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.

The Fashion Film Club presents this screening of A Bigger Splash, followed by a discussion with arts writer Dominic Lutyens. 

Director Jack Hazan and editor David Mingay (Rude Boy) had access to David Hockney and his circle from 1970 to 1973, a critical period for the internationally-acclaimed artist following the break-up of his relationship with Peter Schlesinger. As much an intimate study of love gone wrong as a portrait of an artist at work. A Bigger Splash chronicles the emotional ripples that separation casts on their coterie. With appearances by such art scene icons (and subjects of Hockney's work) as Celia Birtwell, Ossie Clark, Henry Geldzahler and Patrick Proctor, this ground-breaking film is presented here in a newly remastered version..

Dominic Lutyens is a freelance arts writer. He is the co-author with Kirsty Hislop of the book, 70s Style & Design. He also wrote Celia Birtwell the textile designer’s biography, with her. His latest book Perriand, a monograph on architect and designer Charlotte Perriand, was published last year.  

Two free-diving athletes, Hua-Yang Huang and Afa Zhang, push their bodies to the limit in this captivating documentary from Taiwan. Competing to break records and win contests, the friendly rivals dive to astonishing depths whilst holding their breath, often at significant risk to their health, as they experience blackouts, bleeding, and barotrauma. Yet while this takes a heavy psychological toll, the successful dives bring a sense of elated triumph and almost spiritual serenity. Director Holo Wang explores the pair’s determination and endurance, as well as dancer Afa’s stunning transformation into a mermaid, journeying from a Taipei Pride float to the 2023 China Mermaid Open Championship. The mesmerising underwater cinematography captures the beauty of the divers’ exertions as they lose themselves in the tranquil, mysterious depths.

As part of Queer East 2026, a cross-disciplinary festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities.

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.

To be loved, we tell lies to make ourselves more appealing; to be accepted, we sculpt ourselves into shapes that others recognise. On stage, performance becomes a refuge to rehearse the self we ache to inhabit. From drag to forbidden kisses, funeral rites to genderbending opera, roles are imposed, stolen, resisted—until they breathe through us. Between stage and life, secrecy and exposure, fiction and documentary, what begins as acting slowly becomes being.

Curatorial idea by Shimeng Wang, as part of Up Next: Future Film Curators Lab 2025/26

Butterfly Lovers

Two spirits reimagine the ancient legend of the Butterfly Lovers.

dir. Lei Jiang | China, UK | 2025 | 4min

The Red Kiss

Two teenage girls develop a deep intimacy while rehearsing for their school play.

dir. Steve Li & Amy Chan | Hong Kong | 2025 | 24min

Chengdu Rainbow

A group of queer friends gather to rebuild a LGBTQ+ organisation.

dir. River Lee | China | 2024 | 24min

The Wind in Ash

A tomboy returns to their hometown for a funeral, sparking a journey of self-discovery.

dir. Sun Kun | China | 2025 | 18min

Sotong

Four Malaysian drag queens revisit the fallout of a police raid.

dir. Zinc Chew | Malaysia | 2024 | 25min

Someone special

Lisa lies about speaking fluent Vietnamese to impress her date.

dir. Alice Gervat | France | 2024 | 8min

Content notes: contains scenes of violence and references to suicide.

As part of Queer East 2026, a cross-disciplinary festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities.

Our screening on Friday 17 April will be introduced by Garden Cinema Team Member (and resident Otaku) Abdel Belabbes.

Iconic and game-changing, and now digitally remastered, Akira is the definitive anime masterpiece. Katsuhiro Otomo's landmark cyberpunk classic obliterated the boundaries of Japanese animation and forced the world to look into the future. Akira's arrival shattered traditional thinking, creating space for future generations of ground-breaking movies.

All screenings will be in Japanese with English subtitles.

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.

The screening on 15 June will be followed by a Q&A with co-director Rodrigo Vazquez-Salessi.

"Identidad is a deeply personal and urgent exploration of Argentina’s dark past - a past that continues to shape the lives of those searching for the truth. At its core, this film is about memory, justice, and the resilience of identity."

Stolen at birth during Argentina’s dictatorship, a 46-year-old man finally finds his biological family. The doubts Daniel Santucho Navajas had about his identity were finally exposed when the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, who store the genetic information of victims of the military dictatorship in Argentina, found a DNA match for him in July 2023. Reconnecting with his biological family, Daniel uncovers the truth of what happened to him. He learns he was born in a detention centre and covertly adopted while his mother remains one of the thousands of disappeared people. Through his search for the truth, he discovers a widespread programme of illegal adoption and crimes committed during the military dictatorship from 1976-1983.

"Identity" is a documentary film by Daniel's sister Florencia Santucho and Rodrigo Vazquez-Salessi. This film is Florencia Santucho's directorial debut, while Rodrigo Vázquez-Salessi is an award-winning filmmaker and war correspondent who honed his craft in Argentina before moving to the UK in 1995 to study at the National Film & TV School.

The film is produced by Bethnal Films.

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.

Amélie contains a sequence of flashing lights, which might affect viewers with photosensitive epilepsy.

To celebrate the launch of our new season of Argentine cinema, members are invited to experience the country's musical heritage on Friday 8 May.

Join us in the Atrium Bar from 19:00, where singer, songwriter, and guitarist Corina Piatti, who is originally from Argentina, will perform a selection of Argentinian tango and original compositions.

At 20:00 we'll head into the screen for an introduction to the season by its curator, Abla Kandalaft, which will be followed by Relatos salvajes (Wild Tales). Co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar, this delightfully deranged anthology film is an exhilarating thrill-ride which you’re never going to forget.

Tickets for the event are £15 each, and restricted to 2 per member, meaning you can bring an amigo or amiga along for the occasion.

About the film:

Inequality, injustice, and the demands of the world we live in cause stress and depression for many people. Most face them on bended knee - but some of them explode. This is a film about those people. Comprising six stories of apocalyptic revenge, Wild Tales is a blackly comic series of vignettes on what it means to lose control. A critical and commercial hit, the film is also a clever social satire that skewers the frustration caused by corruption and class disparity.

About Corina Piatti:

Corina Piatti is a singer, songwriter and guitarist, originally from Argentina, whose songs have a strong folk blues sound with a South American flavour. Corina sings in Spanish, Portuguese and English, reflecting the different cultures from which she has taken her musical inspirations. Brazilian bossa-novas and sambas, and particularly music by Jobim, are some of her specialties, and when she sings tangos in her native Spanish, you cannot help but admire the authenticity. Corina’s own songs and guitar accompaniment are refreshingly unique in character. Her lyrics, often surrealistic, are delivered with a soulful vocal style that communicates feelings of both calm and excitement at the same time.

Website | Instagram

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, on Saturday 18 April, for a baijiu tasting, paired with traditional Chinese pastries and snacks. The celebrated filmmaker comes from Fenyang, which is also the hometown of Fenjiu baijiu – a spirit which frequently appears in his films.

During the tasting event, the team from Cheng International will take us through the history of this spirit and its place in Chinese culture, and we'll be trying 8 different baijiu varieties. Each of them will have a carefully selected food pairing; you'll enjoy some of the baijius with lighter and more delicate aromas accompanied by the sweet pastries from the famed Daoxiangcun, Beijing's oldest traditional pastry shop (think red bean paste, pineapple, and many other flavours), while the ones with a stronger and more robust aroma will be paired with a variety savoury and spicy Chinese snacks.

To provide inspiration for how else you can enjoy baijiu, the team will also be mixing up two different cocktail varieties for you to taste.

After the tasting, there will be the chance to do some pop-up shopping, in case you'd like to purchase a bottle 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.

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.

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.

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

A special season celebrating the 70th anniversary of London Film School (LFS), the UK’s oldest film school and a vital force in independent filmmaking since its founding.

Cannes is arguably the most famous and prestigious film festival in the world. London Film School is proud that many of our alumni have had their features selected for competition there. In this programme we are showing short films, produced by our students, whilst still at the school, which were also selected for competition at Cannes, and in some cases won prizes there.

Glorious Revolution

UK/Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian

Festivals: Cannes 2022; Camerimage 2021

Director Mariia Novikova

In 2014, at the height of the Ukrainian revolution, a mother loses her son who is killed while protesting in Independence Square. Her attempt to bury him as a hero clashes with a corrupt bureaucratic system, in this bleakly moving comedy. Never more relevant today.

Praeis (It’ll Pass)

UK/ Lithuania, Lithuanian

Festivals: Cannes 2024

Director Dovydas Draksas

The daughter of a cigarette smuggler thinks again about her father, as she works for him, questions the childhood myth she built around him and comes to know him anew.

Leidi

UK/Colombia – Spanish

Festivals: Cannes 2014

Director Simon Mesa Soto

Leidi lives with her mother and her baby. Her boyfriend, Alexis, hasn’t shown up in days. One sunny morning, after bathing her baby, Leidi is sent to buy plantains. Outside, a guy tells her that he has seen Alexis with another girl. Leidi won’t come home until she finds the father of her child.

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.

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.

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.

The screening on 1 June will be followed by a Zoom Q&A with director Juan José Campanella.

A retired legal counselor Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darìn) writes a novel about an old case 25 years after the fact - an unresolved homicide/rape which occurred in 1974 and still haunts him decades later.  

This highly polished and tense thriller is both an engrossing murder mystery and an examination of historical memory. The film revisits the corruption and chaos of the period that ushered in the dictatorship and its fallout, as well as the way in which we process and remember things. Set between 1975 and 1999, it spans from the Perón years through the transition into the military dictatorship to turn of the century Argentina, linking the personal trauma of the characters with the wider political trauma of the country.

The film, which won the Oscar for best foreign feature and proved a commercial hit, was also notable for Félix Monti’s dramatic cinematography, especially a famous five-minute sweeping sequence, seamlessly made to look like a single-shot over a football stadium.

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.    

Winner of the Golden Lion Best Film prize at the 2025 Venice Film Festival, Father Mother Sister Brother is the eagerly-awaited new film from Jim Jarmusch. Funny, tender and astutely observed, this is an intimate exploration of the universal intricacies of family dynamics. Starring Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat.

Told in the form of a triptych divided into chapters set in New Jersey, Dublin, and Paris, each story concerns the relationships between adult children, their somewhat distant parent (or parents), and each other. Blending remarkable performances from its ensemble cast with Jarmusch’s wry and idiosyncratic observations of everyday life, the iconic indie director’s latest serves as a timely reminder that you can choose your friends and your lovers, but you can’t choose your family.

The Garden Cinema View:

Jim Jarmusch’s return to the triptych-structures of his early work earned him a surprise Golden Lion last year. Arguably the most low-key winner of Venice’s top prize since Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere in 2010, Father Mother Sister Brother is a film that works according to its own (slow-paced) rhythms, and gentle absurdism – ever more mellow as Jarmusch himself matures. These three family meetups, full of unspoken history, stilted attempts at connection, and mild passive aggressiveness, recalls something of Yasujiro Ozu’s family dramas. But the pointed repetition of peculiar moments and abstracted lines of dialogue is imbued with a strange humour which is typical of Jarmusch. There is something in that particular insistence on the nature of words which is like modernist poetry. And perhaps the three settings: rural New Jersey, Dublin, and Paris, also attest to this artistic lineage.  

Join GP Surgery and Never Watching Movies in The Atrium Bar for a special screening exploring Black experiences of finding self-confidence, joy and how fashion links to affirming identity.

Our main film of the evening, shown digitally courtesy of Tape Collective, is African-American Director Ayoka "Ayo" Chenzira’s 1994 film “Alma’s Rainbow”, A coming-of-age comedy-drama about three African American women living in Brooklyn. The film explores the life of teenager Rainbow Gold (Victoria Gabrielle Platt) as she enters womanhood and navigates standards of beauty, self-image, and the rights women have over their bodies.

We will also be screening a rarely seen short experimental film “A Look to Kill” (1997) Directed by Obinna Nwosu on a 16mm film print courtesy of the LUX Moving Image Archive and joined by Film Projectionist John Wilders. This short 90’s comedy follows a fashionable man waiting at a south London bus stop for the arrival of his current romantic interest. His style goes hand in hand with his attitude that he has a “look to kill”. The film highlights music, dynamic colour,  and the role fashion plays in identity and confidence.

About the curators:

GP Surgery is a film collective founded by Jaison Washington (he/they) who is an independent film curator, archivist at LUX Moving Image, researcher, and filmmaker based in London. GP Surgery specialises in Experimental Film and Artist Moving Image as a means of catharsis, healing, and challenging our audience.

NWM presents screenings and events sharing diaspora, community and culturally significant movies. Founded by Zain Gibson

Content Warnings:

Please note that whilst The Garden Cinema is wheelchair accessible, the cinema can only accommodate one wheelchair user in the Atrium.

Please visit The Garden Cinema’s accessibility page for more information about how to book this.

A special season celebrating the 70th anniversary of London Film School (LFS), the UK’s oldest film school and a vital force in independent filmmaking since its founding.

London Film School’s third programme features short films focused on childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Directors from around the world explore common themes in culturally specific ways from the Middle East and Israel to London, Serbia and India. All these short films are festival favourites and award winners from the last twelve years of the school’s archive.

Children of God

UK/Iraq Arabic 2013

Director Ahmed Yassin

A young disabled amputee, with a passion for football, bets his valuable football cards in the hope that he can catch the attention of the girl he loves.

Summer Shade  

UK/Israel Hebrew 2019

Festivals: Munich 2021; BSC Short film winner 2020; London Film Festival

Director Shira Haimovichi

On a hot Summer’s day, a mischievous teenager, Gal, takes a dip in her favourite nearby pool and unexpectedly encounters a group of Hasidic boys.

Rickshaw

UK English 2022  

Festivals: Nahemi Eat our Shorts (Best Film and Best Cinematography) 2023

Director Raphael Hernandez

Paul is celebrating his eighth birthday with a night out with his parents. They've taken him to the theatre, and for a special treat, Paul begs to take a ride on a rickshaw instead of taking a cab home. Reluctantly, his parents agree.  A rather disturbing, and magical, journey ensues.

Señor  

UK/Serbia Serbian 2019  

Director Masa Clark  

Eleven-year-old Dunya lives with her parents in a small town in the North of Serbia. When Dunya decides to accompany her father on his wine delivery route, an unexpected encounter with her father’s old love confronts her with the mystery of who her father really is - and more perilously - who he used to be.

Mast Qalandar  

UK/India Punjabi and Hindi 2015  

Festivals: Manchester Film Festival 2016 (Best Student Film and Rising Star Award_

Director Divij Roopchand  

Montek is a Sikh boy about to turn thirteen.  A rap-loving teenager, all he wants for his birthday is a new haircut.  He spends the day hunting down a pair of scissors.

Three Centimetres

UK/Lebanon Arabic  2019  

Festivals: Berlinale 2018 (best short film, Iris Prize winner)

Director Lara Zeidan  

A moment of floating. Living at standstill. Four girlfriends sit chatting in the gondola of a Ferris wheel looking out at the Mediterranean sea on the Lebanese coast. Framed in a single shot as the wheel starts and stops, their conversation takes on life-changing resonance when one of them loses her patience and steps out of her shell.

The latest offering of the Greek Salad is a preview screening of the exquisite Hen, filmed and produced in Greece and starring all Greek actors.

Told entirely from the perspective of its avian protagonist, Hen follows a chicken who escapes an industrial farm only to find herself navigating the pecking order of a crumbling seaside restaurant in Greece.

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.

Select Japan and Kabuki Club present a special preview of Lee Sang-il's Kokuho.

Hosted by actor and theatre-maker Suleiman Suleiman, this Kabuki salon invites audiences into the world of Kabuki through a short performative introduction, setting the scene for the film and offering a poetic lens through which to experience its themes and aesthetic.

Guests will receive a complimentary glass of sake and enter a carefully curated atmosphere inspired by Japanese theatre before settling in for the screening.

Following the film, audiences are invited to stay on for an informal drink and conversation in the bar.

About the film:

After the death of his father, the leader of a yakuza gang, fourteen-year-old Kikuo is taken in by a renowned Kabuki actor and introduced to the demanding world of traditional theatre. Growing up alongside Shunsuke, the actor’s only son, the two boys devote their lives to the stage - training, performing, and competing as their bond shifts between brotherhood and rivalry.

Spanning decades of ambition, scandals, loyalty, and betrayal, Kokuho traces the extraordinary journey of two performers chasing greatness, as one rises to become a legendary master of Kabuki. The highest-grossing live-action film of all time in Japan and an Academy Award nominee, the film is an epic portrait of artistry, sacrifice, and the relentless pursuit of perfection.

Event timings:

15:30-16:00  Sake in the Atrium Bar

16:00-16:20  Introduction

16:20-19:15  Screening of Kokuho

Tickets for this event are £17 for members and £20 for non-members. All tickets include a glass of sake, or non-alcoholic alternative.

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. In 1969 the film critic Pauline Kael described it 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.

The screening on 18 May will be introduced by Professor of Latin American Film Deborah Martin.

This Argentinean tale, which revolves around a group of families passing summer vacation in a rural country house, does not rely on a concrete plot line, but rather roves, rambles, and stumbles upon each new event. No event, no action, no exchange of words, no scene of the movie is more or less important than another. Instead, the film continues nonsequentially in what feels like a prolonged wait.

Critically acclaimed and voted the greatest Argentine film in a 2022 poll, Lucrecia Martel's moody and atmospheric debut is an acerbic look at the decadence of the bourgeoise, class, gender and the place of the indegenous community in modern day Argentina.

The screening on 16 May will be preceded by an introduction by curator and writer Adam Feinstein.

Set in Buenos Aires in the immediate aftermath of The Dirty War, The Official Story tells the story of high school teacher Alicia, played by a real-life exile from the military, Norma Aleandro, who comes to suspect that her adopted child might be the child of disappeared parents.

Living a comfortable life with her husband, a wealthy businessman with ties to the military, Alicia is able to largely ignore the growing protests of families of the thousands of people who were abducted or killed by the government.

But as she starts talking to people around her, Alicia becomes all to aware of the possibility that her daughter had been forcibly taken at birth. The Official Story traces Alicia's journey from ignorant bystander to unwitting participant in the regime's kidnapping of thousands of babies.

This is a taut thriller and compelling drama that deservedly won a spate of awards, including the Oscar for best foreign film.

The screening on 6 June will be followed by a Q&A with director Carlos Sorín.

Influenced by travel accounts of his time, Frenchman Orélie Antoine de Tounens set off for southern Argentina around 1860. Once there, he had himself proclaimed king of Araucania and Patagonia, which led to his expulsion from the country by the Argentinian government. More than one hundred years later, obsessive filmmaker David Vas attempts to make an epic film about de Tounens, meeting obstacles at every turn, involving striking actors, the police, and financial collapse.

Carlos Sorín's film within a film is a surreal and absurd tale of a unyielding director in the face of exceptional circumstancial adversity.

Outlandish with laugh out loud moments, La película del rey reflects on the cyclical and chaotic nature of history, with the film's doomed and frantic production mirroring the failures of the wider economic landscape.

The film won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1986.

The screening on Thursday April 16 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.

A special season celebrating the 70th anniversary of London Film School (LFS), the UK’s oldest film school and a vital force in independent filmmaking since its founding.

Love is a common theme for many filmmakers including graduating students from London Film School. This selection of short films from Serbia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Argentina explore love in its many forms, from young passion to filial duty and into old age. All these short films are festival favourites and award winners from the last twelve years of the school’s archive.

Your Guardian

UK/ Serbia, Serbian 2021

Festivals: Watersprite Film Festival 2023  

Director -Mirjana Vlaovic  

The start of the Yugoslav civil war forces newly graduated Mina to choose between her role as an obedient daughter and the possibility of escaping abroad with her lover so that he can avoid conscription.

The Translator

UK/ Turkey,  Turkish/Kurdish  2014  

Festivals: Nominated for European Film Award 2015

Director Emre Kayis  

Yusuf, 13, a refugee living in a Turkish border town with his grandparents, spends his days in complete alienation. The only things which excite him are the tumbling pigeons and the existence of 15-year old Amina, who is oblivious to him. One day she asks for a favour, and forces Yusuf into a difficult decision.

Sol De Agosto  

Argentina , Spanish 2018

Festivals: Palm Springs 2018

Director Franco Volpi  

Javier has come back to his hometown of Buenos Aires, only to find himself torn between the needs of his mentally ill mother, and the life he's built in Europe.

The Chairs  

UK/Azerbaijan, Azeri 2018  

Festivals: Palm Springs 2019; Prague Shorts 2019

Director Orkhan Aghazadeh

Kerim and Rena were in love, but had to marry other partners. Despite the passage of time, their love is still prohibited. They see each other every week on a hill where the villagers go to use their mobile phones, but they cannot express their feelings. They can only express their love secretly, through lights flashing across the dark of night.

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.

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.

Our regular Members' Scratch Night returns on Friday 1 May to help more of the creatives in our membership community develop their WIP projects. This is an opportunity to test out material - be it unfinished films, scripts, pieces of writing, or other art forms - in front of a supportive audience, who will be able to provide you with their thoughts and feedback in a casual setting. The event will take place in the Atrium Bar, and will be hosted by fellow cinema member Roberto Prestia.

We'll have six 15-minute slots available for members to present their material (with microphones and a projector available to use, if needed), and additional tickets for audience members who are interested in discovering new work by fellow members, and in contributing to their creative process.

Tickets for the event are £5, and include a token for a complimentary glass of house wine, a beer, or a soft drink at the bar. They are restricted to 2 per member, so you're welcome to bring along a curious +1.

Please ensure you select the right option when booking a ticket:

• If you're looking to present a project, please purchase a Presenter ticket. There are just 6 of these available, so if the option doens't appear, they are unfortunately sold out. Feel free to send an email to membership@thegardencinema.co.uk to let us know you're interested in presenting, so we can contact you if a spot does become available.
• If you'd just like to watch the presentations and provide feedback, please purchase an Audience ticket.

The schedule on the night will be as follows:

19:00-20:00  Introduction and first three presentations of 15 minutes each

20:00-20:30  Break for drinks, providing feedback, and mingling

20:30-21:15  Additional three presentations of 15 minutes each

21:15-22:00  Drinks, providing feedback, and further mingling

About Roberto:

Roberto Prestia is a London based independent filmmaker. In his quest for DIY filmmaking and creative freedom, he has made constant use of scratch nights and workshops with fellow creatives, as a tool for developing his early shorts as well as his second feature film, which is currently in the making.

The screening on 14 May will be followed by a Q&A with director Rodrigo H. Vila.

Almost fifty years ago, Mercedes Sosa drafted together with other young artists, the so-called Manifesto del Nuevo Cancionero (The New songbook Manifesto), which anchored popular songs and music in indegenous folkore and social movements.

Apart from the millions of records she sold, the thousands of concerts she made all over the world, her countless fans and detractors, Sosa left behind an indelible legacy. This film is a deep intimate journey into her world, not only as an artist but as human being. An autobiography through her own voice, with never seen before archive and several international artists giving their testimony about Sosa’s life.

Sosa has reached legend status in Argentina. Some of her most famous recordings, including 'Gracias a la vida' (originally composed by Chilean poet Violeta Parra) became torch songs for the leftist movements that struggled against fierce repression during the seventies and eighties. Blacklisted and exiled by the military dictatorship, the country declared three days of mourning when she died in 2009.

The film premiered at IDFA and this is a rare chance to catch it in the UK.

On a weekend trip to the countryside, Laura, a piano student from Berlin, miraculously survives an accident. Physically unhurt but deeply shaken, she is taken in by a local woman who witnessed the accident and now cares for Laura with motherly devotion. When her husband and adult son also give up their initial resistance to Laura's presence, the four of them slowly build up some family-like routine and spend some days of happiness together. But soon they can no longer ignore their past, and Laura has to come to terms with her own life.

The Garden Cinema View:

Christian Petzold returns with this small delight. This latest is partly a Rohmerian visit to the countryside, but with elements of a Bergman identity-slip chamber piece, and even Hitchcockian psychodrama. Working as usual with cinematographer Hand Fromm, Miroirs No. 3 is shot in Petzold’s typically light and unfussy style. This lends the drama, even as it turns mysterious and slightly sinister, a deftness of touch matched by the performance of Paula Beer. This is Beer’s fourth lead role for Petzold, and one that confirms them as one of the best actor-director collaborations in contemporary European cinema.  

Cinema Mentiré brings to The Garden Cinema the new restorations of Nobody's Wife (1982) and Miss Mary (1986) by trailblazing feminist Argentinian filmmaker María Luisa Bemberg (1922-1995). Bemberg had a gift for telling meaningful stories, focusing on the lives and struggles of women while painting a picture of Argentina's political context. Her vision has been a significant contribution to Argentinian identity and cinema, and it is relevant to remember her on the 50th anniversary of the last dictatorship. The double bill is part of the UK-wide retrospective Daring to Dare: The Films of María Luisa Bemberg, celebrating her legacy on the 30th anniversary of her passing in 2025.

A moody and perceptive period piece, Miss Mary tells the story of a family that symbolises the oligarchy that ruled Argentina as if it were their personal ranch. Its members are oblivious to the rumours of a changing world and dream a dream from which they will abruptly awake with the rise of Juan Domingo Perón to power. These events, which took place between 1938 and 1945, are recalled by the English governess Miss Mary, played by a captivating Julie Christie. The film is a lively and committed document that shows the repression of feelings as a reflection of a rigid and patriarchal society, as well as a hypocritical and authoritarian family context where social conventions matter more than love.

The film will be preceded by an introduction by the Cinema Mentiré team. 

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.

My Dinner with Andre was suggested by our member Chrysi, and sparked several enthusiastic responses on our Members' Area.

In this captivating and philosophical film directed by Louis Malle (several of whose films also feature in our Jeanne Moreau retrospective), actor and playwright Wallace Shawn sits down with his friend the theater director André Gregory at a restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side, and the pair proceed through an alternately whimsical and despairing confessional about love, death, money, and all the superstition in between. Playing variations on their own New York–honed personas, Shawn and Gregory, who also cowrote the screenplay, dive in with introspective intellectual gusto, and Malle captures it all with a delicate, artful detachment. A fascinating freeze-frame of cosmopolitan culture, My Dinner with Andre remains a unique work in cinema history.

Please note, the screening on Monday 6 April is our free members' screening, and booking for this will open on Thursday 2 April at 18:00. The one on Tuesday 14 April is a regular screening, which is open to the general public.

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.  

Juan and Marcos are two small-time swindlers, one a young man and the other a veteran, who happen to get involved in an affair that could make them millionaires: they have less than a day to pull off a scam that can’t fail.

Restored and released in 2025, the multi-award winning heist satire stars the ubiquetous Ricardo Darín, this time playing experienced con artist Marcos who recruits the novice Juan to embark on a more complex scam: selling a replica set of rare but forged German stamps.

The plan starts to unravel and the many twists and turns leave us guessing until the very last minute.

The film, originally released in 2000, garned much critical acclaim for its tight script and humour and its allegorical indictment of endemic corruption, reflecting the fallout of the economic crisis of the time.

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.

A special season celebrating the 70th anniversary of London Film School (LFS), the UK’s oldest film school and a vital force in independent filmmaking since its founding.

Cannes is the most prestigious film festival in the world. London Film School is proud that many of our alumni have had their features selected for competition there. In this programme we are showing short films, produced by our students whilst still at the school, which were also selected for competition at Cannes.

End of Season

UK/ Kazakhstan Russian and Kazakh

Festivals: Cannes 2018

Director Zhannat Alshanova

At the end of summer, Rosa (50) arrives at her husband’s resort – a small hotel in the vast dry steppe - to check on staff and collect the accounts. An unexpected encounter interrupts the routine of her stay and awakens a long-gone passion for swimming.

Talking to the River  

UK/China Chinese  

Festivals: Cannes Director’s Fortnight 2023  

Director Yue Pan

A young Chinese boy lives with his grandparents in a remote river-side village, where he spends his time playing and dreaming. When he learns that his absent mother is expecting a second child, he begins to sleepwalk. Pulled forward by its magnetic young lead actor, the film is a rite of passage that invokes both water and fire.

In The Hills  

UK English  

Festivals: Cannes 2016; Toronto 2016  

Director Hamid Ahmadi

Shahram is a young immigrant, newly arrived in the idyllic countryside of the Cotswolds in England. To integrate into this new society, he chooses to take a rather radical approach!

Based on a story by Jean Genet, the final film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a surreal fever dream of subversive eroticism.

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.

This screening will be followed by an online Q&A with director Li Dongmei, moderated by Victor Fan.

A young couple live in a small apartment in the city. He earns little and she’s pregnant. Through their brief exchanges and moments of solitude, it becomes clear that their relationship has, without either of them realising it, edged towards a crisis point. A tale told through moments of quietude, of waiting and longing, capturing the hardships of modern-day womanhood with an understated empathy.

Re:Mind is a festival bringing some of the most exciting new voices in Asian cinema for the first time to London, with the aim of showcasing film's power to heal. Through its film programme and workshops, Re:Mind promotes mindfulness, community-building, and alternative forms of resistance. Its first edition runs from May 7 to 17 at the Garden Cinema and King's College London.

This screening will be followed by an in-person Q&A with director Kit Hung, moderated by Victor Fan.

The film follows an emotionally harrowing journey endured by young gay photographer Alex after he is diagnosed with peritoneal cancer. Abandoned by his brother and his on-again, off-again lover, Alex is forced to face his mortality and the loss of his sexual identity through sheer resilience. A devastating, but ultimately hopeful story of survival and resolve.

Re:Mind is a festival bringing some of the most exciting new voices in Asian cinema for the first time to London, with the aim of showcasing film's power to heal. Through its film programme and workshops, Re:Mind promotes mindfulness, community-building, and alternative forms of resistance. Its first edition runs from May 7 to 17 at the Garden Cinema and King's College London.

Our 20:00 screening on Friday 17 April will be followed by a Q&A with director Max Walker-Silverman.

After a wildfire destroys his home, divorced father and ranch owner Dusty (Josh O’Connor) must plant new roots. Now living in a close knit trailer community, he quietly reassembles his life, reconnecting with his estranged young daughter and ex-wife (Meghann Fahy).

From filmmaker Max Walker-Silverman and also starring Academy Award winner Amy Madigan, Rebuilding is a heartfelt portrait of resilience and human connection in the wake of loss.

The Garden Cinema View:

Rebuilding hangs heavy with loss – of people, possessions, and, most pointedly, home. Josh O’Connor gives a suitably weathered and beaten performance as a man coming to terms with devastating wildfires which have destroyed his family ranch, and now adjusting to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) temporary trailer accommodation. But Rebuilding is also a film that revels in the natural splendour of Colorado – a majestic land that is increasingly under threat from global heating. Max Walker-Silverman treats this landscape with painterly awe, indulging in the mountains, moonlight, and breaking light of dawn.

There’s a debt here to Chloé Zhao, particularly Nomadland and her masterful The Rider. As with those films Rebuilding retains faith in the strength of community, and our ability to build new found families. A lilting Americana score lends the film a tone that is elegiac and hopeful, reinforcing the idea that nature and people alike require care, but can coexist.

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.

Inequality, injustice and the demands of the world we live in cause stress and depression for many people. Most face them on bended knee - but some of them explode. This is a film about those people. Comprising six stories of apocalyptic revenge, Wild Tales is a blackly comic series of vignettes on what it means to lose control.

By turns shocking, hilarious, violent and preposterous this exhilarating thrill-ride is one that you’re never going to forget. A critical and commercial hit, Wild Tales is also a clever social satire that skewers the frustration caused by corruption and class disparity.

Co-produced by Almodóvar, the delightfully deranged anthology won the 2016 BAFTA for Best Film Not in the English Language.

Wild Tales also won a spate of awards at the Goyas in Spain, the San Sebastián International Film Festival, the Silver Condor Awards, the Havana Film Festival, and others.

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.

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.

Cinema Mentiré brings to The Garden Cinema the new restorations of Nobody's Wife (1982) and Miss Mary (1986) by trailblazing feminist Argentinian filmmaker María Luisa Bemberg (1922-1995). Bemberg had a gift for telling meaningful stories, focusing on the lives and struggles of women while painting a picture of Argentina's political context. Her vision has been a significant contribution to Argentinian identity and cinema, and it is relevant to remember her on the 50th anniversary of the last dictatorship. The double bill is part of the UK-wide retrospective Daring to Dare: The Films of María Luisa Bemberg, celebrating her legacy on the 30th anniversary of her passing in 2025.

Leonor is an upper-middle-class committed housewife whose comfortable life falls apart when she learns of her husband’s infidelity. With more fear than conviction, she sets out on a voyage of self-discovery. It is an act born of integrity, a refusal to live a lie, but as her encounters with family and economic institutions reinforce her social non-existence, it becomes a gesture of active resistance. Made under the military regime, the story of Leonor’s move from a family home and a blind life centred on pleasing others to a desire to create a life outside the system was dangerously challenging to the symbolic order in place. Bemberg struggled for five years to get her script approved by censors, who saw her criticism extending from family to state, and Leonor as an emblem of rupture.

The film will be preceded by an introduction by the Cinema Mentiré team.

A father and his son arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They’re searching for Mar — daughter and sister — who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties. Surrounded by electronic music and a raw, unfamiliar sense of freedom, they hand out her photo again and again. Hope is fading but they push through and follow a group of ravers heading to one last party in the desert. As they venture deeper into the burning wilderness, the journey forces them to confront their own limits.

The Garden Cinema View:

Oliver Laxe takes us into the heart of darkness with this sensory overload of endless desert, towering mountains, and apocalyptic rave culture. Drawing on the likes of Fury Road and Wages of Fear, Sirāt is a spectacular visual and sonic experience, with some astonishing photography set to an ever-pounding techno score. The film is nihilistic almost to the brink of parody, or least until the bleakness reaches a tipping point into black comedy. And, to this point, there is something hollow, and overtly edgy in Laxe’s brashness. A technical (and techno) feat, but to what purpose?

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 film that defined a generation is heading back to the big screen in a brand new restoration by its 40th anniversary.

Four 12-year-olds searching for a missing teenager's body find more than they bargained for. Rob Reiner’s consummate adaptation of Stephen King’s novella is a slow-burning gem. It also introduced the world to the considerable charms of River Phoenix.

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.

This edition of Composing Cinema focuses on Oscar and Grammy-winning composer John Addison. The screening will be introduced by Oscar nominated-composer Gary Yershon, who will discuss Addison's score for Tony Richardson's anti-war epic, The Charge of the Light Brigade.

From director Tony Richardson comes this brilliant retelling of tragic events during the Crimean War between Britain and Russia in the 1850s.

A British cavalry division, led by the overbearing Lord Cardigan (Trevor Howard), engages in an infamously reckless strategic debacle against a Russian artillery battery. An inept chain of command and the arrogance of the aristocratic officers nearly destroys the brigade. Interpersonal wars within the unit, including unfaithful wives and a rivalry between Lord Cardigan and Captain Nolan (David Hemmings), heighten the conflict.

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 Garden Cinema View:

It's difficult to discuss The Drama without addressing the  twist that propels the film in an entirely unpredictable direction - so we'll tread carefully.

Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself, Dream Scenario) is the epitome of a satirist, particularly interested in exploring the gap between what we project and who we actually are. Drawing from our obsessive social media culture of curated perfect lives and flawless coupledom, he excavates the space between reality and performance - and what happens when people confuse their projected image with their actual self.

In this respect, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson are ideal casting: young, gorgeous, sophisticated and genuinely entertaining to watch. The film shrewdly begins like a run-of-the-mill boy-meets-girl encounter in a bookshop, before throwing us in a completely unexpected direction.

What Borgli is emphatically not interested in is people-pleasing. He operates gleefully on the periphery of political correctness with his jokes and sudden observations. This, combined with a twist destined to disturb some whilst satisfying others, makes for a film guaranteed to provoke conversation.

The programming team found ourselves equally entertained and divided by The Drama - we'd love to hear what you think on the Members' Area.

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 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.

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.  

François Ozon has adapted a monumental work of literature – The Stranger by Albert Camus.

In 1930s Algeria, the apathetic Meursault (Benjamin Voisin) shows total indifference to life. His emotional detachment leads to a murder, followed by a trial that scrutinises both the crime and his character.

The Garden Cinema View:

Although Camus’ The Stranger remains a potent and problematic treatise on colonialism, existentialism, and absurdism, it is also a daunting project for adaptation, particularly in France where is stature is so monumental. Ozon’s attempt is both very faithful to the text, whilst adding subtle details to add depth to some of the Algerian characters. Shot in crisp monochrome with period details and fashion, the film looks beautiful. And this being Ozon, there’s a strong current of eroticism. The resulting film has echoes of Netflix’s Ripley, and certainly Meursault and Tom Ripley share a sense of psychotic charisma. This aestheticism imbues the narrative with a sense of distance and apathy. Whilst that might capture Meursault’s mood, it does not allow the viewer much emotional space.

It’s a handsome production, but one that proves that the deeper themes of the novel remain difficult to translate to screen.

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.

Join us for a special afternoon exploring the power of storytelling in shaping our understanding of justice; with a panel discussion followed by a screening of the timeless classic To Kill a Mockingbird.

Hosted in partnership with the Attorney General’s Office Rule of Law team, this event brings together leading voices from law and film for an intimate conversation about how film narratives can influence public perceptions of fairness, truth and the justice system.

The Attorney General, Richard Hermer KC will join fellow contributors in reflecting on the responsibilities of storytellers, the cultural legacy of courtroom dramas, and what canonical films like To Kill a Mockingbird continue to teach us about ethics, empathy and civic values.

Following the discussion, stay for a screening of To Kill a Mockingbird - a defining work of American cinema directed by Robert Mulligan and a touchstone for debates about justice, integrity and the rule of law.

A special season celebrating the 70th anniversary of London Film School (LFS), the UK’s oldest film school and a vital force in independent filmmaking since its founding.

For the last in our season of short films directed by graduates of London Film School we have simply chosen some of our favourites. A holiday in Sardinia, a bungled robbery at a gas station in Ireland, a stone cutting factory in China, a farm in Belgium and horror in a small Greek town are the backdrop to these gripping dramas.

Sparare Alle Angurie  

Italy, Italian 2023

Festivals: RAI Cinema Prize

Director Antonio Donato  

Federico is on holiday with his father and brother in Sardinia. Their father, Aurelio, is a severe and overtly masculine figure who makes Federico anxious and inadequate. When a wealthy German family invites them to dinner, Federico discovers that he may not be so different from his father.

Sucking Diesel

UK/Ireland, English 2021  

Director Sam McGrath  

After a bungled robbery, a petrol station owner must decide whether to protect her idiot employee or turn him into the most dangerous man in Ballybeg.

Poet  

UK/China, Chinese 2023  

Director Kun Sun

Hua, a female labourer living in the dormitory at a stone-cutting factory; adores literature; values her solitude;  and endures an abusive and secret relationship with her supervisor.  

Scorched Earth

UK/Greece, Greek 2022  

Festivals: Locarno Film Festival Official Selection 2023

Director Markela Kontaratou  

It's summer in rural Greece and Stela escapes to the family’s summer house hoping to finish her essay. But her loud and threatening neighbour and his girlfriend keep distracting her. One night Stela thinks she has witnessed a terrible crime…

The Bull

UK/ Belgium , Flemish 2023  

Director Victor Nauwynck  

Cyriel and Marie are a childless farming couple, whose day to day lives are marked by repetitive and laborious chores. When a stud bull is brought into their cowshed, the couple’s life gets thrown into disarray. While Cyriel is determined to manage the mating of their cows, Marie has other ideas.

Often absent from the big screen, queer elders bask in the limelight in these luminous short films that trace their lives on the road, in care homes, and onstage. They retell stories of political upheavals and secret romances, passing down lived histories to the next generation. Honouring those who have endured great hardship and loss, this vibrant programme is a tribute to the elders who continue to love, resist, and grace the silver screen.

Curatorial idea by Xi Liu, as part of Up Next: Future Film Curators Lab 2025/26.

Two Travelling Aunties

A lesbian couple in their late fifties embark on a road trip.

dir. Christine Seow |Singapore, UK | 2025 | 22min

Golden Voice

Forty years after the Cambodian genocide, a trans man returns to his former labour camp.

dir. Mars Verrone | Cambodia, USA | 2023 | 18min

Jasmine that Blooms in Autumn

Amid the stillness of a care home, a hidden love blooms between two women.

dir. Chandradeep Das | India | 2025 | 15min

Ibu

Singapore’s drag legend Kak Nina Boo talks about her life, legacy, and chosen family.

dir. Jessi Goh | Singapore | 2025 | 19min

Silig

A terminally ill woman organises her own funeral with the help of an old flame.

dir. Arvin Belarmino & Lomorpich (aka YoKi) Rithy | Philippines | 2024 | 17min

As part of Queer East 2026, a cross-disciplinary festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities.

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 Ashkan Sepahvand

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.

Ashkan Sepahvand is an artist, writer, and researcher. He was born in Tehran, Iran and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His practice takes time. An interest in words and bodies shapes his inquiries. Projects take on the form of text, drawing, performance, and regular collaboration with friends. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Fine Art at St John’s College, University of Oxford. 

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.

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.

When his mother and two siblings first immigrated from Hong Kong to Los Angeles in the early 1980s, six-year-old Alvin was forced to stay behind with his working and consequently absent father. Spending the following three years often alone in an empty apartment, he longed for his family’s reunification. However, upon Alvin and his father’s arrival to America, that dream was utterly and permanently shattered. Reunifitcation is AIvin Tsang’s poetic and self-reflective exploration of many unresolved years that moves moodily across different channels and modes, bending into labor histories and Hong Kong’s colonial trajectories. Alvin turns the camera on his own family, cautiously prodding for answers, but fully acknowledging that the only closure he can get will be from deciding for himself how to move on.

There will be a post-screening discussion with Prof Sabrina Yu (Newcastle University) & Prof Victor Fan (King’s College London)

Re:Mind is a festival bringing some of the most exciting new voices in Asian cinema for the first time to London, with the aim of showcasing film's power to heal. Through its film programme and workshops, Re:Mind promotes mindfulness, community-building, and alternative forms of resistance. Its first edition runs from May 7 to 17 at the Garden Cinema and King's College London.

Waving Kites: Hong Kong Diaspora Cinema UK Tour, taking place in Newcastle, Manchester, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Southampton, and London from April to May 2026, explores Hongkonger diasporic experiences across diverse moments and places. The tour forms part of a wider project on Hong Kong independent cinema led by the Chinese Independent Film Archive (CIFA) at Newcastle University, and is supported by the British Film Institute’s Screen Heritage Fund. This screening is in partnership with Re:Mind.

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 film will be introduced by academic, critic, and curator Professor Maria Delgado.

Zama, an officer of the Spanish Crown born in South America in the 1700s and station in a remote Patogonian outpost waits for a letter from the King granting him a transfer from the town in which he is stagnating, to a better place. His situation is delicate. He must ensure that nothing overshadows his transfer. He is forced to accept submissively every task entrusted to him by successive Governors who come and go as he stays behind.

Lucrecia Martel's mesmeresing film follows Zama has he descends from boredom into outright delirium. Hypnotically beautiful and comedic in moments, Zama is a reflection on Argentina's colonial legacy right through to modern bureaucractic chaos.