The screening on 4 April will be introduced by Luke Robinson (University of Sussex).

A singular work in Jia Zhangke’s filmography, 24 City is a striking hybrid of documentary and fiction, tracing half a century of Chinese industrial history from 1958 to 2008 through intimate personal accounts.

Set around the transformation of Factory 420, a former state-owned industrial complex in Chengdu, into the luxury real-estate development known as '24 City', the film interweaves real interviews with scripted monologues performed by well-known actors, including Joan Chen. Through poetic quotations and first-person narratives, 24 City transforms collective memory into an intimate, lyrical meditation on labour, loss, and the passing of an era.

Based on Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel and set in 1980s England and post-war Japan, A Pale View of Hills follows Niki, a young journalist desperate to understand her mum’s history before her birth in 1950s Nagasaki.

Spanning two timelines, and lightly excavating the author’s own family history and cultural heritage, this is an elegant, moving and hopeful account of the generational impact of war.

The Garden Cinema View:

This very decent adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s beguiling debut novel doesn’t quite capture the singularly eerie nature of its source, but succeeds on its own terms as an exploration of memory, guilt, and grief. Director Kei Nishikawa (a rising star in Japan, but relatively unknown in the UK) evokes the two distinct periods (1950s Nagasaki and 1980s Hertfordshire) with impressive production design, and coaxes excellent performances from Suzu Hirose and Yō Yoshida as the younger and older Etsuko. Although certain scenes look a little too clean, and digitally sharp, Piotr Niemyjski’s cinematography is subtle and effective. The novel reaches an almost gothic sense of closure, but Nishikawa doesn’t quite match this, with narrative threads becoming muddled, and departing with a sense of confusion. Although, this is perhaps appropriate for a film so imbued with the fog of memory.

Both screenings will be video introduced by Victor Fan (KCL).

Jia Zhangke’s bold and most genre-inflected work, A Touch of Sin (an homage to King Hu’s A Touch of Zen), offers a shocking reflection on capitalist China. Structured around four characters living in four different provinces, Shanxi, Sichuan, Hubei and Guangdong, the film forms a fractured yet panoramic portrait of contemporary Chinese society, in which ordinary people are pushed toward violent ends. Nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, the film went on to win Best Screenplay.

Inspired by true events, the film begins with the tale of an angry miner (Wu Jiang), enraged by the corruption of his village, who decides to take justice into his own hands. This gives way to follow the tales of a rootless migrant (Wang Baoqiang) who discovers the infinite possibilities of owning a firearm; a receptionist (Jia’s wife and regular collaborator Zhao Tao) working at a local sauna, pushed to the limit by a wealthy client; and finally a young factory worker (Luo Lanshan), who goes from one discouraging job to the next, only to face increasingly degrading circumstances.

This classic Disney musical animation is loosely inspired by one of the stories associated with the Middle Eastern folk tales collection 'One Thousand and One Nights'.

Street-smart Aladdin, pairs up with clever, confident Princess Jasmine to fight against the evil sorcerer Jafar and foil his plans of taking over the kingdom. Along the way, Aladdin learns to believe in himself...with the help of a comical, shape-shifting Genie whose three wishes can change everything.

Aladdin became the highest-grossing film of 1992 and the first animated film to reach the half-billion-dollar mark until it was surpassed by The Lion King in 1994.Critics praised the animation and Robin Williams' performance as the genie, while it's soundtrack won numerous accolades including an Oscar for Best Score and Best Song for A Whole New World.

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.

23-year-old Amélie is lonely. After an isolating childhood, she moves to Paris and becomes a waitress at the Café des Deux Moulins, a bar restaurant filled with a colourful cast of diners and employees. One night, Amélie happens across a box of treasures hidden in her apartment, left by a little boy in the Fifties, that changes the course of her life. Henceforth, she dedicates herself to giving back to her community, tracking down the owner of these keepsakes, consoling a widowed neighbour and befriending a reclusive artist. When completing these good deeds, she crosses paths with Nino, a photobooth collagist who shares her oddball sensibilities. She quickly falls in love with him.

The Jia Zhangke retrospective will launch on Sunday 8 March with a members' event featuring spicy cocktails and an academic intro by Maurizio Marinelli (UCL). You can find tickets for this here.

Ash Is Purest White is Jia Zhangke’s only explicit gangster film, although his works consistently return to jianghu as a social condition, an informal ethical order shaped by loyalty, obligation, violence, and survival amid historical change. Deeply influenced by Hong Kong genre cinema of the 1980s and 1990s, the film can be seen as a grounded, realist response to the heroic bloodshed tradition epitomized by John Woo's The Killer, translating its codes of loyalty and jianghu ethics into the lived realities of post-reform China.

Spanning more than fifteen years, the film views a changing China through the perspective of a pair of lovers. It follows Qiao, a woman from Datong, and Bin, a local underworld figure, whose rise and gradual disappearance mirror the shifting structures of power and belonging. Performed by Jia’s muse Zhao Tao, Qiao embodies a cool, self-possessed presence that recalls Pulp Fiction’s Mia Wallace, marked by autonomy, resilience, and moral resolve. After a fight breaks out between rival gangs, an act of loyalty irrevocably alters the course of her life…

For members who are curious to delve deeper into the world of Jia Zhangke, we're thrilled to welcome our friends from Cheng International, UK-based importer and distributor of Chinese spirits, for a baijiu tasting on Saturday 18 April. Jia comes from Fenyang, which is also the hometown of Fenjiu baijiu – a spirit which frequently appears in his films. He has previously collaborated with Fenjiu in China, making this connection between his cinema and baijiu especially meaningful.

Whether you're new to baijiu, or simply curious to learn more, this event is the perfect opportunity to experience this unique beverage, with some suitable snacks provided to enjoy alongside. However, we do recommend having some dinner beforehand, as baijiu usually contains around 45-50% alcohol!

After the tasting, there will be the chance to do some pop-up shopping, and purchase a bottle or two of your favourite baijiu to take home.

The tasting will start at 19:00, and we expect it to wrap up around 21:30. Tickets are available for £25 each, and are restricted to 2 per member, meaning you can bring a +1 along.

If you'd like to make a day of it, why not consider coming to the cinema early to catch the 16:00 screening of Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue, Jia’s latest documentary. This screening will be introduced by Kiki Yu (Queen Mary), and members can take advantage of a combo discount, which will reduce the film ticket price to £10. Simply add a ticket to your basket for both the screening and the baijiu tasting, for the discount to apply automatically.

About Cheng International:

Established in London in 2018, Cheng International Co. Ltd is a trading company mainly engaged in importing high-end Chinese Baijiu and its culture across UK. Adhering to its business philosophy founded upon the key principle of sincerity, Cheng International continues to promote the rapid expansion of the high-end Chinese Baijiu market in Britain. Through its promotion of Chinese history and culture, production and technology, music and food, Cheng International endeavours to share the charm of Chinese Baijiu culture with the world.

Website | Instagram

Bar Shorts returns to the Garden Cinema with an afternoon celebrating the artists who move fluidly between two worlds: the flicker of film and the stillness of the graphic novel page. From Frame to Page brings together some of the UK’s most inventive animation voices to explore how their storytelling evolves when the camera stops rolling and the pen takes over.

The afternoon features award‑winning animator and model‑maker Astrid Goldsmith author of The Crystal Vase. Astrid’s debut graphic had already been critically claimed and explores the world of family. Graphic novel stalwart Lucy Sullivan whose amazing book, Barking, explores mental health. It’s artwork went onto to become inspiration for Dylan Southern’s film adaption of Max Porter’s The Thing With Feathers. The storyteller, Greg McLeod, part of the duo The Brothers McLeod will be taking about his debut graphic novel which he is currently Kickstarting called The Existential Musings of Mee and Burd. Finally Writer and director Chris Shepherd, the author of Anfield Road and Bar Shorts co-creator will be sharing the creative leaps, stumbles, and revelations that shaped their journeys from animated filmmaking to graphic narrative.

Across the afternoon, guests will screen a selection of their short films before diving into the worlds of their graphic novels — discussing character, structure, world‑building, and the surprising ways animation informs the drawn page (and vice versa). Expect candid stories, practical insights, and the kind of creative honesty Bar Shorts is known for.  A rare chance to see how animators reinvent themselves as authors — and how stories transform when they shift medium. An afternoon for filmmakers, illustrators, readers, and anyone who loves watching creativity evolve.

After the screening the artists will be selling their books in the bar.

Bar Shorts returns to The Garden Cinema for a very special night with one of the most poetic voices in animation: Michael Dudok de Wit.

A rare, intimate evening with a master of the form — and a chance to see the inspirations behind some of the most quietly profound animated films ever made.

The Oscar‑winning filmmaker behind Father and Daughter and the acclaimed Studio Ghibli co‑production The Red Turtle joins us to share a hand‑picked selection of his favourite short films — works that have shaped his sensibility, inspired his craft, and continue to influence his approach to visual storytelling. Expect a rare glimpse into the artistic lineage of a director celebrated for his emotional clarity, painterly elegance, and meditative pacing.

Following the screenings, Michael will be in conversation with Chris Shepherd, exploring the creative impulses behind his work, the films that shaped him, and the enduring power of simplicity in animation. The night is curated with Dog&Rabbit.

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

Bound was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Mariane Lingley.

Before making their name with The Matrix, The Wachowski sisters debuted with this sizzling neo-noir thriller financed by legendary Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis.

Gina Gershon plays Corky, a young woman recently released from a five-year jail term for, as she puts it, the 'redistribution of wealth'. After a brief lift encounter with her sexy and sultry neighbour Violet (Jennifer Tilly) the pair strike up a steamy love affair under the nose of Violet's unhinged Mafia boyfriend Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). Soon the two women are hatching a plot to steal $2 million from Caesar and his associates - but if you're going to mess with the mob, you'd better be sure you do it right...

This screening will finish at 20:39.

Disney Pixar brings you the magical, mythical world of the Scottish Highlands. Rebellious Princess Merida doesn’t see why she needs to get married, but her mother insists it is her destiny. As the Scottish clans gather to offer up their best men to compete for Merida’s hand in marriage, she decides to take her fate into her own hands. With the help of a strange witch, she unleashes a spell to change her mother’s mind - but instead stirs up an ancient, beastly legend. Bringing the beauty of the Scottish Highlands to life and telling the cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for, this is fairytale animation at its best.

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.

Breathless was suggested by our member Jacquie Lee who writes: 'In light of the Richard Linklater’s excellent newly released film Nouvelle Vague – I was wondering whether the Garden Cinema might consider hosting a screening of Godard’s Breathless so we can watch this film on the big screen?'

Michel (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is a young hoodlum who models himself after Humphrey Bogart. After stealing a car in Marseille, he heads for Paris, gunning down a cop on the way. Once in the capital he meets up with American student Patricia (Jean Seberg), an aspiring journalist who sells copies of the New York Herald Tribune on the Champs-Elysee. Patricia agrees to hide him while he tries to trace a former associate who owes him money so that he can evade the police dragnet and make a break for Italy. But as the authorities close in, she betrays him, leading to a final shoot out in the street.

Please note, the screening on Tuesday 24 March is our free members' screening, Saturday 28 April is part of our 4th Birthday celebration, and Wednesday 1 April is a regular public screening, which is open to the general public.

From the BAFTA nominated directors of the Sundance award winning 20,000 Days on Earth - comes Broken English, a bold documentary portrait of the inimitable singer, songwriter and icon: Marianne Faithfull. Broken English is an intimate and unflinching exploration of a fractured yet unbreakable life shaped by fame, creativity and relentless public scrutiny. The film unfolds within The Ministry of Not Forgetting - an imagined, cinematic institution where memory and mythology collide. Featuring a cast led by Tilda Swinton and George MacKay, with powerful, intimate performances from friends and collaborators including Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, Courtney Love and Suki Waterhouse. Broken English is a genre-defying act of resilience and rebellion.

The Garden Cinema View:

Through interviews, video archives, and articles, Broken English’s unusual documentary/docufiction approach attempts to reconstruct Marianne Faithfull's real legacy, separating it from the media's often distorted portrayal of her personality. By the end, we have a 360-degree view of a prolific artist working across multiple media - a far cry from the one-dimensional ‘Mick Jagger ex-girlfriend’ persona. After her initial battles with addiction, Faithfull emerges as an unapologetic proto-feminist, anarchic and lustful in equal measure.

The archival material is interspersed with a curious fictional device: an interview of Faithfull by actor George MacKay, orchestrated within a strange ministry operated by Tilda Swinton. Although this conceit feels somewhat clumsy at times, tempering the film's overall strength, Broken English is clearly a labour of love.

The screening on 23 April will be introduced by Tony Rayns,  whose long-standing support of Jia Zhangke, from festival exposure to sustained critical advocacy and English subtitling, played a crucial role in bringing Jia’s work to international attention.

Caught by the Tides, a mix of fiction and documentary, is an enduring but fragile love story shared by Qiaoqiao (starring Jia Zhangke’s capturing muse Zhao Tao) and Bin, set in China, from the early 2000s to the present day.

Caught up in each other, Qiaoqiao and Bin enjoyed all that the city had to offer, singing and dancing. Until one day, Bin finds himself wanting to try his luck in a bigger place than Datong. He left without any notice. Sometime later, Qiaoqiao decides to go on a journey to look for him.

Traversing all of his past films, Jia Zhangke delivers an epic look at the romantic destiny of his perennial heroine, Qiaoqiao. Spanning 23 years of a country going through profound transformation, the film gives a new perspective to look into the contemporary China as well as the individual experiences under the turbulent emotional and social changes.

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.

Petit Bonhomme de poche (The Pocket Man)

A little man lives in an old suitcase. One day he finds a new friend – an old blind man.

Löwe

The lion must get fit. The gazelle does not think he is capable of doing so.

Naeris

Based on a Slavic folktale, the film shows the story from underground, giving an overview of what was really happening while peasants were engaged in picking vegetables

Aaaah !

The tumultuous school day is filled with cries of „Aaaah!": cries of anger, of boredom, of joy and surprise – in short, the full spectrum of young emotions.

Code Rose

In the middle of the sea a pink flamingo lands on an aircraft carrier. To keep the runway safe, military personnel have to coax it to fly away. But the bird and its companions settle unrelentingly on the war machine.

Rajskie Ptaki

Bird droppings. To most, a nuisance. But for a remarkable flock of flightless birds, they are the foundation of life itself. There is a delicate harmony in their hidden world – until one day when a mysterious object washes up on shore. What begins as curiosity sparks a profound shift, leading the flock into a new era of cultural and technological change. Once happy with simplicity, the birds now face the price of progress.

Piccolo Piccolo

A tiny mouse, wanting to forget her little worries, decides one day to climb a very high mountain.

Screened in partnership with Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival

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 before and after for networking drinks.

FILMS SCREENING:

Samba Infinito

During Rio's Carnival, a street cleaner struggles with the loss of his sister and his work obligations. Amid the celebrations, he finds a lost child and sets out to help him.

dir. Leonardo Martinelli | France | 2025 | 15min

Soixante-sept millisecondes

Starting from the trail of a bullet captured on CCTV, Soixante-sept millisecondes follows the trajectory of the shot and those of its key protagonists. Through a reconstruction combining computer-generated images with surveillance footage and the story of a victim, the film forcefully questions the legitimacy and excesses of law enforcement in France.

dir. Fleuryfontaine | France | 2025 | 15min

Deux personnes échangeant de la salive (Two People Exchanging Saliva)

In a society where kissing is punishable by death, and people pay for things by receiving slaps to the face, Angine, an unhappy woman, shops compulsively in a department store. There, she becomes fascinated by a playful salesgirl. Despite the prohibition of kissing, the two become close, raising the suspicions of a jealous colleague.

dir. Alexandre Singh, Natalie Musteata | France | 2025 | 36min

Saillie

Frédérique, in her fifties, has dressed up to go for a walk with her dog Pauline. She hopes to meet someone on the forest trail... and it doesn't take long: Philippe and his dog Magic. The dogs get closer. Will their owners do the same? Is this what Frédérique came to the forest for?

dir. Aude Thuries | France | 2025 | 10min

Dieu est timide (God is shy)

During a train ride, Ariel and Paul pass the time sketching their deepest fears. Their game takes an unexpected turn when Gilda, a mysterious passenger, intrudes on their exchange. Yet, her relationship with fear seems far less innocent than their playful drawings.

dir. Jocelyn Charles | France | 2025 | 15min

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 and after the screening.  

FILMS SCREENING:  

We Were Here

In a sleepy old indian town, convinced that machines are replacing them, three retired men threaten to take over the jobs of household appliances. But when one of their children lands a job at an A.I. Company, it rattles their crusade.

dir. Pranav Bhasin | India | 2025 | 11min

Birthmark

A woman makes her way to a sex worker to discover something about her world, about herself. Behind those walls, another war is being fought - one of truth, one of being.

dir. George Peter Barbari | Lebanon | 2025 | 20min      

Las Visitantes

3 retired women travel by bus to discover Europe. They've recently lost their husbands and now it's time to start living. They've heard people talk about the wonders of tourism all their lives and are dying to experience them firsthand.

dir. Enrique Buleo | Spain | 2025 | 20min

The Singers

The Oscar-winning The Singers follows down-on-their-luck patrons in a dive bar who connect through an impromptu singing competition. The film adapts a 19th-century Ivan Turgenev story, featuring a cast of internet viral singing talents like Mike Yung.

dir. Sam A. Davis | USA | 2025 | 18min

A Shot At Art

When two seasoned volunteers at an international art festival start participating in a highly controversial art installation, the situation spirals completely out of control… … but who was actually crossing the line here?

dir. Ilke Paddenburg | Netherlands | 2026 | 16min

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. Prior to the screening, join us for networking in the bar.

FILMS SCREENING:

Murewa

Two boys form a close friendship in a quiet coastal town, sharing passions for skateboarding and photography.

dir. Ché Scott-Heron Newton | United Kingdom | 2025 | 15min

Magid / Zafar

Luis Hindman's BIFA-winning, BAFTA-nominated short film is a propulsive journey through the world of a British Pakistani takeaway as tensions rise with the heat of the stove.

dir. Luis Hindman | United Kingdom | 2025 | 18min

Sento

The daily grind of the elderly cleaner of a Japanese bathhouse is disrupted when a young man attempts suicide.

dir. Noémie Nakai | United Kingdom | 2025 | 10min

Ovary-Acting

While stuck at her sister's baby shower a thirty-something woman is forced to decide whether she wants to have kids or not after unexpectedly giving birth to her reproductive organs.

dir. Ida Melum | United Kingdom | 2025 | 12min

Nostalgie

BAFTA and IFTA nominated short film with Aidan Gillen. When a faded 80s pop star performs in Belfast, he discovers that one of his B-sides has acquired a dark significance.

dir. Kathryn Ferguson | United Kingdom | 2025 | 19min

Emma Matthews and Christopher Petit’s (Radio On) unique and tender new film is a meditation on cinema, the NHS and family relationships.

D is for Distance tells the story of the filmmakers’ son Louis, and his debilitating epilepsy, through an extraordinary archive of personal footage and Jodhi May’s narration.

The film was selected at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Doclisboa, and the Vienna International Film Festival.

The film will followed by a Q&A with with director Emma Matthews, star Louis Petit and a representative from Epilepsy Action,

Epilepsy Action is a UK charity dedicated to supporting people with epilepsy, raising awareness, and campaigning for better services and treatment for individuals affected by the condition.

Ahmet, a 15-year-old boy from a remote Yörük village in North Macedonia, finds refuge in music while navigating his father’s expectations, a conservative community, and his first experience with love - a girl already promised to someone else.

Winner: Sundance 2025 World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award and the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision

The Garden Cinema View:

Tradition vs modernity, independence vs family, coming of age - these are familiar tropes in cinema. What sets Georgi M. Unkovski's third film apart is its rarely depicted setting of a Yuruk village in Northern Macedonia, a superbly mixed music score, striking visuals, and above all, an encompassing sense of fun and humour.

Sheep dyed in bright fuchsia, rave parties in the proximity of rural communities - the film creates a small universe of stark contradictions. The deeply patriarchal patterns of this isolated setting are oppressive for the village youths who are more concerned with what to next watch on their phones, yet Unkovski addresses these tensions with respect for the locals, and an empathetic eye.

DJ Ahmet balances social observation with real warmth, finding both absurdity and humanity at the intersection of old and new worlds.

The morning of 8 February, 1977, Anthony G. 'Tony' Kiritsis, 44, entered the office of Richard O. Hall, president of the Meridian Mortgage Company, and took him hostage with a sawed off 12-gauge shotgun wired with a 'dead man’s wire' from the trigger to the Hall’s head. This is the true story of the stand off that took the world by storm as Tony demanded $5 million, no charges or prosecution, and a personal apology from the Halls for cheating him out of what he was 'owed'.

The Garden Cinema View:

There's a lot of fun to be had with this well-crafted riff on Dog Day Afternoon. Based on a bewildering true story, it's a quintessential David vs. Goliath tale of an eccentric, exploited borrower who kidnaps a mortgage company owner's son at gunpoint. Despite the gravity of the situation, the film never becomes truly high-stakes - largely due to Bill Skarsgård's darkly humorous yet deeply truthful performance.

Where the film really thrives is in its evocation of late-70s Indianapolis: the rising social inequalities, local DJ culture, and old-school police methods all feel authentic. Unapologetically inspired by 70s moral thrillers like The Conversation and Network, it holds its own without becoming mere homage, aided by top-level filmmaking craft and a fantastic jazz soundtrack that perfectly captures the era's mood.

Gus Van Sant and his cast - including a hilarious Al Pacino cameo, an excellent Dacre Montgomery as the entrapped hostage, and a spirited Myha'la as an ambitious reporter - are truly on top form. This is a thoroughly enjoyable watch!

This sly adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel is classic Luis Buñuel. Jeanne Moreau is Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black-and-white Franscope, Diary of a Chambermaid is a raw-edged tangle of fetishism and murder - and a scathing look at the burgeoning French fascism of the era.

The screening is part of a double bill with Still Life and will be introduced by Sabrina Yu (Chinese Independent Film Archive, CIFA).

Dong is the second chapter in Jia Zhangke's documentary trilogy about artists in China, alongside Useless (2007) and Swinning Out till the Sea Turns Blue (2020). Made in the same period as Still Life, it occupies a unique place in Jia Zhangke’s body of work, functioning both as a documentary in its own right and as a companion piece to his most internationally acclaimed fiction film. Centred on contemporary painter Liu Xiaodong - whose monumental canvases, inspired in part by China’s Three Gorges Dam project, resonate closely with Jia’s own cinematic concerns of marginal lives, transient spaces, and bodies shaped by labour and displacement.

Shot on digital video, Dong follows Liu as he travels first to the Three Gorges region, where the construction of the dam has displaced entire communities, and later to Bangkok, where he paints a group of young sex workers. Jia’s camera quietly observes Liu’s encounters with his subjects and surroundings, as well as the slow, physical act of painting itself.

Accompanying the screening of Unknown Pleasures as part of our Jia Zhangke retrospective, we’re delighted to invite you to join us on Friday evening 24 April for a special pre-screening dress-up karaoke party in the Atrium Bar.

Set at the turn of the millennium, Unknown Pleasures captures the restless drift of youth in China’s post-90s moment — a world shaped by pop songs, borrowed emotions, and karaoke bars as shared spaces of escape. Popular music runs throughout Jia Zhangke’s films as a fleeting expression of freedom, intimacy, and longing.

In that spirit, this party invites you to sing songs featured across Jia Zhangke’s cinema, alongside favourites from the late 1990s and early 2000s — or simply any song you love. Dressing up with a touch of Y2K nostalgia or classic 90s style is encouraged, but there are no strict rules, just the joy of slipping briefly into another era! Our friends at Asian Girls Club will be setting up a pop-up stand in the Atrium Bar, where you could shop their curated Y2K and 90s pieces to glam up your look!

Event timings:

19:30-21:00  Dress-up karaoke party & pop-up shopping

21:00-21:05  Brief introduction by season curator Millie Zhou

21:05-23:00  Screening of Unknown Pleasures

Tickets are available for £13.50 for members and their +1, and £16.50 for non-members, and include access to the party, the pop-up store as well as an unallocated seat for the screening.

About the film:

Set in the year 2000 in Datong, a declining industrial city in northern China, Unknown Pleasures follows two aimless young men, Bin Bin and Xiao Ji, adrift in boredom and unfulfilled desire. Unemployed and disconnected, they drift between pool halls, streets, and cheap interiors, dreaming of escape without the means to pursue it. Xiao Ji becomes fixated on Qiao Qiao, a nightclub dancer whose allure remains out of reach, while Bin Bin flirts with the fantasy of a criminal act that might give his life meaning. Through their stalled lives and quiet frustrations, the film offers a stark portrait of a generation left behind by rapid economic change, suspended between pop-cultural aspiration and lived limitation.

About Asian Girls Club (AGC):

Founded in 2019, it is a fashion-led brand bringing the creative energy of East and Southeast Asian subcultures to the global stage. It is the UK’s first dedicated home for Asian subculture, shaping a new youth culture grounded in Collective, Creativity, and Community. Beyond fashion, this vision extends into AGC’s physical space where music, art, film, craft design, and events come together to form a new Asian expression.

Committed to challenging conventional narratives around the words “Asian” and “girls”, AGC celebrates them not as labels, but as perspectives. More than a secret wardrobe, Asian Girls Club is a one-stop destination for those seeking the pulse of Asian fashion, lifestyle, and stories that go beyond language. A diverse range of events and products can be explored on its official website and social channels.

Website | Instagram

This special screening, part of Planting Seeds, the Garden Cinema's environmental film strand, marks Earth Day 2026, the UN-backed global event occurring every 22nd April since 1970, to profile ecological campaigning.

And it is another UN environmental structure, one that is now deeply problematic, that comes under close scrutiny in Josh Appignanesi's remarkable documentary essay film Colossal Wreck. Taking its title from Ozymandias, Shelley's famous sonnet on imperial hubris, Colossal Wreck plunges us deep into the chaos of contradictions that is COP28, the 2023 UN climate change conference in oil-producing Dubai. Invited to show his earlier film My Extinction, about climate protest, in a fringe pavilion, Appignanesi moves from official gatherings to absurd immersive installations to well-meaning activist rallies and the lived frontline of unarguable indigenous witness. All of this takes place in one of the most jarring cityscapes on the planet, "narcotically Ballardian and surreal... an uncanny valley of hyper-prosperous consumerist placidity... a city-state-sized airport duty free shop crossed with a Kubrickian spaceship" (The Guardian).

Superbly shot and written, evocatively scored by Vik Sharma, Colossal Wreck is a singular, urgent and honest dispatch from the hypocrisy-fuelled frontline of an increasingly precarious future, a film of "mesmerizing energy... as if Schopenhauer had made Blade Runner" (The TLS).

Introducing Colossal Wreck, and discussing it afterwards with host Gareth Evans, will be the film-maker Josh Appignanesi.

Set in an enchanted town in the Colombian mountains, Encanto charts the lives of The Madrigal family. They live in a large, magical house, with each family member possessing a unique power – ranging from speaking to animals to super strength. The young Mirabel is the only one without a special ability, leaving her to wonder if there’s something wrong with her. However, when the house’s magic is threatened by a mysterious force, Mirabel may be the only one able to save the family and their home.

This colourful musical story is all about finding your own uniqueness and community. It is also a celebration of parts of Colombian culture, including music and design.

Encanto has been described as a cultural phenomenon, and in 2022 won Best Animated Feature at the 94th Academy Awards, the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature, and the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film.

It's soundtrack was a key part of its success, with Surface Pressure its most successful song, topping both the US Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart for multiple consecutive weeks.

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.

In a world where bears are in charge and mice are downtrodden creatures, an unlikely friendship is formed: Ernest, a large brown bear working as a clown and musician, meets tiny Celestine, a clever little orphan mouse who has run away from a life where she doesn't fit in. They have a very happy friendship until the other bears and mice find out and their anger forces the pair to hide. This heartwarming film explores themes of friendship, belonging and tolerance as Ernest and Celestine embark on an exciting and funny adventure.

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 Thursday 12 March will be followed by a Q&A.

In May 2021, a UK Home Office dawn raid triggers one of the most spontaneous and successful acts of civil resistance in recent memory. In Pollokshields, Scotland’s most diverse neighbourhood, hundreds of residents rush to the streets to stop the deportation of their neighbours.

Winner: Sundance Film Festival World Cinema Documentary

Special Jury Award for Civil Resistance

The Garden Cinema View:

Rarely has a documentary been more timely, prize-winning at a Sundance Film Festival held amidst ICE raids and murders in Minnesota, and as we face the prospect of a future far-right government in the UK. But whilst Everybody to Kenmure Street can be anger-inducing and tragic, at its core it is an empowering and invigorating paean to collective action. A story of community as told by the community, this is a film we can all benefit from.    

Gaslight was proposed for out 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Rachael Grant.

The original screen adaptation of the Patrick Hamilton play stars Anton Walbrook as a calculating husband who attempts to make his wife think she is going insane so that he can locate her hidden family jewels. Oscar-nominee Diana Wynyard is his turn-of-the-century bride who moves into the house where her aunt was murdered and begins to fear she's going mad.

This screening will finish at 18:04.

Rick Moranis stars as a preoccupied inventor who just can't seem to get his electro-magnetic shrinking machine to work. Then, when he accidentally shrinks his kids down to one-quarter-inch tall and tosses them out in the trash, the real adventure begins! Now the kids face incredible dangers as they try to make their way home through the jungle of their own backyard! Hurricane sprinklers! Dive-bombing bees! A runaway lawn mower and much, much more!

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 5 April will be introduced by Chris Berry (KCL).

After exploring China's social and historical transformations for over a decade, Jia Zhangke turns his lens to Shanghai in this compelling documentary.

I Wish I Knew is a vivid portrait of the fast-changing metropolis and port city – Shanghai, a place marked by revolutions, assassinations, love stories, and the constant flow of people in and out. After the Chinese Communists' victory in 1949, thousands of Shanghaiers left for Hong Kong and Taiwan. To leave meant being separated from home for thirty years; to stay meant suffering through the Cultural Revolution and China's other political upheavals.

Eighteen people from these three cities, Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong, including filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien, painter Danqing Chen, writer Han Han and actress Rebecca Pan, recall their lives in Shanghai. Their personal experiences, like eighteen chapters of a novel, tell stories of Shanghai lives from the 1930s to 2010.

The screening on 10 April will feature a recorded introduction by the director Walter Salles (Central Station).

Jia Zhangke, A Guy from Fenyang is a rare, feature-length documentary devoted to the Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke, directed by Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles. Viewed today, it stands as an invaluable record of a filmmaker’s life, comparable to Olivier Assayas’ 1997 documentary on Hou Hsiao-hsien, one of Jia’s key inspirations.

Filmed entirely in China across locations central to Jia’s life and work, including his hometown Fenyang in Shanxi province and Beijing. The film features interviews conducted by Walter Salles and critic Jean-Michel Frodon, who also collaborated with Jia on the companion book The World of Jia Zhangke. Jia reflects on his past, his filmmaking philosophy, and his artistic development. Blending candid conversations with excerpts from his films, the documentary also brings together voices from his creative circle, including long-time collaborator Zhao Tao, who has appeared in all of Jia’s narrative features since Platform, alongside family, friends, and neighbors. The result is an affectionate and comprehensive portrait of an artist in motion, also originating a peculiar outlook on the role of cinema itself.

Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, Jules et Jim charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffaut directs, and Jeanne Moreau stars as the alluring and willful Catherine, whose enigmatic smile and passionate nature lure Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) into one of cinema’s most captivating romantic triangles. An exuberant and poignant meditation on freedom, loyalty, and the fortitude of love, Jules etJim was a worldwide smash in 1962 and remains every bit as audacious and entrancing today.

As The Garden Cinema would never have made it to a 4 year anniversary without your wonderful support, members are invited to help us close our day of celebratory screenings on Saturday 28 March with a birthday party featuring your favourite cinematic tunes, and party hats aplenty!

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Garden Cinema party without a classic feature: we'll end the night with a screening of Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude, which was suggested by member Joseph Lidster.

Doors will open at 19:00, after which you're welcome to make your way to either bar area:

• In the upstairs Atrium Bar we will be hosting a karaoke party, where you'll have the chance to belt out iconic songs from a range of films - be that from Harold and Maude's evergreen Cat Stevens soundtrack, or another needle drop you would like to sing your lungs out to
• If you prefer a bit more peace and quiet, and would like to let your creativity flourish, the downstairs Garden Bar will have several crafting stations set up, allowing you to decorate artistic party hats or press your own Garden Cinema badges (commemorating seasons & screenings from the past four years)

Both bars will be serving up drinks throughout the night, and your first one will be included in your ticket, with a choice of our very own Garden Pale Ale (courtesy of the wonderful Lost and Grounded Brewers), a glass of party punch, or a soft drink of your choice.

At 21:00, we'll head into the screens for our tribute to the late Bud Cort, with Ashby’s timeless ode to love and life, Harold and Maude.

Tickets for this event are restricted to 2 per member, so you can bring your favourite party person along for the festivities, and are just £14.50 each. Each ticket includes access to the birthday party, a complimentary drink, and an unallocated seat for the film.

The London Review of Books presents a special screening of one of Frederick Wiseman’s most influential films, Law and Order (1969), to mark his death, its (ever-)present relevance and the arrival of ‘Frederick Wiseman: American Lives’ on MUBI: a curation of documentaries shot over a period of more than 50 years, cataloguing great American institutions such as the police, the public school system, Ivy League colleges, City Hall, the five boroughs of New York City and more.

Law and Order follows the members of the Kansas City Police Department, who are largely white, as they engage in daily patrol activities, interacting with members of the public. Despite occasional flashes of brutality, Wiseman found, somewhat to his own surprise, that he’d created a sympathetic movie about cops. After its re-release in 2017, Pauline Kael described it in the New Yorker as ‘the most powerful hour and a half of television I’ve seen all year.’

Matthew Barrington, curator of cinema at the Barbican and an authority on Wiseman’s work and slow cinema, will introduce the film. Then after the screening, he’ll be joined via video link by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor at Princeton, author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America – and star of another Wiseman film, 2017’s Ex Libris: New York Public Library.

The latest season of the LRB’s long-running film series continues its exploration of visions of London created by non-British filmmakers throughout 2026.

Next up is the landmark early sound film Piccadilly, converted from its own silent version in the same year and manner as Hitchcock’s similarly capital-set Blackmail. Scripted by the  prolific English writer and novelist Arnold Bennett, and directed by German filmmaker E.A. Dupont, it is especially notable for its casting of the pioneering Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong (Wong Liu Tsong). One of the five British films in which she starred, Piccadilly casts Wong as a young Chinese woman working in the kitchen at a London dance club, who is given the chance to become the its main act, a decision that leads to bitter rivalry, betrayal, transgressive love, and murder.

Capturing a key moment in the city’s cultural history, and acknowledging London’s often overlooked Chinese community, it’s a vivid and highly atmospheric drama, almost a film noir avant la lettre, driven by Wong’s compelling presence in what is probably her most famous role. With stalwarts like Charles Laughton and Ray Milland both putting in an appearance, it is, as the BFI’s Mark Duguid writes, ‘on a par with the best work of Anthony Asquith or Alfred Hitchcock in the period … notable for qualities not typically associated with British (silent) films: opulence, passion and a surprisingly direct approach to issues of race.’

Introducing Piccadilly, and discussing it afterwards with regular host Gareth Evans, will be the musician and writer Emma-Lee Moss (better known to some as Emmy the Great). In her forthcoming first book, My Cantopop Nights, which is published in June, Moss explores and attempts to reconcile the different sides of her heritage through music: Hong Konger and British, Cantopop and indie.

From Academy and BAFTA Award–winning filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, La Grazia is a sweeping exploration of love, duty, and personal freedom. Toni Servillo – winner of the Best Actor Award at the 2025 Venice Film Festival – stars as Italy’s outgoing president, Mariano De Santis, navigating moral and personal crossroads with the help of his confidante and daughter, Dorotea (Anna Ferzetti). With Sorrentino’s signature poetic vision and an evocative soundtrack, this heartfelt masterwork is an intimate meditation on fatherhood, conscience, and the enduring question: who owns our days?

The Garden Cinema View:

Paolo Sorrentino’s best film in some years is also a return to familiar ground. Sharply dressed elder men in positions of influence and wealth facing an existential crisis is Sorrentino’s bread and butter, and here is a particularly refined example. Reuniting with his muse, the sparkling Toni Servillo, this portrait of the final months in office for a popular President of the Republic pits a stiff servant of the law against larger and intangible forces: faith, grace, and love. At times a wordy and weighty moral conundrum, La Grazia is given lightness by Sorrentino’s stylistic flourishes – lonely cigarette breaks scored by thumping Italo disco, a Portuguese dignitary caught in a slow motion storm. And whilst the film takes its time to find its conclusions, the payoff is satisfying and very moving.  

This psychologically acute, visually striking modernist work was director Michelangelo Antonioni’s follow-up to the epochal L’avventura. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star as a novelist and his frustrated wife, who, over the course of one night, confront their alienation from each other and the achingly empty bourgeois Milan circles in which they travel. Antonioni’s muse Monica Vitti smolders as an industrialist’s tempting daughter. Moodily sensual cinematography and subtly expressive performances make La Notte an indelible illustration of romantic and social deterioration.

Le Cercle Rouge was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Mo Abdelrahman.

Alain Delon plays a master thief, fresh out of prison, who crosses paths with a notorious escapee (Gian Maria Volontè) and an alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand). The unlikely trio plot a heist, against impossible odds, until a relentless inspector and their own pasts seal their fates. With its honorable antiheroes, coolly atmospheric cinematography, and breathtaking set pieces, Le Cercle Rouge is the quintessential film by Jean-Pierre Melville - the master of ambiguous, introspective crime cinema.

This screening will finish at 15:20.

Le Havre was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Emanuele Busuito.

The life of former author and well-known bohemian Marcel Marx is disrupted when his wife is diagnosed with a serious disease. When fate suddenly throws in his path an underage immigrant, Marcel once more has to rise against the cold wall of human indifference with his only weapon of innate optimism and the unwavering solidarity of the community. But against him stands the whole blind machinery of the Western constitutionally governed state, this time represented by the dragnet of the police, moment by moment drawing closer around the refugee boy... It’s time for Marcel to polish his shoes and reveal his teeth.

This screening will finish at 17:43.

The screening on Thursday April 19 will be introduced by freelance writer and programmer Savina Petkova. It will feature English subtitles.

Synopsis:

Papatakis’s debut unfolds in a country home where two domestic servants are cruelly exploited by the family they work for. When their abusive employers push them too far, it provokes a shocking and escallating rebellion. This allegorical portrait of the Algerian resistance was inspired by the real-life story of the Papin sisters, two maids who brutally murdered their employers in 1930s France - also the basis for Jean Genet’s influential 1947 play The Maids and Claude Chabrol’s 1995 psychological thriller La Cérémonie.

Curator’s note:

Boycotted by the selection committee of the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, Les Abysses was publicly defended by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, André Breton, and Jean Genet. The case of the two sisters has long been cited in French left-wing intellectual circles as a perfect example of working-class struggle. In Papatakis' view, the sisters' violence stemmed directly from their living conditions - the humiliations they endured and the exploitation they suffered at the hands of their employers.

The film exemplifies Papatakis' hyper-stylized, expressionistic approach, escalating the domestic conflict into paroxysmic class warfare. Like ancient Greek tragedies where masked actors embodied archetypes rather than nuanced psychological portraits, the performances are deliberately exaggerated - raw and symbolic rather than naturalistic.

Simone De Bouvoir:

"A magnificent and strange film in which reason descends into madness, paradise into the depths of hell, and where love is painted with the colours of hate. [...] Only the violence of the crime committed by the two heroines allows us to measure the atrocity of the invisible crime of which they themselves were victims

Content warning: 
The film Contains intense violence, psychological distress, and disturbing imagery related to class conflict and abuse.

For his feature debut, twenty-four-year-old Louis Malle brought together a mesmerizing performance by Jeanne Moreau, evocative cinematography by Henri Decaë, and a legendary jazz score by trumpeter Miles Davis. Taking place over the course of one restless Paris night, Malle’s richly atmospheric crime thriller stars Moreau and Maurice Ronet as lovers whose plan to murder her husband (his boss) goes awry, setting off a chain of events that seals their fate. A career touchstone for its director and female star, Lift to the Scaffold was an astonishing beginning to Malle’s eclectic body of work, and it established Moreau as one of the most captivating actors ever to grace the screen.

Marguerite Duras adapted Jean Genet’s story of a repressed schoolteacher in rural France (an unflinching turn by Jeanne Moreau) who causes mayhem in her village and allows prejudiced locals to blame an Italian woodcutter (Ettore Manni), with horrific results. Director Tony Richardson renders a one-of-a-kind hybrid of arthouse drama and psychosexual thriller, which even its detractors found too audacious to ignore (Roger Ebert declared Moreau 'flawless'). Fraught with Freudian symbols (snakes, felled pine trees) and a scathing vision of corrupt and unknowable humanity, Mademoiselle was nominated for the Palme d’Or and earned a BAFTA for Jocelyn Rickards’ costumes.

“Practically Perfect In Every Way” Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews) flies out of the windy London skies and into the home of two mischievous children. With the help of a carefree chimney sweep named Bert (Dick Van Dyke), the spirited nanny turns every chore into a game and every day into a “Jolly Holiday”  to reconnect the children with their parents.

Into Film age recommendation: 5+

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 tie in with the cinema's fourth anniversary celebrations, our next Members' Film Quiz will be inspired by birthdays (and more broadly, parties)!

Are you the person in your friend group who everyone asks for film recommendations to get them into the party spirit? Do you know your Party Girl from your Abigail's Party, and your My Favourite Cake from your Layer Cake? These skills you've been honing might pay off on Wednesday 25 March, during our Members' Film Quiz! Join us for an evening of (very) loosely celebration-themed trivia questions, film clips & audio rounds.

There will be presents up for grabs for the top 3 teams:

- A selection of cinephilic books from our wonderful neighbours at Faber

- Handmade scented candles from our fabulous friends at Norfolk Natural Living

- Gift vouchers for the cinema

There will also be a liquid bonus for the best team name.

We have space for 10 teams of max. 5 contestants each. Tickets are £5, and are restricted to 1 per member, so please make sure to be logged in and book quickly once ticket sales open on Thursday 5 March at 13:00.

Important info before booking:

• If you would like to be placed on a team with friends (who must also be members of the cinema), you can either:
  -  Purchase your tickets individually, and leave their names during the checkout process, so we can place you on the same team
  or
  -  Purchase tickets for the entire team, and assign each ticket to the individual team members (you will need to know their surname as well as the email address their membership is registered under, to do this)
• If you're joining by yourself, you will be placed on a Garden Cinema All Stars team - a great opportunity to meet fellow members!

Please note that any teams of 3 contestants or less may be merged together to allow as many members as possible to join.

About Faber:

Faber is one of the world’s great independent publishing houses. Since they were founded in 1929, poetry has been at the heart of their publishing, with T. S. Eliot as their first Poetry Editor. In every generation, Faber has sought to find the very best writers and they are proud to publish the foremost voices in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, film and children’s books, from writers including Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett, Ted Hughes, William Golding, Kae Tempest, Seamus Heaney, P. D. James, Natalie Diaz, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Alan Bennett, Edna O’Brien, Simon Armitage, Sally Rooney, Emma Carroll, Kieran Larwood and Natasha Farrant. Thirteen Nobel Laureates and six Booker Prize-winners have been published by Faber, with awards most recently for Kazuo Ishiguro and Anna Burns.

Website | Instagram

About Norfolk Natural Living:

Norfolk Natural Living is a British lifestyle brand built on the idea that the little things really do matter. Not in a lofty way, in a genuinely makes your day better way. So much so, they still make every perfume, every candle, every pillow mist, by hand, in their Norfolk studio, as part of a quiet but determined effort to bring back the art of handmade perfume.

Everything is done properly, slowly, and with a kind of stubborn refusal to rush. From plant to bottle, each ingredient is chosen, distilled, blended, and poured with care, which feels faintly radical these days. It’s craft for the sake of it, and all the better for that.

Female founded, and led by a real belief in scent, they make fragrances that uplift, relax, and transport. With nine perfumeries, including two in London, one just round the corner on Lambs Conduit Street, you can wander in, linger over the interiors, which really are worth it, and come away with a complimentary hand and arm massage and a distinct sense that life has improved. Which, in a way, is the whole point.    

Website | Instagram

Our regular Members' Mingle returns on Wednesday 22 April! Join us in the Atrium Bar from 19:00 onwards to meet fellow members - think film chat with cinema enthusiasts, drinks, and a playlist of iconic songs from favourite features, curated by you! You can add your song suggestions for the evening's soundtrack here.

Concerned the conversation might run dry? Fear not, as our bar team have you covered! Not only will your ticket include a complimentary drink in case you are in need of a bit of Dutch courage, but it will also come with a film-based prompt to serve as an icebreaker to introduce yourself to fellow members. Who knows, you might meet a like-minded cinephile to attend future screenings with!

Tickets for the event are just £5, restricted to 1 per member, and include a token for your first drink on the house.

Metropolitan was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Larri Murdoch.

One of the great American independent films of the 1990s, the surprise hit Metropolitan, by writer-director Whit Stillman, is a sparkling comedic chronicle of a young man’s romantic misadventures while trying to fit in to New York City’s debutante society. Stillman’s deft, literate dialogue, and hilariously highbrow observations earned this first film an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. Beneath the wit and sophistication, though, lies a tender tale of adolescent anxiety.

This screening will finish at 18:04.

The screening on 16 April will be introduced by Lu Xiaoning (SOAS).

As one of Jia Zhangke’s most ambitious works, Mountains May Depart spans three decades, tracing China’s rapid transformations through the intimate lens of a family drama. Set primarily in Jia’s native Fenyang and later partially in Australia, the film blends fiction with poetic realism. Importantly, as in many of Jia’s other works, it features a striking use of popular music - the Pet Shop Boys and Cantonese singer Sally Yeh - which not only evokes nostalgia but also underscores and drives the characters’ emotional journey across time and distance.

The story follows Tao, a woman in 1990s Fenyang, her lover Jiang, and her young son Dollar. Across three distinct periods, the 1990s, early 2000s, and 2025, the characters confront love, separation, and the changing currents of life, offering a poignant reflection on memory, belonging, and the passage of time.

The UK’s Best International Feature Film entry to the 98th Academy Awards and recipient of the Caméra d’Or Special Mention at Cannes, Akinola Davies Jr.’s My Father's Shadow is a poetic, tender portrait of father-son bonds. Framed by the political landscape of 1993 Lagos, the film follows a father and his two young sons as they journey into and around the vibrantly rendered Nigerian metropolis, quietly reckoning with their relationship while navigating a city on the precipice of democratic crisis. Brothers and collaborators Akinola Davies Jr. and Wale Davies bring us a groundbreaking feature debut – centering an award-winning performance by Sopé Dìrísù - that reveals the profound depths of what families leave unspoken.

The Garden Cinema View:

This impressive debut feature from Akinola Davies Jr. is a tender memory play, a tribute to his father, and an immersion into a politically volatile Nigeria in 1993. Co-writing with his brother Wale Davies, My Father’s Shadow is a deeply personal, and partially biographical work. Sopé Dìrísù anchors the drama as their father, exuding strength, vulnerability, desperation, and love, in what is a complex and well-rounded portrayal of father-son relations. Despite a small budget, early 1990s Lagos is rendered in vivid sights and sounds that are transportive. Beneath this ripples mystical energies, whilst the escalating political breakdown gradually frays the edges of this portrait. A poignant film, and one which announces a key new voice in British cinema.  

We're back at The Garden Cinema where we will be showing films about journeys taken by OffBeat People. These range from huge migrations across the country to much smaller journeys, all of them epic nonetheless and each beautifully filmed.

OffBeat is a folk film club and festival sharing overlooked archive films about folk, heritage, and working life in the UK, with the aim to celebrate and connect the culture, art, and stories of everyday people, offering a joined-up, inclusive picture of what it is to be British.

Join us at The Garden Cinema for an evening of films sharing the intimate stories of OffBeat people. This event includes the feature-length documentary All My Life is Buried Here about the English composer, folk song collector and morris dancer George Butterworth who met a tragic end at The Somme in 1916. Not to be missed.

OffBeat is a folk film club and festival sharing overlooked archive films about folk, heritage, and working life in the UK, with the aim to celebrate and connect the culture, art, and stories of everyday people, offering a joined-up, inclusive picture of what it is to be British.

Join us at The Garden Cinema where we will be showing films about people who have an intense love and connection to nature, place and the environment. Films in this lineup include The Mole Catcher and Digging For Worms.

OffBeat is a folk film club and festival sharing overlooked archive films about folk, heritage, and working life in the UK, with the aim to celebrate and connect the culture, art, and stories of everyday people, offering a joined-up, inclusive picture of what it is to be British.

The screening on 15 March will be introduced by season curator Millie Zhou.

Platform, the second chapter of Jia Zhangke’s 'Hometown Trilogy' (alongside Xiao Wu and Unknown Pleasures), is shot on 35mm and marks Jia’s first collaboration with Zhao Tao, beginning a partnership that would continue across all of his fiction features. Spanning the late 1970s to the early 1990s, the film unfolds during China’s most far-reaching period of reform and transformation, closely overlapping with Jia’s own coming of age.

Set in a small town in Shanxi province, Platform follows a group of young performers as they evolve from a state-run propaganda troupe into drifting individuals navigating pop culture, romance, and uncertainty. As their ideals fade and desires remain unresolved, the film observes a generation quietly shaped by historical change, unfolding in lived time and ordinary moments.

The story of a beautiful, proud, and tough loner, a sailor named Querelle, whose commanding officer Seblon worships and desires him from afar. Querelle turns on his drug-smuggling partner and murders him. He then goes to a notorious brothel run by the rapacious Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau), who leads Querelle into his first homosexual encounter. Then, Querelle has become vulnerable and soft, and soon the once powerful object of passion comes to belong to Seblon.

To celebrate our new Jeanne Moreau season, we're very excited to welcome cinema members, long-time music enthusiasts, and occasional DJs Andy and Paul for a special screening of Lift to the Scaffold on Saturday 11 April.

To prepare you for this wonderful film (as well as its iconic Miles Davis soundtrack), the pair will be playing jazz from their vinyl collection in the Atrium Bar before and after the screening, and they will be delighted to talk all things music and film!

To enhance the sense of urbane sophistication, our bar team will be serving up Manhattans for you to sip on - the first of which will be included in your ticket.

Event timings:

19:30-20:30  Records and cocktails in the Atrium Bar

20:30-22:05  Screening of Lift to the Scaffold

22:05-23:00  Vinyl and cocktails continue

Tickets for the event are £18.50 each, and include access to the vinyl sessions, a seat for the film screening, and a complimentary Manhattan (or a non-alcoholic alternative). They are restricted to 2 per member, meaning you can bring a fellow music enthusiast along, even if they're not a member.

There will be additional (regular) screenings of Lift to the Scaffold throughout the season - you can find these here.

With his senses-ravishing third feature, visionary director Bi Gan takes his deepest plunge yet into the realm of pure cinematic dreamscape. In a world where humans have forsaken dreams in exchange for immortality, a dreaming monster (Jackson Yee) embarks on a shape-shifting odyssey through illusion, beauty, and terror that takes him across the twentieth century and to the end of time. Unfolding in five dazzlingly imagined chapters that encompass everything from silent-cinema expressionism, to film noir, to a delirious vampire love story shot in one of Bi’s signature long takes, Resurrection is a work of breathtaking imagination in which cinema is the ultimate portal to the unconscious mind.

The Garden Cinema View:

Bi Gan’s first film in 7 years (he’s still only 36), cements his place at the vanguard of contemporary cinema; a filmmaker whose singular vision, and self-confidence, makes for thrilling viewing experiences. Resurrection is his most ambitious work to date (and the boldest film of the year). A sprawling and hallucinatory sci-fi epic which begins in a kind of Guy Maddin early-cinema styled future, before plunging backwards into 20th century Chinese history. This is a vast genre-hopping canvas. And as with such films (think the Wachowskis’ Cloud Atlas or Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast) there is a fine line between art and folly. Resurrection might be uneven and a little frustrating when compared to Bi’s Kaili Blues or his majestic Long Day’s Journey into Night, but when it works it soars, and pushes the boundaries of what cinema can achieve.

When a fishing boat, the Rose of Nevada, lost with all hands 30 years ago, mysteriously reappears in the old harbour of a forgotten Cornish village, for those who remember, it’s surely a

sign. The boat must go out to sea again and maybe then the luck of the devastated village will turn.

Young father Nick (George MacKay) and enigmatic newcomer Liam (Callum Turner) join captain Murgey (Francis Magee), and they head to sea. But when they return, satisfied with their haul, something is amiss - they’ve slipped back in time, and the villagers greet them as if they are the original crew.

El Benny offers a warts-and-all but compassionate portrayal of the life of legendary singer and bandleader Benny Moré (1919–1963) - that not only celebrates his extraordinary musical talent but also illuminates the broader social context of music-making by Black musicians in pre-revolutionary years. It doesn’t hide from the man’s excesses nor the racism he faced, while revealing his deep commitment to his art and his people.

The drama concentrates on the 1950s, a crucial decade in El Bárbaro del Ritmo’s artistic development and his emergence as one of the greatest Latin American musicians of the 20th century. The film opens as Benny arrives in Cuba from Mexico and is offered work by a wealthy politician which doesn’t go to plan. Betrayed and frustrated, never far from a drink, the legend puts his band back together and triumphs but misfortune and chaos surround him.

The soundtrack is outstanding, with completely newly recorded tracks by Santiago singer Juan Manuel Villi, sounding uncannily like Benny. It includes help from contemporary legends pianist Chucho Valdés, and the late Los Van Van band leader Juan Formell, who composed a special tribute heard at the end of the film.

Content Warning: Contains scenes of domestic violence

Special guest Director Eirene Houston will be there to talk about the film before and after the screening.

Son – the first truly home-grown Cuban music and dance style – and its variations have ruled the Cuban dance floor for the last hundred years. But a new dance has exploded onto the scene, capturing the imagination of the young, Reggaeton. Can Cuba hold on to the roots of its dance culture, or will some traditions be lost forever?

Life is Dance follows the stories of six main protagonists, across three generations. Ordinary Cubans with one thing in common, their passion for dance. Marta and Félix are nostalgic for the dance halls of old, but still dance whenever they can. Damaris and Gusmel are leaders of a small-town dance group, it means everything to them to win the annual dance competition. Teenagers Lachy and Dayan would love to be professional dancers, if only they could stick to reggaeton and not have to learn the “old people’s dances”.

Full of colour and music, disappointment and joy, we join these charismatic characters on their journey through a changing Cuba.

Following the success of global phenomenon The Worst Person in the World, Academy Award-nominee Joachim Trier reunites with BAFTA nominee Renate Reinsve for their universally acclaimed follow-up, Sentimental Value. Winner of the prestigious Cannes Grand Prix award, and featuring career-best performances from Golden Globe winner Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning.

Reinsve plays Nora, a successful stage actress who, along with her sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), reunites with their estranged father Gustav Borg (Skarsgård) – a once-renowned film director planning a major comeback with a script based on his family. When Gustav offers Nora the lead role, which she

promptly declines, he turns his attention to Rachel Kemp (Fanning), an eager young Hollywood starlet primed for her big breakthrough. With their fraught dynamics made even more complex, Nora, Agnes and Gustav are each forced to confront their difficult pasts.

The Garden Cinema View:

Joachim Trier cements has status as the most successful Norwegian filmmaker of all time with an ambitious and self-reflexive family portrait. As any self-respecting auteur will do at some point, Trier has made a film about filmmaking. This is a subject that, although quite indulgent, opens up Sentimental Value for poignant reflections on creativity, performance, and the meaning of (a broken) home.

Although Trier is a very different filmmaker, there is something faintly Bergman-esque in Sentimental Value. The excavation of family history, the merging of identity, a problematic father, and simply the presence of actors (performing Ibsen no less), all help to conjure the ghost of the Swedish master. Actually the film that Sentimental Value evokes most strongly is Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island, although with less metatextual contortions.  

This is confident and powerful filmmaking, carried off by a superb cast, and is the is best film about a film director since Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory.

Seven Samurai was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Thu Tran.

One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, Seven Samurai tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to protect them from invading bandits. This three-hour ride from Akira Kurosawa -featuring legendary actors Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura - seamlessly weaves philosophy and entertainment, delicate human emotions and relentless action, into a rich, evocative, and unforgettable tale of courage and hope.

This screening includes a 5 minute intermission, and will finish at 15:36.

Twenty years after his first appearance, Wallace and Gromit’s cheeky sidekick finally gets his own big screen adventure in this delightful comedy from British animation studio Aardman. Life on the farm is pretty carefree for Shaun and his friends. Bored of the daily routine, Shaun decides to take the day off, but after some very silly, mischievous behaviour he and the rest of the flock are forced to head into the big city to try and rescue the hapless Farmer who has lost his memory.

Packed full of slapstick humour and wonderful visual comedy, this dialogue-free stop-motion animation will be adored by children of all ages.

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.

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.

Lifts and corridors often go unnoticed in day-to-day life, designed to get us from one place to another, but in cinema they become transitional spaces that resist dwelling and force events to happen.

The architecture of transit imposes constraints that cinema exploits. A lift seals people together, removes escape routes or makes time visible through changing floors. It creates enforced intimacy, sharing space with strangers or companions. This compression can generate romance, as in 500 Days of Summer, or explosive violence, such as Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Inception plays with this literally, with bodies floating in arrested motion, while Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory turns ascent into a flight of fancy.

Corridors operate through a different spatial logic. They're linear but can feel infinite, structured but disorienting. The hallway becomes a test for how long you can sustain movement, tension or a single shot. In Oldboy, one corridor becomes a single fight in an unbroken take. Kubrick's passages in 2001: A Space Odyssey seem infinite, as they curve back on themselves. And when Titanic floods its corridors, familiar paths become traps and navigation is all about survival.

This Site&Sound examines how cinema transforms functional architecture into narrative space. In these compressed environments, movement becomes charged with meaning. The structures themselves shape what stories can unfold within them.

The screening on 27 March is part of a double bill with Dong and will be introduced by Sabrina Yu (Chinese Independent Film Archive, CIFA).

Still Life stands as one of Jia Zhangke’s most celebrated works and a defining achievement of his career. Awarded the Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Film Festival, the film marks the culmination of his early exploration of China’s vast social and geographical transformations, while also signalling a new confidence in narrative form and visual composition.

Set against the monumental backdrop of the Three Gorges Dam project when millions of people had to be relocated, Still Life interweaves two parallel stories. A coal miner, Han Sanming, arrives in the doomed town of Fengjie, Chongqing in search of the wife and daughter he has not seen for sixteen years. Meanwhile, Shen Hong, a nurse, comes to the same town looking for her estranged husband. As buildings are demolished and communities dismantled around them, both characters navigate a terrain shaped by loss, impermanence, and emotional distance.

Given studio carte blanche after the unexpected Oscar triumph of Midnight Cowboy, director John Schlesinger created one of the most underrated masterpieces in British cinema. Ahead of its time in its unsensationalised representation of queer polyamory, Sunday Bloody Sunday was to be the most personal work of Schlesinger's career, in which screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt drew heavily on both his and her own past experiences.

Set against a backdrop of economic crisis, the film explores the memories and inner lives of gay Jewish doctor Daniel Hirsh (Peter Finch) and divorced office worker Alex Greville (Glenda Jackson), as both navigate a relationship with drifting designer Bob Elkin (Murray Head).  Stunningly constructed and edited, the film went on to sweep that year's BAFTAs, beating out The Go-Between and Death in Venice for Best Film and Best Director, and with both Jackson and Finch taking away lead acting awards for career-best performances.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion about John Schlesinger's queer cinema legacy.

Showing as part of The Consummate Professional: John Schlesinger at 100, a UK-wide retrospective curated by Marc David Jacobs and Claire Nicolas, taking place from February to July 2026. More information here.

The screening on 18 April will be introduced by Kiki Yu (Queen Mary).

Ten years after his last documentary I Wish I Knew (2010), Jia Zhangke returns to non-fiction with Swimming Out till the Sea Turns Blue, the final chapter in his trilogy about arts in China, following Venice award-winning Dong (2006, about the painter Liu Xiaodong) and Useless (2007, about the fashion designer Ma Ke).

Jia’s latest documentary, Swimming Out till the Sea Turns Blue, centres on four prominent modern Chinese writers, the late Ma Feng, Jia Pingwa (Red Sorghum Clan), Yu Hua (To Live) and Liang Hong at a literary festival, taking place in May 2019 in Jia’s hometown of Fenyang in Shanxi province. This starts an 18-chapter symphony about Chinese society since 1949. Through reflections on their own lives and literary careers, those authors discuss the changes China has undergone since their births in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, weaving a 70-year spiritual history of the Chinese people.

This edition of Composing Cinema pays tribute to the pioneering animator Lotte Reiniger, and the centenary of her groundbreaking The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

We are delighted to be joined by experimental noise conjuror mutterichbindoom from SECT Silent Club who will perform his live score for the film.

Masterminded by Lotte Reiniger, and hand-tinted frame by frame, The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the first feature-length animation in film history. Based on The Arabian Nights, the film tells the epic tale of Prince Achmed, who is tricked into mounting a magical flying horse by a wicked sorcerer. The horse carries Achmed off on a series of adventures, over the course of which he joins forces with young Aladdin, battles ogres and monsters, and romances the beautiful Princess Peri Banu.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed will be preceded by Cinderella (1922, 10 minutes, also featuring a live score), one of Reiniger's earliest works. This delicate short showcases her innovative cut-out animation technique in its formative years, offering a glimpse into the artistic vision that would culminate in her masterpiece.

Jeanne Moreau stars as the titular bride, who after marrying her love sees him murdered on the steps outside the church. From here she enacts her ruthless revenge on the group of men responsible. Undoubtedly an influence on Kill Bill, François Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black was itself influenced by the master of suspense. Adapting celebrated crime writer Cornell Woolrich (here credited as William Irish and who was also the author of the short story Hitchcock’s Rear Window is based on) Truffaut’s film is a deliciously entertaining tale that was one of the director’s biggest hits. Alongside Moreau, the film boasts a sensational cast, including Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Claude Brialy, Charles Denner and Michel Bouquet among others, and features a score by the maestro, Bernard Herrmann.

A happily engaged couple is put to the test when an unexpected turn sends their wedding week off the rails.

This film contains flickering or flashing lights that may affect those with photosensitive epilepsy.

The Grand Budapest Hotel was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema members Jemima Hoadley and Felicity Taylor.

Wes Anderson brings his dry wit and visual inventiveness to this exquisite caper set amid the old-world splendour of Europe between the world wars. At the opulent Grand Budapest Hotel, the concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) and his young protégé Zero (Tony Revolori) forge a steadfast bond as they are swept up in a scheme involving the theft of a priceless Renaissance painting and the battle for an enormous family fortune - while around them, political upheaval consumes the continent. Meticulously designed, The Grand Budapest Hotel is a breathless picaresque and a poignant paean to friendship and the grandeur of a vanished world, performed with panache by an all-star ensemble that includes F. Murray Abraham, Adrien Brody, Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Jeff Goldblum, Mathieu Amalric, Tilda Swinton, and Bill Murray.

This screening will finish at 20:20.

Remastered and finally back on the big screen.

Fresh from the success of the first two A Better Tomorrow films, in 1989 action maestro John Woo would unleash The Killer, a spectacular blend of explosive gunfights and dramatic performances, including the magnetic Chow Yun-Fat in one of his most memorable roles.

Ah Chong (Chow Yun-Fat) is a hitman whose latest job takes a wrong turn when, during a shootout at a lavish nightclub, he accidentally blinds singer Jennie by firing his gun too close to her eyes. Racked with remorse, Ah Chong decides to retire from his life of crime and help Jennie get a cornea transplant. But when Ah Chong's rancorous former boss betrays him, Ah Chong receives an unexpected helping hand from hot-headed police detective Lee Ying (Danny Lee, City on Fire).

Anna, an artist, and Magnús, a fisherman, live with their three children and charismatic sheepdog in the quiet grandeur of the Icelandic countryside.

As the fractures in their marriage come to the surface, the couple try to hold onto the afterimages of a life together and make sense of a deep and lingering devotion. Filmmaker Hlynur Pálmason (Godland) brings surprising humor and emotional weight to this gorgeous, intimate, and brilliantly expansive scenes from a marriage, amidst the majestic backdrop of the changing seasons.

The Garden Cinema View:

Hlynur Pálmason follows up his vast and elemental Godland with… a charming slice-of-life comedy drama about family life in the countryside. Well, The Love that Remains may be relatively gentle, but it is still set against a remarkable backdrop of glaciers, volcanos, and the Atlantic ocean, and scenes set on a fishing vessel revel in the contrast between grinding machinery and the occasional aquatic visitor.

Structurally unusual, the film is a collection of semi-contained episodes, across a year. While some dramatic tensions are left unresolved, and frequent slips into fantasy and dreams lead to further questions, this is a unique and lovely snapshot of a modern family.  

Louis Malle’s second film The Lovers, made in the same year as Lift to the Scaffold, is a fitting companion piece to his feature debut and a landmark of modern French cinema and screen eroticism. It was the Special Jury Prize at Venice in 1958.

Once again, the enigmatic Jeanne Moreau is the star of Malle’s illicit drama. She plays Jeanne Tournier, whose relationship to her husband (Alain Cuny) has long lost its spark. Having taken on a lover (José Luis de Vilallonga), she soon finds his antics dull. So Jeanne is surprised by her reaction to the younger Bernard (Jean-Marc Bory), a stranger she accepts a lift from. But how will she navigate her way through this new complexity in her life?

A huge success in France when it was released, the film was also regarded as racy for its time and faced accusations of obscenity. Today, its genuine passion is still remarkable.

The Marriage of Maria Braun was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Alex Titcombe.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's penultimate film of the seventies was also his most successful. Popular with audiences and critics alike, among them Roger Ebert and François Truffaut, The Marriage of Maria Braun finally provided its director with the international breakthrough he had craved for so long.

Maria Braun marries a young soldier amid the Allied bombing raids of World World II the day before he must return to the Russian front. Awaiting his return in 1945, she is informed of his death and must endure and navigate the post-war years alone. Mirroring the German Wirtschaftswunder ('economic miracle'), she determinedly rises to prosperity as a self-made woman.

This screening will finish at 15:30.

The screening on Thursday May 14 will be introduced by strand curator Erifili Missiou. It will feature English subtitles.

Synopsis:

Fleeing political turmoil in Greece, Ilias (Aris Retsos) travels to Paris and seeks out Gerasimos (Hristos Tsagas), a homesick relative working there as a furrier. Ilias carries with him the photograph of a singer whom he presents as his sister, thus causing a series of misunderstandings that leads each man into a tangled web of deception and delusion that lays bare their complex relationships of a Greek of the Diaspora.

Curator's note:

Drawing from his difficult childhood in Ethiopia where he faced discrimination due to his mixed-race heritage, The Photograph (1986) is Papatakis’ most personal and sensitive film. It also reflects his lifelong experience of dislocation - from Ethiopia to Greece, Greece to France, France to the United States, and back again. Uncharacteristically naturalistic in style, it highlights the hardships and humiliation of migration, ostracization, and illiteracy. For Papatakis, economic migration meant being severed from one's culture and condemned to a perpetual, often futile struggle to integrate.

The Criterion Collection:

Nico Papatakis brilliantly dissects the soul of modern Greece in this darkly comic, cuttingly perceptive exile’s tale.

The Princess Bride was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Tamsin Clements.

A high-spirited adventure that pits true love against inconceivable odds, The Princess Bride has charmed legions of fans with its irreverent gags, eccentric ensemble, and dazzling swordplay. A kid (Fred Savage), home sick from school, grudgingly allows his grandfather (Peter Falk) to read him a dusty storybook - which is how we meet the innocent Buttercup (Robin Wright, in her breakout role), about to marry the nefarious Prince Humperdinck (Chris Sarandon) though her heart belongs to Westley (Cary Elwes). The wedding plans are interrupted, however, by a mysterious pirate, a vengeful Spaniard, and a good-natured giant, in a tale full of swashbuckling, romance, and outrageously hilarious spoofery. Directed by Rob Reiner from an endlessly quotable script by William Goldman, The Princess Bride reigns as a fairy-tale classic.

This screening will be Pay What You Can, and finish at 12:48.

From acclaimed director Kleber Mendonça Filho, The Secret Agent is a gripping, mischievous political thriller that entertains as much as it provokes. Wagner Moura stars in a Best Actor–winning performance as Marcelo, a father on the run from a mysterious past amid the vibrant cultural landscape of 1970s Brazil. Arriving in Recife during Carnival, he is swept into a dizzying world of colour, commotion, and secrets. A global awards contender – The Secret Agent heralds a bold new chapter in Brazilian cinema.

Nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor Oscars.

Winner of Best Director and Best Actor at Cannes.

Winner Best Non-English Language Film and Lead Actor in a Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes.

The Garden Cinema View:

From its airlessly tense opening sequence, through the wonderfully detailed evocation of 1977 Recife, to a thoughtful coda, The Secret Agent is a superb addition to Kleber Mendonça Filho’s impressive filmography. Returning to his explorations of community and resistance as seen in Neighbouring Sounds, Aquarius, and Bacurau, The Secret Agent expands the canvas and scope of his political cinema. This tapestry of period touches, political resolve, and escalating peril is held together by the resolute but gentle performance from Wagner Moura. This is also a commercial and critical breakthrough of sorts for Mendonça Filho: now garlanded with Best Picture and Actor Oscar nominations, following a standout reception at Cannes.

Mendonça Filho’s influences range from Cinema Novo, 70s horror and paranoid thrillers, and John Carpenter. It shouldn’t then be a shock to find the occasional flourish of surreal imagery and pulp violence (certainly not for fans of Bacurau). There’s even room for a continuation of Mendonça Filho’s love letter to the (vanishing) arthouse cinemas of Recife, as seen in his documentary Pictures of Ghosts. This is a tremendously entertaining and engaging film about a dark period of Brazilian history, but urgently relevant for current times.  

The screening on 22 March will be introduced by Maurizio Marinelli (UCL).

The World is Jia Zhangke’s fourth feature and his first officially approved, studio-backed film to receive theatrical release, marking a decisive transition from underground status to a new phase of filmmaking, while retaining his distinctive observational style.

Drawing inspiration from the real-life experiences of its lead actress Zhao Tao, who worked as a dancer in Shenzhen’s Window of the World before collaborating with Jia, the film is set in Beijing’s World Park, a theme park featuring miniature replicas of global landmarks, such as Big Ben and Eiffel Tower.

The film follows Tao, a young dancer performing at the World Park, and her boyfriend Taisheng, a security guard at the same site. As they navigate love, work, and uncertainty, their lives unfold in a space where the world appears compressed and accessible, yet remains emotionally distant. Through this fabricated landscape, the film offers a quietly incisive reflection on the impact of urbanization and globalization.

The screenings of The World are presented in partnership with Green Ray.

Soviet Union, 1937, thousands of letters from detainees falsely accused by the regime are burned in a prison cell. Against all odds, one of them reaches its destination, upon the desk of the newly appointed local prosecutor, Alexander Kornyev. Kornyev does his utmost to meet the prisoner, a victim of agents of the secret police, the NKVD. A dedicated Bolshevik of integrity, the young prosecutor suspects foul play. In the age of the great Stalinist purges, this is the plunge of a man into the corridors of a totalitarian regime that does not bear said name.

The Garden Cinema View:

Sergei Loznitsa returns to fiction after a seven year break with this dense but satisfying adaptation of a novella written by Soviet political prisoner Georgy Demidov. This is a film that unfolds in long conversations, usually in confined rooms. A stagey premise that results in a slow burn, but is ultimately an engrossing and intimate watch. Initially, the young prosecutor-protagonist speaks from a point of authority. But as he moves through the inertia of Stalinist bureaucracy, a looming sense of conspiratorial dread slowly builds. There’s a dash of Kafka’s ‘Before the Law’ here – although the film is not necessarily absurdist beyond the surreal nature of the Soviet legal system. And through meetings and dead time, Two Prosecutors gradually builds into a paranoia machine which will have you questioning even the most mundane remarks and procedures.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Foivos Dousos, writer of Uchronia, hosted by Dr Jordan Osserman.

In this docu-essay inspired by Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer, we meet the poet’s ghost embarking on a time-travel adventure. His delirious visions become portals opening onto alternative timelines—or “uchronias.”

Following the poem’s prophetic, time-bending and fragmented logic, Rimbaud creates a collage of revolutionary histories and gains the opportunity to meet radical figures of the past 150 years, such as Emma Goldman, Guy Hocquenghem, David Wojnarowicz and Marsha P. Johnson. Together, they explore the possibility of social change and reflect on the meaning of revolution in times of generalised disillusionment.

In an explosive mix of documentary and experimental film, reconstructed segments from the original text meet contemporary political discourse. Inspired by the rich history of 20th-century experimental queer cinema, the film is a celebration of enfants terribles and dissident freaks across the globe.

Dr Jordan Osserman is a Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex, and a clinical psychoanalyst. His research interests include feminist, queer and critical theory; the Lacanian tradition of psychoanalysis; and the politics of the Left.

A 78-year-old curmudgeonly balloon salesman, is not your average hero. When he ties thousands of balloons to his house and flies away to the wilds of South America, he finally fulfills his lifelong dream of adventure. But after Carl discovers an 8-year-old stowaway named Russell, this unlikely duo soon finds themselves on a hilarious journey in a lost world filled with danger and surprises. Up marries Pixar's breathtaking animation with storytelling so adept, you'll be crying and laughing within the first five minutes.

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 2 Apriil will be introduced by Kiki Yu (Queen Mary).

The second film in Jia Zhangke’s documentary trilogy looking into arts and creative labour in China - alongside the Venice award-winning Dong (2006), about painter Liu Xiaodong, and Swimming Out till the Sea Turns Blue (2020), centred on writers - Useless is a documentary anchored by fashion designer Ma Ke. Through Ma Ke’s practice and philosophy, the film opens onto a broader reflection of China’s fashion and clothing industry.

Moving across three sharply contrasting locations—a garment factory near Guangzhou, an haute couture fashion show in Paris, and a small tailor’s shop in a mining town in Shanxi, the film examines how value is produced, erased, and reassigned in a globalized economy. Using clothing as both material object and social metaphor, Jia reflects on the tensions between mass production and craftsmanship, visibility and invisibility, usefulness and waste.

A beautiful IRA operative Maria (Brigitte Bardot) flees the British authorities and finds herself in Mexico, where she meets a stunning woman also named Maria (Jeanne Moreau), a singer in a traveling circus. The new friends start a vaudeville act - one that grows exponentially more popular after they incorporate striptease into their routine. When the singer Maria falls for a charismatic Mexican rebel, the girls leave the circus behind and recreate themselves as wild-eyed revolutionaries.

The screening on Thursday June 11 will be introduced by strand curator Erifili Missiou. It will feature English subtitles.

Synopsis:

Based on an incident in the life of director Nico Papatakis’s former friend and collaborator Jean Genet, Walking a Tightrope casts Michel Piccoli as Marcel Spadice, whose infatuation with an Arab-German circus worker (Lilah Dadi) leads him to try to turn the young man into the world’s greatest tightrope walker. When Marcel begins to pursue a new object of desire, however, his callousness unleashes tragedy.

Curator's note:

In his magnum opus, Papatakis returns to his enduring concerns - class dynamics, shame and control, the Arab-French conflict - but with a renewed sense of maturity and restraint. This queer melodrama explores the ways in which systemic politics penetrate personal relationships featuring an outstanding Michel Piccoli as Jean Genet, Papatakis' longtime friend.

Often referred to but rarely examined in depth, 'Sixth Generation' filmmaking emerged in the early 1990s and has played a defining role in shaping contemporary Chinese cinema. Associated with directors such as Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, Lou Ye, and Zhang Yuan, these filmmakers worked largely outside the state studio system during a period of profound social and economic changes. Their films form a rich, diverse, and often challenging body of work, remaining deeply influential today.

This panel brings together scholars and curators who work closely with Chinese cinema to examine the Sixth Generation as both a historical moment and a critical category. Topics include, but are not limited to:

 • the generational framework of Chinese cinema and its broader social and cultural contexts;

 • the relationship between the Sixth Generation and the Fifth Generation, as well as intergenerational dynamics within Chinese cinema more broadly;

 • key filmmakers and representative works, with particular attention to how directors have sought to navigate the tensions between state censorship and artistic expression—an effort that has not always met with success;

 • the acceptance, rejection, and contestation of the “Sixth Generation” label among the directors themselves;

 • its ties to Chinese independent cinema and international festival circulation;

 • its influence and legacy in global film culture.

Moderator

Luke Robinson is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the University of Sussex and author of Independent Chinese Documentary: From the Studio to the Street.

Speakers

Chris Berry is Professor of Film Studies at King’s College London, where he teaches and researches cinemas of the Sinosphere. In the 1980s, he worked for China Film Import and Export Corporation in Beijing, and his academic research is grounded in work on Chinese-language cinemas and other Chinese-language screen-based media. He has written widely on the urban realism of the Sixth Generation directors and more specifically on Jia Zhangke as a poet-historian of the everyday experiences of China's transformation.

Sabrina Qiong Yu is Professor of Film and Chinese Studies at Newcastle University, UK. Her research and publications primarily focus on Chinese-language cinema, stardom and fan culture, and film censorship. With support from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the British Film Institute (BFI), she established the Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA) at Newcastle University, where she is responsible for its daily operations. Since 2012, she has actively curated academic events, film festivals, screenings, and exhibitions related to Chinese independent cinema, and is committed to advancing research into it and its global circulation.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was proposed for our 4th Birthday celebrations by Garden Cinema member Elli Hollington.

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor star in this adaptation of Edward Albee's controversial play, directed by Mike Nichols. George (Burton) is a foul-mouthed, drunken university professor married for two decades to the equally foul-mouthed, drunken Martha (Taylor), whose father is the president of George's New England college. When younger married couple Nick (George Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis) are invited round for a nightcap, they witness a marathon of bickering and verbal abuse. The film won five Oscars, including Best Actress in a Leading Role (Taylor) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Dennis) and was nominated for a further eight.

This screening will finish at 20:36.

Get into the chocolate-eating spirit with this iconic and scrumdiddlyumptious version of Roald Dahl's much-loved classic, 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,' starring the magical Gene Wilder.

The story of Charlie Bucket, a little boy with no money and a good heart, who dreams wistfully of being able to buy the candy that other children enjoy. Charlie enters into a magical world when he wins one of five Golden Tickets to visit the mysterious chocolate factory owned by the eccentric Willy Wonka and run by his capable crew of Oompa-Loompas. Once behind the gates, a cast of characters join Charlie and Grandpa Joe on a journey to discover that a kind heart is a far finer possession than a sweet tooth.

Into Film age recommendation: 5+

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 March will be followed by an online Q&A with the lead actor Wang Hongwei (Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures).

A rare chance to be seen with English subtitles, Xiao Shan Going Home is the film that launched Jia Zhangke’s career. Shot on video and running just under an hour, it qualified for entry in the Hong Kong Independent Film and Video Awards, where it won top prize in 1997. It was there that Jia met his long-time producer Chow Keung and cinematographer Nelson Yu Lik-wai, while the cash award went on to fund his first feature, Xiao Wu.

The film establishes the raw, on-the-street aesthetics that would come to define Jia’s early work. It stars Wang Hongwei, who was also the protagonist in Xiao Wu. In Xiao Wu, Wang’s character is stuck in small town China, but in Xiao Shan Going Home, plays a migrant worker stuck in Beijing as he fruitlessly tries everything he can think of to get back to his small hometown in time for the Chinese New Year. The film was pioneering not only in its style, but also in its focus on the daily difficulties of China’s huge internal migrant population. Seen today, Xiao Shan Going Home already tackles many of the thematic and formal concerns that would define Jia Zhangke’s works for decades to come.