

This film was proposed by our member Ian Martin, who writes: 'Sweet Charity – the best musical!'

Charity Hope Valentine (Shirley MacLaine) always tries to look on the bright side of life, despite working in a rundown dance hall and contending with a seemingly endless run of bad dates. Determined to find love, Charity falls for suave actor Vittorio Vidal (Ricardo Montalban), but their romance is all too brief. However, when Charity finds herself stuck in an elevator with the reserved Oscar Lindquist (John McMartin), it turns out that she may have finally met her match.

Please note, the screening on Wednesday 9 April is our free members' screening, while the one on Tuesday 15 April is a regular screening, which is open to the general public.

The screening on 11 April will be introduced by Tom Cunliffe (UCL). Digitally restored and presented in 2K, shown in the UK for the first time. 

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. In Cantonese with English subtitles.

Twenty-five years after environmental collapse left the Earth uninhabitable, one family clings to a sense of normalcy while confined to a palatial bunker. Wealthy ex-ballerina Mother, former oil executive Father, their precocious Son (and a chosen few companions) keep a happy routine. But when a Girl turns up at their underground doorstep, with her own past and a plain-spoken perspective, the group’s blind optimism begins to unravel. As long-repressed emotions resurface, and a connection blossoms between the outsider and the Son, a changed existence becomes the only way forward.

The Garden Cinema View:

A 2.5 hour, post-apocalyptic musical does seem like a radical departure for The Act of Killing / The Look of Silence director Joshua Oppenheimer. And while The End is a distinctly peculiar watch, connective threads to those earlier documentaries begin to emerge. In The Act of Killing, Oppenheimer gave the executioner Anwar Congo the opportunity to create fantasy versions of his atrocities through filmmaking within several classic genre forms. Here, perhaps, he allows himself the same courtesy, working with science-fiction and the musical to explore the unspeakable weight of guilt amid an unthinkable (yet frighteningly possible) circumstance.

Oppenheimer’s use of music and the eccentric performances of his a-list cast, while not purely Brechtian, are endlessly odd enough to hold the audience in a state of curiosity. Ultimately, as with Anwar Congo and his fellow murderers, a sense of culpability appears to emerge, but with a troubling undercurrent of performative guilt.

The End hovers in a strange in-between space that is never exactly enjoyable, always fascinating, and charged with dread.    

The film is screening as part of our LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production programme, in partnership with the ICA.

An adaptation of João Guimarães Rosa’s Sagarana—a haunting short story collection about people of the sertão in the southeastern Brazil state of Minas Gerais—Roberto Santos’s Cinema Novo western follows the mythical “hero’s journey” of Augusto Matraga (Leonardo Villar), a violent farmer who is betrayed by his wife and left for dead. After he is rescued by a pair of farmers, Matraga devotes his life to contrition until the opportunity for revenge arrives. Featuring a superb score by Geraldo Vandré, The Hour and Turn of Augusto Matraga is a lyrical revenge film that foregrounds faith and spiritualism.

Like childhood, animation is full of wonder and simple pleasures. This carefully chosen programme for our littlest and most special audience contains 10 of the best, most recent wonderful short animated films, full of joy, from all around the world. There’ll be talking animals, seriously fun adventures and wondrous tales to spark those little imaginations.

For more information about the London International Animation Festival and our programmes please look at the website at www.liaf.org.uk

My Name is Fear

The fear that lives in your head wants to give an interview. Maybe you and Fear can become friends, or maybe there is a reason to be scared of Fear.

Germany 2021 Dir: Eliza Płocieniak-Alvarez 5 min

Swing

In a world of toys a wooden robot feels lonely. When another robot appears their relationship starts to blossom.

Spain 2022 Dir: Ignasi Tarruella 5 min

Bellysaurus

A tiny dinosaur dreams that she is a big scary dinosaur. When danger strikes, she learns it’s what’s on the inside that counts—literally.

Australia 2021 Dir: Philip Watts 8 min

Fox for Edgar

Edgar is not getting a lot of attention and affection from his parents, as they prefer spending time with their smartphones and laptops than with their son.

Germany 2021 Dir: Pauline Kortmann 8 min

Meta

Interconnection, form, function, flow: all these big ideas about change and growth sprout in playful ways when creatures shape shift and dance to the rhythm of discovery.

Germany 2022 Dir: Antje Heyn 4 min

The Adventures of Goar

An undersea explorer called Goar dives into the bottom of the sea to save her robot friend.

China 2021 Dir: Sergio Lu 6 min

Heartwood

Midge is hiking in the woods with her boring father. When she decides to leave the monotony of the hiking trail to set off on her own adventure, she makes a magical discovery.

UK 2021 Dir: Clara Schildhauer, Reyes Fernández 4 min

How Shammies Travelled

Hankie proposes to travel around the house with eyes closed. Space under the table suddenly turns into a dragon’s cave and the stairs into snowy cliffs.

Latvia 2021 Dir: Edmunds Jansons 6 min

Lost Brain

Every time Louise the crocodile sneezes, she loses part of her brain, until she cannot perform simple tasks and becomes trapped inside her own apartment.

Switzerland 2022 Dir: Isabelle Favez 6 min

The Smortlybacks Come Back!

In a barren world TamLin of the Little People travels with his herd of splendid smortlybacks in search of greener pastures.

Switzerland 2022 Dir: Ted Sieger 8 min

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

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.

Francis Hodgson Burnett's classic novel is beautifully brought to life by director Agnieszka Holland, cinematographer Roger Deakins and excuitve producer Francis Ford Coppola. Mary Lennox is an orphan sent to live with her uncle at his Yorkshire mansion that is full of secrets. She is looked after by the housekeeper (Maggie Smith) and soon discovers a cousin she never knew she had and a neglected garden she is determined to bring back to 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

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).

Timings:

15:45 - 17:00  Reception with complimentary drinks

17:00 - 18:35  Screening of The Story of Woo Viet

18:35 - 19:20  Q&A with 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.

In a world plagued by genocides, the climate crisis, and the erasure of cultures, this short film programme explores how queer communities continue to imagine possible futures ripe with solidarity and abundance. From queer shamanism to radical care between HIV-positive bodies, ritual and performance become tools to remake the universe. Because to be queer is to refuse to comply with the world as it is, thereby hoping, dreaming, and forging worlds that are not yet born.

Curatorial idea by Arshootti and Xinyi Wang as part of Up Next: Future Film Curators Lab 2024/25

Filament Fortune

HIV-positive bodies stage a reverse-arranging of flowers.

Dir. Beau Gomez | multiple origins | 2024 | 10min

JuJu vs The Possibilities of Life, Love and Death

A chance encounter leads to a trans woman speculating on future possibilities.

Dir. Htet Aung Lwyn | Myanmar | 2024 | 15min

High Tide or Low Tide?

A closeted high schooler takes part in a poetry contest.

Dir. Gio Franco Amarillo Alpuente | Philippines | 2024 | 20min

Hide and Seek

Queer utopias are brought to life through 3D animation.

Dir. Junjie Xu | UK | 2024 | 6min

Baradiya

An indigenous trans woman grapples with becoming a Babaylan, a Filipino queer shaman.

Dir. Gab Mejia, Miko Reyes, David Loughran, Antonio Lantong Dagoc Jr. | Philippines | 2024 | 20min

The screening on Friday 28 March in Screen 3 will be followed by a Q&A with directors Jacob Perlmutter, Manon Ouimet, as well as Maggie and Joel.

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.

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.

The Garden Cinema View:

Can the marriage of two fiercely creative and independent people work in the long run? Especially when the two have experienced different levels of success with their work? And can happiness and attraction coincide with resentment and hidden grievances? These are the central questions that directorial duo (and partners in life) Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter explore in this quietly engaging documentary about Joel Meyerowitz and Maggie Barrett's relationship.

The catalyst for exploring the issues underlying the quiet surface of the couple's day-to-day existence is a serious accident that propels a meditation on mortality and the complexities of aging together.

Against the backdrop of stunning Tuscan scenery and immaculate house interiors, the film features Maggie Barrett's elegant piano playing interspersed with examples of Meyerowitz's breathtaking photography, which alone is worth the viewing.

In celebration of the Year of the Snake, this programme coils itself around the serpent as a symbol of transformation and duality. Across five short films, propriety and convention are shed like scales as characters emerge into strange new expressions of queerness. From melancholic relationship drama to monochrome queer myth, Japanese drag queens to Chinese folktales, vulnerable new skins ripple, shift, and struggle into wondrous new shapes. These stories celebrate the unending process of becoming, thereby honouring the slippery and sacred queer experience.

This screening is preceded by a drag performance.

Curatorial idea by Alisa Ikenaga and Vee Dagger, as part of Up Next: Future Film Curators Lab 2024/25

Kokuhaku

An actor returns to the past to re-live his most intimate memories.

Dir. Adrià Guxens | Spain | 2024 | 10min

Shé Snake

The top violinist of an elite London orchestra faces her demons.

Dir. Renee Zhan | UK | 2025 | 15min

J is for Just an Afternoon Thunderstorm

A casual couple’s outing, a mysterious encounter, and an afternoon thunderstorm.

Dir. Yung Hsiang Chuang | Taiwan | 2023 | 22min

The Deity Yet to Be Seen

A serpent shifts between various genders and identities.

Dir. Junn Zhou | Netherlands | 2024 | 14min

The Gossips of Cicadidae

A boy falls in love with a mythological humanoid creature.

Dir. Vahn Leinard C. Pascual | Philippines | 2022 | 18min

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

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.

Margy Kinmonth’s feature documentary shines a light on the trailblazing role of women war artists, on the front lines round the world, championing the female perspective on conflict through art and asking: when it's life or death, what do women see that men don't?  Traditionally a male domain, war art by women has been largely unrecognised. Until now...

Culture breaks the taboo, crosses borders - tells the truth to power. Artists featured include Dame Rachel Whiteread, Zhanna Kadyrova, Maggi Hambling, Assil Diab, Dame Laura Knight, Marcelle Hanselaar, Cornelia Parker, Maya Lin, Shirin Neshat and Lee Miller. An entirely female cast of contributors makes this film a unique undertaking – telling vital truths in turbulent times.

The Garden Cinema View:

Margy Kinmonth's latest documentary continues her trilogy exploring artists inspired by war (Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War and War Art), with a unique central question: is there a distinctive female artistic perspective on war? To investigate, she interviews contemporary female visual artists and the descendants of artists who have grappled with this theme.

While the documentary's premise is intriguing, its ultimate strength lies beyond its structural coherence. Similar to the recent Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other, the raw power of the artwork elevates the film, transcending any potential narrative weaknesses.

Among the numerous fascinating artists featured, the work of Zhanna Kadyrova stands particularly striking. Her installations and sculptures created in bombed-out Ukrainian landscapes while under attack are profoundly harrowing, offering a visceral testimony to art's resilience in the face of destruction.

Karun, a security man from southern India, is posted to Gurez, a remote village in Kashmir. There, he begins a relationship with Faheem, a young Kashmiri man. But it’s a romance that seems doomed from the start. Exploring themes of love, friendship and the impact of geopolitical conflicts on personal lives, this is a touching and sensitive drama.

The screening will be preceded by an Introduction and followed by a Q/A session.

The Hong Kong New Wave is a filmmaking movement that began in the late 1970s and continued through the 1980s and 90s, which shaped contemporary Hong Kong cinema and is still hugely influential today. It encompasses an incredibly rich, exciting, and diverse body of work, and launched the careers of directors such as Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, and Tsui Hark. 

This panel discussion draws on the perspectives and expertise of speakers from academic, film industry, and filmmaking backgrounds, who work closely with Hong Kong cinema. It will provide attendees a deeper understanding of this often mentioned, but rarely explored cinematic movement, covering its emergence, key figures and their works, the relationship with the Hong Kong studio system and TV industry as well as the Taiwanese and mainland film industries, connections with other global cinematic movements, and its influence and legacy.

Moderator:

Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London, where he teaches and researches cinemas of the Sinosphere. 

Speakers:

James Mudge is the Festival Director of Focus Hong Kong and Chinese Visual Festival, and has been screening and releasing Hong Kong films around the UK for over 15 years, working with the British Film Institute, the Glasgow Film Theatre, and other organisations. He is a well-known international film critic and the Head Writer for the popular Asian cinema website easternKicks.com, specialising in Hong Kong cinema, and regularly gives talks at industry events around the world. James is also a film producer and writer working between the east and west, and is the owner of The Next Day, a UK-based film production, sales, communications and exhibition company.

Victor Fan is Reader in Film and Media Philosophy, King’s College London and a film festival consultant and moderator. He is the author of Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), Extraterritoriality: Locating Hong Kong Cinema and Media (Edinburg University Press, 2019), and Cinema Illuminating Reality: Media Philosophy through Buddhism (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). 

Tammy Cheung is one of the most respected documentary filmmakers in Hong Kong. She was born in Shanghai, China, grew up in Hong Kong, and has been based in the UK since 2022. After years of working as a film festival organiser in Canada, Cheung made her directorial debut in 1999 in Hong Kong. In 2005, she started using a 'Direct Cinema' approach, and her works mainly deal with current social and political issues. Her previous films include Invisible Women, Secondary School, Rice Distribution, Moving, July, Speaking Up, Village Middle School, and Election. 

Michelle is enjoying a peaceful retirement in a Burgundy village, close to her longtime friend Marie-Claude. When her Parisian daughter Valérie drops off her son Lucas to spend school vacation with his grandma, Michelle, stressed out by her daughter, serves her toxic mushrooms for lunch. Valérie quickly recovers, but forbids her mother from seeing her grandson anymore. Feeling lonely and guilty, Michelle falls into a depression... until Marie-Claude's son gets out of prison.

The Garden Cinema View:

What starts as a stereotypically French arthouse-style, mild meditation on late age and its discontents proves to be a complex and taut whodunnit by the always unpredictable François Ozon.

In Hitchcockian fashion, every carefully constructed scene ushers in fresh doubt, and poses a new question, transforming this into a deliciously unnerving experience. The acting ensemble is exquisite, particularly Hélène Vincent, whose face becomes a canvas on which the audience can project their discomfort, as she shifts between vulnerability and omniscience.

Although When Autumn Falls works as an electrifying thriller, Ozon never loses sight of what he does best: shedding light on the complexities and nuances of human relationships beyond right or wrong.

In this trailblazing combination of animation and live-action, down-on-his-luck private eye Eddie Valiant gets hired to investigate a pattycake scandal involving Jessica Rabbit, the sultry wife of Toontown superstar, Roger Rabbit.Virtually every major cartoon character shows up in this wonderful Oscar-winning classic.

Recommended for ages 9+

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