This film was chosen as Films of Resistance's pick for the Lebanese season, to highlight the way Lebanese and Palestinian communities are interconnected. It will be preceded by an introduction by Dr Kareem Estefan.

In this award-winning documentary, directors Masri and Chamoun focus on the women who played a crucial role in fighting the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. Preserving their stories on camera, Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon is a poignant documentary about courage, resistance, and hope.

Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon could be considered as a sister act to Heiny Srour's Leila and the Wolves (1984), in the way that Mai Masri gives us an intimate look inside the experiences lived by guerilla groups of Lebanese and Palestinian women in South Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War and Israeli occupation. The result is a gentle yet powerful recollection of the fight and the pain lived by those women, contrasted by scenes of joy, desires and creativity captured with compassion and accuracy by Mai Masri's camera.

Mai Masri is one of the pioneers of Palestinian documentary, with most of her work focusing on the linked histories of Lebanon and Palestine. Her films have been screened internationally and won over 90 awards. She is mostly recognised for her poetic and humanistic approach, centering women and children in her stories. Mai worked closely with her late husband Lebanese filmmaker Jean Chamoun and earned international acclaim with her films, including Children of Fire, Woman for Her Time, Children of Shatila, and Beirut Diaries.

Films of Resistance are a collective offering a decentralised screening and fundraising resource. All funds raised through their screenings are reinvested into Palestinian filmmaking.

The ticket price will include a cup of Palestinian sage tea, courtesy of Kaf for Palestine. There will be a chance to purchase prints and tote bags to raise funds for the cultural centres in Palestine.

There is another opportunity to watch the film on 12 July at 16:45, with an introduction by curator Taghrid Choucair.

Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Roma) beautifulyl adaptated this novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden). Sara Crewe is forced to leave her home in India as the outbreak of World War I draws her father into the military. She is sent to a New York boarding school and clashes with the strict headmistress who won't tolerate the little girl's big imagination.

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 will be preceded by a pre-recorded introduction by guest curator Anupma Shanker.

Based on the 1956 Bengali classic novel of the same name by Adwaita Mallabarman, renowned Bengali auteur Ritwik Ghatak’s hauntingly beautiful, elegiac saga is set in pre-independence India and follows the tumultuous lives of the Malo fishing community along the banks of the Titas River in pre-Partition East Bengal (Now Bangladesh). Focusing on the tragic intertwining fates of a series of fascinating characters, in particular, the indomitable widow Basanti (Rosy Samad/Afsary), Ghatak tells the poignant story of an entire community’s vanishing way of life and culture.

Made in 1973, two years after Bangladesh’s independence, A River Called Titas remains a deeply relevant cinematic gem from a master filmmaker who was described by Satyajit Ray as, “one of the few truly original talents in Indian cinema.”

An early example of hyperlink cinema (featuring multiple protagonists in interwoven narrative threads), A River Called Titas also demonstrates Ghatak’s bold creative vision that slowly but surely spreads out (like the river itself), offering infinite, non-linear perspectives on the characters and the landscape that shapes and determines their individual and collective destinies.

Anupma Shanker is a British-Indian film curator and archives researcher with a deep and evolving interest in marginalised and minority screen narratives from, of and about the past. Her curatorial practice is focused on bringing to light films and filmmakers that remain overlooked, inaccessible and undiscovered but can offer valuable insight, wisdom and guidance in contextualizing the difficult but urgent discourses about the myths and realities of shared/contested histories, heritage, identities and memories.

The film is set in Southern Lebanon, July 2006, during what is known as Israel’s “Second Lebanon War", a month of fighting characterised mostly by Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizballah on northern Israel in response.

During a 24h ceasefire, Marwan heads out in search of his father who refused to leave his Southern village and leaves his wife Rana preparing alone their immigration to Canada. Marwan finds no traces of his father and the ceasefire is quickly broken, forcing him to take shelter in Najib’s house, his father’s friend. Marwan finds himself trapped under the rain of bombs with Najib and a group of elders, friends of his father. Tension rises inside and outside of the house. Suddenly, a group of Israeli soldiers enter the first floor...

Ghossein worked around his tight budget but having all the action take place over three days, in one location, with a creative and imaginative use of sound design. The Arabic title of the film is "the wall of sound". We never see the Israeli soldiers, we only hear snippets of conversation and creaking floorboards. A tense and well-crafted thriller, the film paints an engaging and humanising portrait of the people of Southern Lebanon, especially in light of the current situation.

The film won three awards, (Audience, Jury and technical prize) at the Venice Film Festival International Critics' Week.

The screening on 2 July will be preceded by an introduction to give some context to the story.

The screening on 30 June will be a members' event, with live music and a Q&A. Keep an eye out for our announcement.

To celebrate our new season of New Lebanese Cinema, on Monday 30 June we're hosting a special evening for members featuring Lebanese wine & nibbles, as well as a live violin performance.

Join us in the Atrium Bar for drinks from 18:30 onwards. Your ticket will include a complimentary glass of Lebanese St Thomas white wine or Wardy red wine, courtesy of Lebanese Fine Wines, and a packet of iconic Al Rifai mixed nuts.

At 19:00 we'll head into the screen to enjoy a live performance by violinist Leyth Elmani, who is a Lebanese-Palestinian violinist currently studying at the Royal College of Music. The performance will be followed by a screening of the critically acclaimed All This Victory, after which we'll be digitally joined by the film's director Ahmad Ghossein for a Q&A.

Tickets for the event are £18.50 each, and members can purchase up to 2, meaning you're welcome to bring a friend along, even if they're not a member of the cinema. Tickets include a seat for the music performance and screening, as well as a complimentary glass of wine (or soft drink equivalent) and a packet of mixed nuts. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer any substitutes for these.

About All This Victory:

The film is set in Southern Lebanon, July 2006, during what is known as Israel’s 'Second Lebanon War'. This month of fighting was characterised mostly by Israeli aerial bombardment of Lebanon, and rocket attacks from the Shia militia Hizballah on northern Israel in response.

During a 24-hour ceasefire, Marwan heads out in search of his father, who refused to leave his Southern village, and leaves his wife Rana preparing alone for their immigration to Canada. Marwan finds no traces of his father and the ceasefire is quickly broken, forcing him to take shelter in his father's friend Najib’s house. Marwan finds himself trapped under the rain of bombs with Najib and a group of elders. With tension rising inside and outside of the house, a group of Israeli soldiers suddenly enter the first floor...

Ghossein worked around his tight budget by having all the action take place over three days, in one location, employing creative and imaginative sound design. The Arabic title of the film is 'The Wall of Sound'. We never see the Israeli soldiers, we only hear snippets of conversation and creaking floorboards. A tense and well-crafted thriller, the film paints an engaging and humanising portrait of the people of Southern Lebanon, especially in light of the current situation.

The film won three awards (Audience, Jury and Technical prize) at the Venice Film Festival International Critics' Week.

Please note that the Atrium Bar and Screen 3 may not yet have step-free access whilst we wait for our platform lift to be installed.

All That Is Solid: the third Animate OPEN sets out to celebrate, subvert and confound expectations of what animation can be.

The fifteen short films, selected from an international open call, are from Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Scotland, South Korea, the USA and Wales. They explore subjects that range from intimate, personal stories to wider geopolitical events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine, and the climate crisis. They consider the places we call home, and our need to connect with other humans, animals and nature. The diverse animation techniques represented include photo cut-out, Risograph, kitchen lithography, timelapse, charcoal, pinscreen, 3D, stop motion, and hand-drawn on paper.

HoH captions and AD are available

Running Order:

High Street Repeat, Laurie Hill and Osbert Parker, 4 mins 25 secs, 2023, UK

In The Garden: Giggles In The Greenery, Dominica Harrison, 4 mins 34 secs, 2024, UK

Silent Panorama, Nicolas Piret, 5 mins 9 secs, 2024, Belgium

NATURA 2040, Hantao Li, 11 mins 5 secs, 2024, UK

TWENTYTИƎWT, Max Hattler, 7 mins, 2023, Hong Kong        

Dull Spots of Greenish Colours, Sasha Svirsky, 10 mins 32 secs, 2024, Germany

Raining through my bones,Meghana Bisineer, 5 mins, 2022, USA

Noggin, Case Jernigan, 7 mins 10 secs, 2024, USA

Liminal Roots, Aliyah Harfoot, 4 mins 20 secs, 2024, UK

Contradiction of Emptiness, Irina Rubina, 3 mins 6 secs, 2024, Germany        

FLORE, Emily Sasmor, 2 mins 12 secs, 2022, USA

Pigeon Holding, Olivia Dugdale, 1 min 41 secs, 2023, UK

I Am a Horse, Chaerin Im, 7 mins 58 secs, 2022, South Korea

Adulting, James Duesing, 8 mins 10 secs, 2024, USA

Mokosh, Anna Dudko, 4 mins 45 secs, 2023, Austria

Animate champions experimentation in animation. Our mission is to engage the public with the creativity and craft of the artform. We do this through supporting artists to create thought provoking projects, engaging with audiences across digital and physical contexts, and promoting critical debate.

animateprojects.org

Some of the films deal with issues that may be sensitive or distressing to some viewers.

Content includes:

Depictions of emotional distress, intense situations, nudity, racism, and COVID-19 lockdown; discussion of trauma, mental health, depression, anxiety, war, torture, death, illness, sex, animal injury and the Ukraine invasion.

Some films include flashing images or stroboscopic effects, intense soundtracks, sudden loud sounds and startling visual effects.

Viewer discretion is advised.

This film was proposed by our member Simran Patel who writes: 'I'd love to see India's first queer film on the big screen. It was originally believed lost and only recently rediscovered in an archive.'

This daring and progressive account of a complex love triangle broke all manner of taboos to emerge as India’s first queer film and an icon of Parallel Cinema.

Prem Kapoor’s film skilfully navigates the turbulent conditions under which it was made, subtly incorporating bisexuality in such a way that it bypassed India’s strict cultural censorship. It's the story of the interlocking relationship between truck driver and ex-bandit Sarnam (Nitin Sethi), Bansari (Nandiat Thakur), a beautiful woman Sarnam saved from being raped, and Shivraj (Amar Kakkad), who works in a temple and is later hired by Sarnam.

Adapted from Kamleshwar Prasad Saxena’s 1957 novel, the movie's transgressive approach was a direct reaction to wider political turmoil. It remains an emblem of Parallel Cinema, focusing on then-unconventional representations and relationships with a keen eye.

The film was thought lost for many years but was accidentally rediscovered in 2019 in the archive of Berlin’s Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art.

The screening will feature a pre-recorded introduction by Dr Omar Ahmed: Freelance Film Scholar & International Curator of South Asian Cinema and Founder of The Cloud Door. 

Please note, the screening on Tuesday 29 July is our free members' screening, and booking for this will open on Thursday 24 July at 13:00. The second showing on Tuesday 5 August is a regular screening, which is open to the general public with tickets available now.

Hosted in collaboration with the Japan Foundation, this programme is a rare opportunity to see some of the best independent Japanese animation of recent years on the big screen.

Anime is a global phenomenon. But there is much more to Japanese animation than the franchises and studio productions that get the lion’s share of attention. Filmmakers working independently, sometimes almost alone, are creating some of the wildest, most beautiful animation out there, as they experiment with artistic techniques and ways to tell a story.

Clay waves that speak poetry, pointillist landscapes bursting with colour, a candid documentary about periods, an absurdist conspiracy thriller about small people with hats: the short films in this programme, all made by Japanese directors in the past 12 years, cover a dizzying range of styles and narratives.

The programme’s curator Alex Dudok de Wit will introduce the screening.

Mimi, Lisa Fukaya, 4 mins 17 secs, Denmark,  2018

I’m Late, Sawako Kabuki, 10 mins 36 secs, France/Japan, 2019

Maku, Yoriko Mizushiri, 5 mins 25 secs, Japan, 2014

Airy Me, Yoko Kuno, 5 mins 39 secs, Japan, 2013

Datum Point, Ryo Orikasa, 6 mins 41 secs, Japan, 2015

Small People With Hats, Sarina Nihei, 6 mins 51 secs, UK, 2014

A Bite of Bone, Honami Yano, 9 mins 45 secs, Japan, 2021

Bird in the Peninsula, Atsushi Wada, 16 mins 9 secs, France/Japan, 2022

Trigger Warning: This programme contains references to abortion, invasive medical procedures, cremation; graphic violence (including injury detail, animal harm, and allusions to self-harm and suicide).

Established in 1972, the Japan Foundation promotes international cultural exchange between Japan and the rest of the world by organising projects as well as providing financial support through grant programmes in the fields of Arts and Culture, Japanese Language Education, and Japanese Studies. The Japan Foundation currently has its Head Office in Tokyo, with offices and centres in 25 countries outside of Japan.

Northern China, 1999. The grisly discovery of several corpses is made in a small town. A bloody incident during the attempt to capture the alleged murderer leaves two police officers dead and another badly injured. The surviving officer Zhang Zili is suspended from duty; he takes a job as a security guard at a factory. Five years later, another series of mysterious murders occurs. Aided by a former colleague, Zhang decides to investigate under his own initiative.

Diao Yinan's Golden Bear winning third feature is a noirish thriller in drained colours which, whilst playfully alluding to the genre, also invites us into the lives of very ordinary people

In 1960, a young Irish woman named Edna O’Brien wrote a sexually frank debut novel, The Country Girls. She became a literary sensation, writing for The New Yorker, delivering provocative interviews, and authoring screenplays. Her success enraged her writer husband and made her a pariah in her

native Ireland, where her books were banned and burned. She would make her home in London, where she conducted numerous love affairs, hosted star-studded parties, and made and lost a fortune.

In July 2024, Edna passed away and this film provides a final testimony from her, aged 93, as she reflects upon her extraordinary life for filmmaker Sinéad O’Shea’s camera.

Granting the director access to her personal journals - read aloud in the film by the Oscar nominated Irish actress Jessie Buckley - and with additional perspectives offered from Gabriel Byrne, Walter Mosley and an array of renowned writers, Edna does not shy from any subject.

The Garden Cinema View:

This illuminating documentary deploys interviews, archive footage, and readings of Edna O’Brien’s memoirs to foreground her importance to literature alongside the appalling misogyny she suffered throughout her career. Whilst a deep analysis of her writing is not central to this study, there is a firm sense of O’Brien as a hardworking, principled, and resilient artist who faced relentless personal attacks and sexism, from the media and even in her private life. The centrepiece of the film is a remarkable interview with O’Brien, conducted shortly before her death in 2024, which shows her as spikey as ever, but with renewed empathy.

William Hurt and Kathleen Turner strike sparks in this taut, South Florida-set tale of lust, greed, and murder that echoes 1940s film noir but is charged with a steamy passion that could only flare in the 80s. When libidinous but none-too-bright attorney Ned Racine (Hurt) begins an affair with Matty Walker (Turner), the beautiful wife of an unscrupulous tycoon, their desire to be together leads to thoughts of murder.

Cécile is seventeen, spoiled, and spectacularly self-centred. Spending the summer on the French Riviera with her charming, womanising father, she lives a life of parties, flings, and sun-drenched idleness—until an old family friend arrives and threatens to impose order. Cécile doesn’t take it well.

With its unsettlingly hollow energy, baby Jean Seberg's ingenue haircut and a moodboard's-worth of summer style inspiration, Bonjour Tristesse is all elegance on the surface and something much nastier underneath. The original sad girl summer story.

Summertime Sadness

Long, hot summers have always been fertile ground for anxiety, danger and despair on screen. From holiday horrors to angsty coming-of-age tales, summertime sadness is a microgenre all on its own. Even the way we watch – sitting in a dark room – goes against the spirit of warm, sunny days. Escape the packed pubs, hay fever, and heatwave irritability, and come wallow with Zodiac Film Club in a mini-season of sad girl summer classics that lull you with sunshine... then give you a shock.

The screening on 28 June will be introduced by filmmaker and critic Jasper Sharp.

Seijun Suzuki's delirious 1967 hit-man film has drawn comparisons with contemporaries Le samouraï and Point Blank and influenced directors such as John Woo, Jim Jarmusch, and Quentin Tarantino among others.

The story of laconic yakuza Hanada (Joe Shishido), aka 'No. 3 Killer', the third rated hit-man in Japan who takes an impossible job from the mysterious, death obsessed Misako. Hanada bungles the hit and finds himself the target of his employers and a bullet ridden journey leads him to face the No. 1 Killer.

Shot in cool monochrome with beguiling visuals, Branded to Kill is an effortlessly cool crime film with a jazzy score that caused Suzuki to be fired by the studio's executives but is now rightly recognised as his masterpiece.

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

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

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

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

In the spirit of Francis Bacon and CHEERIO, we are proud to continue to support daring and provocative films for young filmmakers. With this in mind, we present this specially curated programme of CHEERIO supported short films.

Triptych (Holly Blakey, 2022, 12 mins)

CHEERIO has commissioned acclaimed choreographer and director Holly Blakey to create an original dance piece,Triptych, inspired by the work of Francis Bacon.

Happy Snaps (Tyro Heath, 2023, 12 mins)

On the Isle of Sheppey, two boys try to enjoy a last day together. Their adventures are captured by Gabriel, who has cerebral palsy, on an old camera. But as the day goes on, fears about the future cloud their friendship.

Autophagy (Edie Lawrence, 2024, 11 mins)

A waterborne disease ravages a town, the affliction slowly morphing you into an octopus. With the societal hatred towards those suffering building, a couple have the limited choice: afford the medication to carry on living, or drink the water and suffer being shunned.

The Tobacconist (Keifer Nyron Taylor, 2024, 23 mins)

A south London odyssey following Tobias, who struggles to fund his mum's return to Jamaica. The city reveals spectres of his community's history and an uncertain future.

Microcosm (Joe Ingham, 2022, 13 mins)

London, 1966. Homosexuality between men is still criminalised. Women don't fare any better. A woman who is exposed as a lesbian can expect to lose her job, her lodgings, her family. It is a tough, dangerous and nerve-wracking existence. But in one subterranean corner of Chelsea, society's rules don't apply. The Gateways club offers a safe haven for women to dance, express themselves and love who they want. Or does it?

Apus Apus (Alfie Elms, 2025, 8 mins)

Apus Apus centres around the character of Bea, whose everyday existence in the city is charted by a series of meals.

The Devil Inside Me (Gabriel B Arranhio, 2022, 5 mins)

A grieving mother believing her son to be possessed by the devil, forces him through a spiritual-religious cleansing. ‘The Devil Inside’ is a poetic exploration of ‘Love’ and the grotesque mutations it can take. A surreal, horror-infused look at a Mother whose intense protective love of her child and innate belief in a deity incite her to take measures that will dismember her son’s trust in her and the world around him. Without acceptance there can be no trust, without trust there can be no love. Told from his perspective in this poetic short piece, David seeks to find the answers within himself, confronting his inner demons, unleashed by his mother, who he still seeks acceptance from now even long after she is deceased.

Lady in The Lake (Joe Fletcher, 2023, 24 mins)

When a suitcase full of body parts washes ashore on an idyllic Austrian lake rumours and incriminations spread through its small, picturesque town. But as the police begin to uncover more in the bizarre case the locals band together, unifying against the darkness that lurks beneath the lake's surface. It is a story about the order of time, the burden of memory and the persistence of myth, narrated and re-enacted by the people whose lives became part of this gruesome case.

Due to popular demand, we're bringing back Caramel, as part of our Lebanese season. The film will be preceded by Dania Bdeir's short film Warsha.

The screening on 25 June will be preceded by a short intro by Dr Albertine Fox, writer of the article "Visibility displaced: lesbian aurality and disruptive self-naming in Sukkar banat/Caramel and Three Centimetres".

Caramel is a Middle Eastern rom-com that challenges binding cultural traditions whilst celebrating female friendship.

In Beirut, five women meet up at a beauty salon, a highly colourful and sensual microcosm. Layale loves Rabih, but he is married man. Nisrine is a Muslim and she has a problem with her coming wedding: She’s no longer a virgin. Rima is tormented by her attraction to women. Jamale is refusing to grow old. Rose has sacrificed herself to look after her older sister. At the salon, men, sex and motherhood are the subjects at the heart of their intimate and liberated conversations.

Punctuated by laugh out loud moments, this hugely popular film from 2006 offers a genuinely nuanced and moving portrait of the country, with its intimate and layered depiction of both its female protagonists and the wider societal relationships they navigate, at a time of cautious optimism in the country.

Caramel will be preceded by the Oscar-nominated mesmerising Warsha, in which a Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut volunteers to cover a shift on one of the most dangerous cranes, where he is able to find his freedom.

The screening will feature a digital introduction by curator Tuyết Vân Huỳnh.

Not all battles are fought with fists, some are for the right to choose your future.

In Children of the Mist, we follow 12-year-old Di, a Hmong girl from rural Vietnam, as she faces the deeply ingrained cultural practice of bride kidnapping. This powerful documentary offers a rare, unflinching look at Di’s personal battle for autonomy against a backdrop of tradition, family, and cultural expectation. As the film unfolds, we not only witness the personal struggles of Di, but we also delve into the ethical challenges of documentary filmmaking.

The documentary questions the role of the filmmaker in capturing such sensitive subjects while offering a deeply human portrait of rural life in contemporary Vietnam. It is a poignant exploration of resistance, self-determination, and the complexity of tradition in a rapidly changing world.

The screening will be preceded by Xe Đạp (The Bicycle, 2000), a radical animated short made by an all-women team, showcasing textured, paper-cut aesthetics that defied formal norms of the time.

Presented by Tuyết Vân Huỳnh

With support from Arts Council England, the British Council Connections Through Culture programme, and the BFI Audience Projects Fund, awarding funds from the National Lottery.

In collaboration with TPD: The Centre for Assistance and Development of Movie Talents, the Vietnam Film Institute and Varan Hanoi.

The screening on Monday June 23 will be introduced by Darling screenwritter Frederic Raphael. 

One of the coolest and most defining films of the 1960s, John Schlesinger's Darling is now lavishly restored. This London fashion scene-set classic features dazzling performances from Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Harvey. Winner of three Academy Awards and four BAFTAs, the film tells the story of a beautiful but easily bored model whose rise to fame makes her a prisoner of the jet-set world she conquered.

Luck Razanajaona’s feature debut is an illuminating drama about revolution, corruption, and a young man’s political awakening in Madagascar

Madagascar, nowadays. Kwame, 20, struggles to make a living in the clandestine sapphire mines. An unexpected event takes him back to his hometown. As he reunites with his mother and old friends, he finds himself confronted with the rampant corruption plaguing his country. He will have to choose between easy money and loyalty, between individualism and political awakening.

Curated by Tatenda Jamera of Maona Art, this film draws audiences homeward through the soulful gaze of African heritage a tapestry of culture, memory, and stories woven into one shared narrative.

This is part of the strand Stone Town: Celebrating the rich tapestry of Africa's voices, cultures, and stories through cinematic experiences on the big screen.

Stone Town, a city in Zanzibar, is home to a unique tradition where on Fridays, a small group of elderly men, seven or eight in number gather in a dilapidated auditorium filled with cobwebs and broken chairs. Sitting beneath the open sky, where the roof collapsed long ago, they watch the flickering images of old films projected onto a wall. This takes place at the Majestic, one of Africas earliest cinemas, an art deco treasure from the 1920s that has since faded from its former glory. It is this very spirit that we seek to revive through the Stone Town strand by showcasing African cinema on the big screen.

A rare cinema screening of 1980s cult family favourite Flight of the Navigator.

12-year-old David is accidentally knocked out in the forest near his home, but when he awakens eight years have passed. His family is overjoyed to have him back, but is just as perplexed as he is that he hasn't aged. When a NASA scientist discovers a UFO nearby, David gets the chance to unravel the mystery and recover the life he lost.

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.

After the success of our previous family-friendly edition, we are thrilled to welcome back the team from Modus Arts for another session of Foley Nights. This time, the event will be open to members only, and give you a chance to discover the world of cinematic sound effects - from breaking your enemy's bones, to going for a winter walk across some freshly fallen show. 

Rather than a traditional workshop, Foley Nights invites you to experiment directly with objects and their unexpected sonic potential. You’ll respond to short film clips by creating your own live sound effects using a table full of carefully chosen materials – from pebbles and plastic sheeting to sticks, hot-water bottles, and celery – all amplified through specialist microphones, including contact mics and hydrophones. No prior experience is needed. You’ll improvise, test, and play in an informal, collaborative setting that flips the typical relationship between what you see and what you hear on screen.

The event will take place on the morning of Saturday 28 June from 11:30 until 14:00, and tickets are £16.50 each, which includes unlimited complimentary tea and coffee for the duration of the event. Due to the limited capacity, tickets are restricted to 1 per member.

About Modus Arts:

Modus Arts is a National Portfolio Organisation with Arts Council England, delivering sound arts projects across the UK. Modus draw on interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to developing public-facing sound-based artworks and events.

www.modusarts.org | @modusarts

A neon-drenched crime thriller which pays tribute to the classics of Hong Kong genre cinema while reinvigorating the form.

Chow Wing’s debut follows Shuang (Tai Bo), who after twenty years in prison retreats from the world of crime, taking a construction job and living alone in a tiny room in the once grand but now rundown Mirador Mansions. His quiet life is thrown into disarray after he meets and decides to help Alice (Kuku So), a teenage girl on the run from her mother’s abusive partner, and when his past starts to catch up with him, Shuang is faced with a harrowing choice. Beautifully shot, For Alice recalls the classic Hong Kong thrillers of the 1980s and 90s through its use of neon and shadows, while reinvigorating the genre with its own suspenseful take on guilt and redemption, marking Wing Chow as a up and coming talent to keep an eye on.

Berlin, 1942. A shy Hilde falls in love with Hans and gradually finds her place in the resistance group that would come to be known as the 'Red Orchestra'. Together, they spend a beautiful summer where their relationship entwines with quiet acts

of defiance. But when the Gestapo arrests members of the group, Hilde and Hans are among their numbers and must find the strength to confront their situation.

Inspired by an incredible true story set against the backdrop of a country torn by conflict, From Hilde, with Love is a powerful tale of love and resistance.

The Garden Cinema View:

From Hilde, with Love is a gripping and powerful story that is carried by a quietly devastating performance from Liv Lisa Fries as the titular Red Orchestra resistance member. This is a film of contrasts, with cinematographer Judith Kaufmann contrasting a summer of warm romance and small acts of resistance against the stark, cold, walls of Barnimstrasse women's prison. The idyll of espionage and eroticism has a lowkey, Lust, Caution element to it, whilst later reckonings with the brutal regime approach some of the themes of Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life. Although there is not a clear break between freedom and incarceration, as director Andreas Dresen repeatedly returns to non-linear scenes depicting the earlier courtship and resistance between Hilde and her husband Hans. This structure brings relief and empathy to some of the more upsetting sequences, but does disrupt the pacing as the film settles into a fairly lengthy runtime. Nonetheless, films like this feel necessary as we witness the stakes of speaking out against authoritarianism begin to rise once again in our own societies.  

A rare chance to experience Cheryl Dunye’s EARLY WORKS – including JANINE, SHE DON'T FADE, VANILLA SEX and more – on the big screen. Made between 1990 and 1996, these shorts marked the arrival of a bold new voice in queer cinema. Together, they helped define what Dunye coined the “Dunyementary” – a playful, political blend of documentary and fiction.

In her early films, Dunye uses sharp wit and radical intimacy to challenge cinematic norms and carve out space for the Black lesbian experience — to be seen, remembered, and reimagined in defiance of a film history that had long erased it.

Also showing: BLACK IS BLUE (2014), a narrative short about a Black trans man grappling with the tension between his inner identity and outward perception.

This screening will be followed by a pre-recorded Q&A with director Cheryl Dunye, moderated by Wema Mumma.

From 7pm, join us for networking in the bar and a chance to grab a limited-edition Cheryl Dunye t-shirt at our pop-up (while stocks last).

The films start promptly at 8pm.

This film was proposed by our memberTakeshi Osada.

Spring. Yorkshire. Young farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker for lambing season ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path.

Please note, the screening on Tuesday 17 June is our free members' screening, while the one on Wednesday 25 June is a regular screening, which is open to the general public.

Gutsy Film Festival celebrates the bold and original work of filmmakers living with hidden disabilities and chronic illnesses. This specially curated programme features a diverse mix of short films spanning a variety of genres. The 60-minute screening will begin with a brief introduction from festival founder Amy Sargeant, sharing the inspiration behind Gutsy and introducing the films. Join us afterwards for drinks in the bar - can't wait to see you there!

Gutsy is a film festival celebrating the work of filmmakers living with hidden disabilities and chronic illnesses. It’s a supportive, inclusive space to showcase creativity, share stories, and connect with others.

In the late 1970s, as renegade filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola struggles to complete an epic allegory of the Vietnam War, Apocalypse Now, his wife, Eleanor, films his daily travails with a camera of her own. The documentary based on her footage details the difficulties of the large production -- from weather-related delays in the Philippines to star Martin Sheen's heart attack while filming -- and it provides unprecedented behind-the-scenes clips of one of Hollywood's most-acclaimed films.

Prior to the film there will be a sitar performance by internationally acclaimed sitarist Jonathan Mayer, and a pre-recorded introduction by guest curator Anupma Shanker.

Adapted by the British American novelist and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her Booker Prize-winning novel, and winner of Best Screenplay at the 1983 BAFTAs, Heat and Dust is a sensual and evocative Merchant Ivory classic that traces the intertwined stories of two English women living in India more than fifty years apart.

Anne (Julie Christie), a young historical researcher, inherits letters written by her great aunt Olivia (Greta Scacchi) and becomes obsessed with their revelations of her past in colonial India. Flitting between the present-day and the 1920s, examines the parallel journeys of self-discovery of the two women, as well as the eternal, seductive allures of the mystical wonder that is India.

Anupma Shanker is a British-Indian film curator and archives researcher with a deep and evolving interest in marginalised and minority screen narratives from, of and about the past. Her curatorial practice is focused on bringing to light films and filmmakers that remain overlooked, inaccessible and undiscovered but can offer valuable insight, wisdom and guidance in contextualizing the difficult but urgent discourses about the myths and realities of shared/contested histories, heritage, identities and memories.

Jonathan Mayer

Son of the late Kolkata composer John Mayer, Jonathan began his musical training at the early age of 5. His teachers have included Clem Alford (the first ever European sitar player), Pandit Subroto Roychowdhury of Senia Gharana and Wajahat Khan (direct descendent of Mia Tansen the great musician, one of the nine jewels in Moghul court of Emperor Akbar). Jonathan has performed all over the world and his works have been performed and commissioned by The London Philharmonic Orchestra, Pilsen Philharmonic Orchestra, Docklands Sinfonia, among others. Jonathan is the co-founder of First Hand Records Ltd and Artistic Director of Zeroclassikal.

The film will be preceded by Al Ittisal (The Call), a short film by Sabine Kahwaji, who will be introducing the screening. 

Serge and his girlfriend Leila arrive late at his parents’ big Easter lunch with the wider family. The electricity has been cut, and tensions are already simmering before coming to a head  when matriarch Josephine realises $12,000 of her savings have disappeared.

Amdist the mouth-watering zooms on the kebbe, fatayer, and tabbouleh, biting remarks and sarcastic swipes always on the verge of snowballing into full-blown political and religious arguments, and dysfunctional-family meltdown, in a manner reminiscent of many a French dyfunctional dinner films (Un Air de Famille comes to mind). The handheld camera never leaves the confines of the flat, as tensions ramp up, the acerbic dialogue - at times hilarious - and Lucien Bourjeily's sharply-observed portrayal packing so much about everything the country has been grappling with over the last few decades.

Emmy-nominated writer and director Lucien Bourjeily is known for both his films and theatre productions. Although his work has travelled internationally, it has sometimes been subject to political censorship.

The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival, the "Special Jury Prize" and "Ensemble Cast" awards at the Festival des cinémas arabes, and was nominated for the Jordan Ressler award at the 2018 Miami International Film Festival, the Critics' Choice Award at the 2018 Hamburg Film Festival and the Best World Fiction film award at the 2018 LA Film Festival.

The screening on 25 June will be preceded by a oud performance by Kareem Samara, and followed by a Q&A with director Lucien Bourjeily.

The screening on 19 June will be preceded by a short and transporative set by oud player Kareem Samara, and will be followed by a Q&A with Lucien Bourjeily hosted by actress and Arab Film Club founder Sarah Agha.

Serge and his girlfriend Leila arrive late at his parents’ big Easter lunch with the wider family. The electricity has been cut, and tensions are already simmering before coming to a head  when matriarch Josephine realises $12,000 of her savings have disappeared.

Amdist the mouth-watering zooms on the kebbe, fatayer, and tabbouleh, biting remarks and sarcastic swipes always on the verge of snowballing into full-blown political and religious arguments, and dysfunctional-family meltdown, in a manner reminiscent of many a French dyfunctional dinner films (Un Air de Famille comes to mind). The handheld camera never leaves the confines of the flat, as tensions ramp up, the acerbic dialogue - at times hilarious - and Lucien Bourjeily's sharply-observed portrayal packing so much about everything the country has been grappling with over the last few decades.

Emmy-nominated writer and director Lucien Bourjeily is known for both his films and theatre productions. Although his work has travelled internationally, it has sometimes been subject to political censorship.

The film won the Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival, the "Special Jury Prize" and "Ensemble Cast" awards at the Festival des cinémas arabes, and was nominated for the Jordan Ressler award at the 2018 Miami International Film Festival, the Critics' Choice Award at the 2018 Hamburg Film Festival and the Best World Fiction film award at the 2018 LA Film Festival.

The event is taking place in partnership with the Arab Film Club.  

There will be another matinee screening of the film on 27 June.

Bestowed with superhuman strength, a young mortal named Hercules sets out to prove himself a hero. Along with his friends and his true love, Hercules must outwit the hotheaded villain Hades, and learn a valuable lesson... that it's not the size of your strength that counts but the strength of your heart!

Featuring rockin' songs by Alan Menkin and David Zippel, and an all-star cast including Tate Donovan, Danny DeVito, Susan Egan, James Woods, Roger Bart, Keith David, Bobcat Goldthwait and Amanda Plummer.

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.

Michael Haneke was awarded the Best Director prize at Cannes for his stunning exploration of a past that haunts the present. This compelling psychological thriller stars Daniel Auteuil as Georges, a TV presenter who begins to receive mysterious and alarming packages containing covertly filmed videos of himself and his family. Convinced he knows the identity of the person responsible, Georges embarks on a rash and impulsive course of action that throws up some unpleasant facts about his past and leads to shockingly unexpected consequences.

Join us for a rare screening of Gurindher Chadha's (Bend it Like Beckham, Blinded By The Light) earliest directorial venture.

The documentary short I'm British But... examines what it meant to be a young British Asian in the 1980s. The rhythms of Bhangra and Bangla music set the pace for this lively collage of interviews with British Asian youth. Mixing archival footage with present day street scenes of Asians in England, this film chronicles the role of race and cultural identity in the formation of modern day British society.

The screening is followed by an open discussion exploring the themes of the film and the meaning of British Asian identity today led by Aagya Pradhan.

Aagya Pradhan is a freelance film programmer based in London. Their interest lies in cinema from the South Asian diaspora, centred on films exploring identity and the complexities of cultural heritage. Their work has also focused on highlighting Nepali voices in cinema, particularly of Nepali Women filmmakers as captured in the Hamro Katha shorts programme, curated for the ICO's Cinema of Ideas.

Our screening on Tuesday 5 August will be introduced by Lucy Bolton (QMUL).

A critical and commerical flop upon release in 2003, Jane Campion's giallo-infleced, erotic thriller is now considered a masterpiece of female desire and subjectivity.

Frannie (Meg Ryan) is a lonely but determined woman living alone in Manhattan, who becomes involved in a murder investigation following the gruesome slaying of a young woman in her neighbourhood. It soon appears that she may know more about the murderer than she thinks, after witnessing what could have been the prelude to the crime. Drawn to the homicide detective (Mark Ruffalo) investigating the case, she discovers the dark side of passion when she embarks on a risky and turbulent affair with him. But as the death toll rises, each victim getting closer to Frannie, she begins to wonder if her new lover is hiding a deadly secret.

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

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

On Saturday 5 July we will be joined by music supervisor Jen Moss, composer agent Gary Downing, and composer Harry Escott to talk about music supervision and composing for film.

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

About the speakers:

Jen Moss is an award-winning music supervisor with over 15 years experience in the industry. She lives for the art of storytelling through music. After completing a music business degree at the Academy of Contemporary Music, she started her career in the sync department at Boosey & Hawkes before moving to Warner Music UK where she would eventually go on to set up an internal film music supervision department working on such films as I, Tonya, Saint Maud, American Animals, Misbehaviour, and Beast. Jen is now at music supervision company SIREN where she is currently working on killer hippo survival thriller Hungry and the Rebecca Hall starring sci-fi The End of It.

Composer agent and music industry veteran, Gary Downing founded the independent, boutique composer agency MRKR in 2023, in partnership with the legendary AIR Studios. Representing a roster including Harry Escott (Shame, Greed, Ali & Ava), Nainita Desai (The Deepest Breath, The Reason I Jump), Sebastian Gainsborough (The Northman) and JB Dunckel (The Virgin Suicides), he has negotiated the composer deals, and overseen the scores of film and TV productions for Disney, Netflix, BBC, Amazon, Apple TV+, Paramount+, Sky, Warner Bros., Universal, and dozens of independent films.

Harry Escott is a BAFTA-winning composer with a rich history of creative collaboration across the arts. Harry’s impressive array of film scoring credits include Steve McQueen’s Shame and Uprising, several scores for Michael Winterbottom and all of Clio Barnard’s films. Away from the screen, Harry has collaborated with a wide variety of artists including PJ Harvey, the poet Lavinia Greenlaw, Plan B, the ORA Singers, and Jazz pianist Kit Downes.

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

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

Two of Hong Kong cinema’s most iconic leading men, Tony Leung and Andy Lau, face off in the breathtaking thriller that revitalised the city's twenty-first-century film industry, launched a blockbuster franchise, and inspired Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The setup is diabolical in its simplicity: two undercover moles -a police officer (Leung) assigned to infiltrate a ruthless triad by posing as a gangster, and a gangster (Lau) who becomes a police officer in order to serve as a spy for the underworld - find themselves locked in a deadly game of cat and mouse, each racing against time to unmask the other. As the shifting loyalties, murky moral compromises, and deadly betrayals mount, Infernal Affairs raises haunting questions about what it means to live a double life, lost in a labyrinth of conflicting identities and allegiances.

The provocative Italian filmmaker Elio Petri’s most internationally acclaimed work is this remarkable, visceral, Oscar-winning thriller. Petri maintains a tricky balance between absurdity and realism in telling the Kafkaesque tale of a Roman police inspector (a commanding Gian Maria Volontè) investigating a heinous crime - which he himself committed. Both a compelling character study and a disturbing commentary on the draconian government crackdowns in Italy in the late 1960s and early 70s, Petri’s kinetic portrait of surreal bureaucracy is a perversely pleasurable rendering of controlled chaos.

Agathe, hopelessly clumsy yet charming and full of contradictions, finds herself in desperate singlehood. Her dream is to experience love akin to a Jane Austen novel and her ultimate aspiration is to become a writer. Instead, she spends her days selling books in the legendary English-language bookshop, Shakespeare & Co, in Paris. Invited to the Jane Austen Writers' Residency in England, she must confront her insecurities to finally fulfil her ambition of becoming a novelist and put an end to wasting her sentimental life.

The Garden Cinema View:

In the last decade, rom-coms have been replaced with either ironic deconstructions or clichéd soaps, often emerging from some kind of streaming-service purgatory. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life serves as a delightful revamp, adding depth to this endangered genre while preserving the romanticism and escapism that audiences expect.

Camille Rutherford is fantastic as the extremely clumsy and vulnerable Agathe, who learns how to reclaim her life in small ways, making her all the more modern and relatable. Equally refreshing is that the film consciously abstains from algorithmic online dating tropes, and exists among the (also) endangered world of writers, readers, and bookshops. Taking inspiration from Austen's literary universe, the film maintains all of Austen’s fun romantic dilemmas as well as her sharp focus on women's perspectives and self-actualisation.

Due to unexpected circumstances, Paul Gorman is no longer able to take part in this screening. We are instead very glad to be joined for a Q&A with the award-winning music writer Daniel Rachel, author of the forthcoming book This Ain’t Rock ‘n’ Roll: Pop Music, the Swastika and the Third Reich.

Long neglected, American Pop is perhaps the last great film of the golden age of adult animation. At once a jukebox musical, an intergenerational epic, and a stylistic tour de force, the film tells the intertwined story of music and migration through the adventures of one remarkable family. Fleeing the Russian pogroms, a rabbi’s wife and her baby son land in New York at the height of the vaudeville craze. Each generation that follows falls in with another wave of distinctly American music, from jazz and soul to rock’n’roll, psychedelia, punk, and beyond. Directed by Ralph Bakshi (Fritz the Cat) in his distinctive Rotoscoping style, the film is both a reimagining of the director’s own journey from Mandatory Palestine to Brooklyn and a celebration of the allure of mass culture.

Scenes of animated violence and drug use

This screening is part of ‘Beyond Jewish Cinema’, a new series that considers what it really means to make ‘Jewish cinema’ in light of parallel currents in commercial and experimental filmmaking. Moving from the Lower East Side to the Yiddish East End and beyond, the series shines a new light on old favourites alongside lesser-known works from across the history of film. ‘Beyond Jewish Cinema’ is programmed by Jargon, a non-profit dedicated to exploring past, present, and future visions of Jewish diasporic culture.

François is a young husband who lives in permanent picnic of bucolic bliss with his pretty wife, Thérèse, and their two children. Then François meets and begins and affair with Émilie, a young single woman who makes him feel equally blissful in an exciting new way.

You might be thinking, “So far, so summertime happiness.” But just wait—there’s a reason writer Jenny Chamarette called it “a horror movie wrapped up in sunflowers”. With its hazy rural charm, golden-afternoon infidelity and creepy vibes of pure positivity, Agnes Varda’s summer story is sunshine on the surface, with something much darker underneath.

Summertime Sadness

Long, hot summers have always been fertile ground for anxiety, danger and despair on screen. From holiday horrors to angsty coming-of-age tales, summertime sadness is a microgenre all on its own. Even the way we watch – sitting in a dark room – goes against the spirit of warm, sunny days. Escape the packed pubs, hay fever, and heatwave irritability, and come wallow with Zodiac Film Club in a mini-season of sad girl summer classics that lull you with sunshine... then give you a shock.

In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armour of fedora and trench coat can protect him. An elegantly stylised masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, Le samouraï is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture - with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology.

The film is part of the Beirut Film Society's first edition of Lebanon Cinema Days in the UK, which shines a spotlight on the powerful voices of Lebanese cinema, presenting a curated selection of films by a new generation of filmmakers. Cinema Days is a mini programme that's part of our wider Lebanese season.

The screening will be preceded by an introduction by film director and academic Maria Abdul Karim on the emerging film scene in Lebanon.

Barefoot from Beirut, dir. by Andrew Dawaf

Far away from home, and after becoming auditorily impaired with a tinnitus as a result of the Beirut blast of August 4th, Tahara, a Lebanese immigrant in Europe, tries singing again, but homesickness overtakes her every emotion.

I Stole the Key From My Own House, dir. by Zinia Khalifeh

At 14 years old, Zinia discreetly steals the spare keys of her own house, after her parents decide to sell it subsequently to a murder of three family members. Today at 21 Zinia uses these keys as a healing tool to her and her Family.

An Album of Vows, dir. by Elio Tarabay

After taking their eternal Vows, a young lebanese priest and nun question their life descisions, until a small encounter provides them with answers.

Yaroun, dir. by Zeinab Mahfoud

Yaroun navigates the emotional journey of an immigrant caught between two worlds amidst escalating tensions in South Lebanon. We follow the protagonist as he seeks solace and refuge under the shelter of the Australian flag.

Remains, dir. Christine Abou Zein

Visually mesmerising film about the struggle of those who remain, the ones who stay stuck and are left with only memories when everything is destroyed and rebuilt.

Alitisal, dir. by Sabine Kahwaji

As a deadly explosion shatters their hometown of Beirut, three Lebanese siblings living abroad confront their mental health struggles amid uncertainty about their parents' fate.

The Sky Never Disappointed Anyone, dir. Ryan Nakhle

Mounir grapples with masculinity and societal expectations. In a surreal exploration of identity and tradition, his attempt to break free leads to a haunting confrontation with his own limitations, mirroring the myth of Icarus.

Ephemeral You, dir. by Nour Dimashkieh

Drawing upon memories, archival footage, and a hike along the seaside in Beirut, this contemplative documentary reflects upon the director’s complex relationship with her father.

Beirut Film Society is committed to using cinema as a platform for dialogue, social impact, and cultural diplomacy. One of the Beirut Film Society’s core missions is to reconnect with the Lebanese diaspora and to promote Lebanese creative expression on the international stage — fostering cultural bridges between Lebanon and the world.

Throughout the season, we will be have Lebanese wine and Al Rifai nuts as part of our bar menu.

Six Lebanese women, different ages, await the return of their sons, brothers, husbands or lovers, who have been missing since the Civil War. VOID depicts the events that take place on the eve of the Beirut Parliament Square sit-in, where the women petition to renew the cases of their missing men. The lives of these women revolve around waiting for the men in their lives. A wait filled with uncertainty, and hope.

Void is a rare film about the plight of the disappeared during Lebanon's Civil War that raged from 1975 to 1990, and more crucially, the aftermath and the impact on their closed ones and the wider society, which has had to grapple with this reality for the following decades. In fact, the Arabic title is "Waynon", which means "where are they?" The stories are nuanced and engaging, carefully avoiding falling into cliches, neither condemning nor lionesing the real people at the heart of this.

The film was written by Georges Khabbaz and directed by seven graduates from Notre Dame University outside of Beirut. The directors were Naji Bechara, Jad Beyrouthy, Zeina Makki, Tarek Korkomaz, Christelle Ighniades, Maria Abdel Karim and Salim Habr. Khabbaz also was the scriptwriter for Lebanon’s Oscar submission, Ghadi, and starred in 2007’s Venice and Sundance festival entry Under the Bombs. Void won the Best Screenplay award at the Malmo Arab Film Festival in Sweden and the Jury Special Prize at the Alexandria Film Festival for Mediterranean Countries.

Diamand Bou Abboud, who won a number of awards for her stellar performance, also stars in Arze, whose UK premiere is screening as part of this season.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with writer Georges Khabbaz and director Maria Abdul Karim. Tickets will include a glass of Lebanese wine, courtesy of Lebanese Fine Wines, or a soft drink alternative.

The film is part of the Beirut Film Society's first edition of Lebanon Cinema Days in the UK, which shines a spotlight on the powerful voices of Lebanese cinema, presenting a curated selection of films by a new generation of filmmakers.

This festival is presented by Beirut Film Society, an organization committed to using cinema as a platform for dialogue, social impact, and cultural diplomacy. One of the Beirut Film Society’s core missions is to reconnect with the Lebanese diaspora and to promote Lebanese creative expression on the international stage — fostering cultural bridges between Lebanon and the world.

The screening on Friday 20 June will be followed by a Q&A with Lollipop lead actress Posy Sterling.

When young mum Molly (Sterling) is released from prison after serving four months, she assumes it will be a matter of hours before she can pick up her children from foster care. Instead, Molly finds herself in the mother of all catch-22s: she can’t get housing because she doesn’t have her kids living with her; but she can’t get them back without a roof over her head. When Molly reconnects with her childhood friend, and fellow single mother, Amina (Ahmed), the two women join forces and take destiny into their own hands.

The Garden Cinema View:

Daisy May-Hudson follows in the footsteps of Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers for a furious and excoriating critique of Britain's care system. Posy Sterling gives an intense and very believable lead performance as a woman in the most desperate of circumstances. There are some didactic moments, but (as in Loach) sometimes the broader political point is more crucial than dramatic immersion. May-Hudson is careful to keep her sights fixed on the Kafkaesque care system itself, rather than the people working in it. In fact, despite the hard edges, Lollipop is generous and soft-centred. May-Hudson shows how solutions, warmth, and hope can be found in community and social relations, even when all seems hopeless.    

Bi Gan followed the mesmerising Kaili Blues with this noir-tinged stunner about a lost soul (Jue Huang) on a quest to find a missing woman from his past (Wei Tang, Lust, Caution). Following leads across Guizhou province, he crosses paths with a series of colorful characters, among them a prickly hairdresser played by Taiwanese superstar Sylvia Chang. When the search leads him to a dingy movie theater, the film launches into an hour-long, gravity-defying long-take which plunges its protagonist - and us - into a labyrinthine cityscape. China's biggest arthouse hit of all time, the film took in more than £30 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office.

Screening in the 2D version.

Founded by Neeraj Churi, Lotus Visual Productions brings South Asian LGBT+ stories to the global screen. With active projects in various stages of production in India and the UK, they strive for authentic representation of LGBT+ experiences and provide opportunities for community members on and off the screen.

The Garden Cinema is delighted to be showcasing a selection of their critically acclaimed and award winning short films from recent years, including titles which have been made possible through the KASHISH QDrishti Film Grant.

Following the screening, Neeraj Churi will be available to answer your questions.

Films in the programme:

Queer Parivaar

Writer/Director – Shiva Raichandani | Length: 25 min | Language: English | Country: UK

When a mysterious gatecrasher appears at their wedding, Madhav and Sufi are forced to face past secrets and reflect on what makes a family.

IYKYK (If You Know You Know)

Writer/Director Bonita Rajpurohit | Length 18 min | Language English, Hindi, Gujrati (with English Subtitles)

We follow Kusum, a trans girl on a series of dates with boys to find "the one" for her.

Mehroon

Writer/Director Abu Sohel Khondekar | Length: 10 min | Language: Silent

In the wake of her father's death, Mehroon is confronted with a will that holds her in a suffocating grip. Determined to break free from this oppressive force, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery and liberation while navigating the expectations of society and family.

Malwa Khushan

Writers/Directors Preeti Kanungo and Sourav Yadav  | Length: 20 min | Language: Hindi (English Subtitles)

Coming of age story of two sisters Malwa and Khushan exploring and experiencing sexuality and attraction in their adolescent years. Living with their grandmother, Khushan always looks up to Malwa for her outspoken nature and courage. Soon a new girl arrives in Khushan's class and she starts developing feelings for her

Taps

Writer/Director – Arvind Caulagi | Length: 15 min | Language: Hindi (English Subtitles)

A simple misunderstanding puts Akshay and Rohan's domestic idyll on shaky grounds. Set over the course of an evening, Taps offers an intimate look at how the couple navigates their way back to each other.

My Mother’s Girlfriend

Director Arun Fulara | Marathi with English Subtitles | 15 min

Renuka and Sadiya, two mature working-class women in love with each other, are out celebrating Renuka's birthday. Unknown to them, Renuka's son, Mangesh, is around. My Mother's Girlfriend is the story of these two relationships colliding.

This film was suggested by our member, Graham Hood: 'With the passing of Brian Wilson, I’m suggesting this little-known biopic of the making of Pet Sounds. A great cast, wonderful studio scenes and a summer feeling to smell the sunscreen (it is the Beach Boys). I only encountered this on an Air NZ flight. So would love to share this on the big(ger) screen.'

In the 60s, Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson struggles with emerging psychosis as he attempts to craft his avant-garde pop masterpiece. In the 80s, he's a broken, confused man under the 24-hour watch of shady therapist, Dr. Eugene Landy.

To celebrate the classic Japanese crime films in our Noir International season, we're delighted to welcome back the team from Sake Collective for a tasting session. 

Sake Collective are a London based sake shop, dedicated to creating a new community of people around sake and other traditional Japanese drinks. They have also been supplying The Garden Bar with a variety of rotating sakes.  

During the tasting, you'll not only get a chance to preview our new menu offering, but Satoshi Hirasaki from Sake Collective will be showcasing other sakes, taking us through a range of styles, while also teaching us about the history of Japan’s national beverage.

Tickets for the sake tasting are £27.50, and are restricted to 2 per member. Remember to log into your membership account before booking.

We're offering a multibuy discount for any members purchasing tickets for the sake tasting and the screening of Masahiro Shinoda’s Pale Flower that follows later in the evening: when both tickets are in the shopping basket, the ticket price for the film will automatically be reduced to just £8.00.

Our screening of Sunday 3 August will be introduced by film journalist Darren Richman.

Inspired by true events, this rain-drenched sophomore feature from the Oscar-winning filmmaker Bong Joon ho blends true-crime with social satire and comedy in typically masterful fashion.

In 1986 Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, after two women are found raped and murdered, Seoul detective Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung) is brought in to help local detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho) with the investigation. As more bodies are found, the pair realise they have a serial killer on their hands.

Our screening on Wednesday 16 July will be introduced by John Wischmeyer (City Lit).

The brilliant breakthrough film by writer-director Neil Jordan journeys into the dark heart of the London underworld to weave a gripping, noir-infused love story. Bob Hoskins received a multitude of honors - including an Oscar nomination - for his touchingly vulnerable, not-so-tough-guy portrayal of George, recently released from prison and hired by a sinister mob boss (Michael Caine) to chauffeur call girl Simone (Cathy Tyson, in a celebrated performance) between high-paying clients. George’s fascination with the elegant, enigmatic Simone leads him on a dangerous quest through the city’s underbelly, where love is a weakness to be exploited and betrayed. Jordan’s colorful dialogue and eye for evocatively surreal details lend a dreamlike sheen to Mona Lisa, an unconventionally romantic tale of damaged people searching for tenderness in an unforgiving world.

Movies, Memories, Magic celebrates the hybrid cinematic and cultural heritage sculpted by London’s South Asian communities across time and space. Cinema has served as a vital bridge between cultures and countries, for South Asians in Britain. This award-winning documentary is the result of a year-long Heritage Lottery-supported South Asian heritage project – Memories Through Cinema, led by the UK Asian Film Festival (UKAFF) in collaboration with Queen Mary, University of London.

The film paints a vibrant picture of how iconic South Asian films screened in renowned cinema halls in London, from the winding alleyways of Brick Lane to the bustling streets of Southall, galvanised cultural conversations and shaped trends in music, food, fashion and politics. From cinema stalwarts such as Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar, film classics such as Mother India (1957) and Sholay (1975) and the razzmatazz of Bollywood, to the bold and bravura brand of new Indian Indie cinema, the film’s inter-generational contributors reminisce about how cinema spaces and viewing practices have transformed over time. Having been screened to audiences across the UK, India, Bhutan, South Africa and Singapore, the film is testament to how the magic of movies and the indelible memories they inscribe have catalysed a hyphenated cultural identity – rooted in local London and blended with global South Asian culture.

The screening will be Introduced by the film's director Dr Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram.

Dr Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram is Reader in Global Cinemas at Queen Mary University of London. He is author of India's New Independent Cinema: Rise of the Hybrid (Routledge, 2016), Indian Cinema Beyond Bollywood: The New Independent Cinema Revolution (Routledge, 2018) and Indian Indies: A Guide to New Independent Indian Cinema (with a foreword by Shabana Azmi) (Routledge, 2022) - the world's first books on new Indian Indie films. Ashvin has directed Movies, Memories, Magic (2018). He is Principal Investigator on the ongoing AHRC-funded research project ‘Connecting Creative Industries and Cultural Heritage: India-UK Film Festival Federation, Youth Curation and Community Co-Creation’ (2024-27).

After the concerning incidents during our Alfred Hitchcock and Al Pacino seasons, we're sad to announce yet another unfortunate occurrence at The Garden Cinema - this time involving low-life detectives, seductive femme fatales, and other iconic film noir characters.

Join us on Saturday 30 August to find out what happened in the shady alleyways and dark corners of the Atrium Bar, by hunting for clues, piecing together hints, and interviewing our suspects & witnesses - who may or may not be trustworthy.. Once you've cracked the case, you'll be invited to take your seat in the screen for our cinematic reveal, followed by a screening of the sizzling ‘80s classic neo-noir, Body Heat.

As the film’s Floridian heatwave is sure to get you sweating, tickets include a complimentary (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) and suitably smoky daiquiri cocktail to quench your thirst.

Event timings:

19:00  Murder mystery and cocktails

20:30  Reveal & screening of Body Heat

22:45  Expected finish

Tickets are £25 each, and include access to the murder mystery, a complimentary cocktail, and an unallocated seat for the film screening. They're available to members only, but there is no limit on the amount of tickets you're able to purchase, meaning you can bring multiple friends along - the more brains, the better!

If you have any access needs or require a specific seat in the screen, please email membership@thegardencinema.co.uk so we can try to accommodate.

About the film:

William Hurt and Kathleen Turner strike sparks in this taut, South Florida-set tale of lust, greed, and murder that echoes 1940s film noir but is charged with a steamy passion that could only flare in the '80s. When libidinous but none-too-bright attorney Ned Racine (Hurt) begins an affair with Matty Walker (Turner), the beautiful wife of an unscrupulous tycoon, their desire to be together leads to thoughts of murder.

The screening will be preceded by a pre-recorded introduction by guest curator Anupma Shanker.

Directed by Dr. Lester James Peries, widely regarded as the father of Sri Lankan cinema, and based on a short story by the prominent Sinhalese author G.B Senanayake, Nidhanaya is a chilling portrait of a crumbling aristocracy in colonial Sri Lanka through the microcosm of one man’s psychological turmoil.

Often likened to his Indian contemporary Satyajit Ray, Dr. Lester James Peries won the Silver Lion at the 1972 Venice International Film Festival for Nidhanaya which has been lauded as the best film of the first 50 years of Sri Lankan cinema and was included among the top 100 films of the century by Cinémathèque Française.

This is the first time the film is officially being screened in the UK.

Willie Abeynayake (Gamini Fonseka), the superstitious scion of a once-wealthy family facing financial ruin, comes across an ancient manuscript that holds the keys to a secret treasure. However, in order to retrieve it, Willie must find a virgin girl with four birthmarks and perform a sacrifice. Tormented by the impossibility of the task, Willy grows increasingly disturbed but when he miraculously encounters the ideal woman with birthmarks (Malini Fonseka), her unwavering devotion towards him softens his heart, until sudden economic turmoil force him once again to reconsider the sacrifice.

Nidhanaya was restored in 2013 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and the Lester James and Sumitra Peries Foundation, and was premiered at the 2013 Venice International Film Festival.

Anupma Shanker is a British-Indian film curator and archives researcher with a deep and evolving interest in marginalised and minority screen narratives from, of and about the past. Her curatorial practice is focused on bringing to light films and filmmakers that remain overlooked, inaccessible and undiscovered but can offer valuable insight, wisdom and guidance in contextualizing the difficult but urgent discourses about the myths and realities of shared/contested histories, heritage, identities and memories.

Ocean with David Attenborough takes viewers on a breathtaking journey showing there is nowhere more vital for our survival, more full of life, wonder, or surprise, than the ocean.

The celebrated broadcaster and filmmaker reveals how his lifetime has coincided with the great age of ocean discovery. Through spectacular sequences featuring coral reefs, kelp forests and the open ocean, Attenborough shares why a healthy ocean keeps the entire planet stable and flourishing.

Stunning, immersive cinematography showcases the wonder of life under the seas and exposes the realities and challenges facing our ocean as never-before-seen, from destructive fishing techniques to mass coral reef bleaching. Yet the story is one of optimism, with Attenborough pointing to inspirational stories from around the world to deliver his greatest message: the ocean can recover to a glory beyond anything anyone alive has ever seen.

Our screening on 11 June will be introduced by freelance curator Yuriko Hamaguchi.

In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful and enigmatic gambling addict; what at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path. Bewitchingly shot and edited, and laced with a fever-dream-like score by Toru Takemitsu, this gangster romance was a breakthrough for the idiosyncratic Masahiro Shinoda. The pitch-black Pale Flower is an unforgettable excursion into the underworld.

A multibuy discount applies to those attending our sake tasting as well as the screening of Pale Flower on Saturday 21 June. To activate the discount, make sure tickets for both events are in your basket. Then proceed to checkout where screening tickets will reduce to just £8.

One of the most acclaimed Hong Kong films of the year, Philip Yung’s latest is a heart-wrenching crime drama based on a shocking real life case.

Acclaimed filmmaker Philip Yung (Port of Call) returns with gripping true crime drama Papa, the winner of multiple awards and which has been hailed as one of the best Hong Kong films of recent years. Café owner Nin’s life is shattered forever when his fifteen-year-old son Ming violently murders his mother and sister one evening. Diagnosed with acute schizophrenia, Ming is remanded indefinitely to a psychiatric prison, while Nin tries to continue his daily pedestrian existence, struggling with immense anger and grief. As time passes, he gives up on trying to understand the reasons for the tragedy, and tries to connect with his son, who despite everything is now his only remaining family.

One of the most important and influential film makers in cinematic history, Akira Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years. His final masterpiece, Ran, is a reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear set in feudal Japan. Ran tells the story of Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) an aging warlord who, after spending his life consolidating his empire, decides to abdicate and divide his Kingdom amongst his three sons Taro, Jiro, and Saburo. This leads to a brutal and bloody war between the brothers for absolute power of the kingdom.

This potent, political landmark of Indian independent filmmaking – famously funded by 500,000 farmers – explores the ugly truths of class and caste in rural Gujarat.

Produced by 500,000 farmers who contributed 2 ruppes each towards the making of the film, Manthan  (The Churning) is a powerful film about the tempestuous winds of change that blow through a village when an idealistic veterinary surgeon from the city arrives in the village to start a milk cooperative movement. His notions of equitable distribution of profits irrespective of class and caste and freedom from exploitative middlemen, churn up a maelstrom of mistrust, anger and resistance among the feudal landlords and the peasants, threatening the deep-rooted social hierarchy based on generations of discrimination. The story plumbs the depths of despair as Dr. Rao faces false accusations and village politics, but ends on a high with a glimmering of change as the idea of the cooperative slowly takes root.

Nearly 50 years after it was made, a pristinely restored Manthan received a red-carpet world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival last year.

Restored by Film Heritage Foundation at Prasad Corporation Pvt. Ltd.’s Post – Studios, Chennai and L’Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, in association with Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd., the cinematographer Govind Nihalani and the director Shyam Benegal.

Reborn India Film (RIF) is a dynamic organization dedicated to the celebration of cinema through its annual film festivals and round-the-clock programs. Each year, we curate an eclectic lineup of screenings, workshops, podcasts, and more, providing a platform for filmmakers, industry professionals, and audiences to engage, learn, and connect. As a production house, RIF specializes in line production, offering comprehensive services to bring film projects to life. With a passion for storytelling and a commitment to excellence, RIF continues to push boundaries, inspire creativity, and shape the future of Indian cinema.

Mghila Mountain, Tunisia, November 2015. When a jihadist group attacks two very young shepherds, 14-year-old Ashraf is forced to take a macabre message back to his family. Traumatised and trying not to lose his mind, Ashraf finds himself confronted with the powerlessness of his elders, and abandoned by the authorities. Inspired by true events, Red Path is a dream-like plunge into the wounded psyche of a child and his incredible ability to overcome trauma.

The Garden Cinema View:

Between opening with a trek exploring the breathtaking Mghila Mountain, and the film's quiet moments of reflection between two young shepherds, the violence that ruptures Red Path is profoundly shocking. The proceeding action immerses the audience in the trauma of the story's young protagonist and his community. The sense of injustice, and of a life spent trapped in the middle of forces of violence, is both enraging and very sad. There is some sense of catharsis and processing within this brutal world, and strong visual motifs and naturalistic performances from the cast help deliver the film’s sobering and important message.  

The screening on Saturday 7 June will be followed by an online Q&A with the director Lou Ye, moderated by Tony Rayns. The screening on Saturday 21 June will be introduced by Filming East Festival programmer Tu Yao.

These screenings are part of 'Lou Ye: Chaotic Desires', a special presentation by the Chinese Cinema Project dedicated to one of China’s great contemporary auteurs, and featuring a collection of Lou's key works across two decades, alongside the release of his new title An Unfinished Film.

1941. Since the Japanese occupation, China has become a wartime intelligence battlefield for the Allies and the Axis Powers. Iconic actress Jean Yu returns to Shanghai, ostensibly to appear in the play 'Saturday Fiction' directed by her former lover. But what is her true aim? To free her ex-husband? To gather intelligence for the Allied Forces? To work for her adoptive father? Or to escape from war with her lover? As she embarks on her mission, with friends ever more difficult to distinguish from undercover agents, as everything spirals out of control, Jean Yu starts to question whether to reveal what she has learned about the imminent Pearl Harbor attack.

The screening on 22 July will be introduced by Aagya Pradhan.

The second feature from writer-director Min Bahadur Bham, following 2015’s The Black Hen – Nepal’s official Oscars entry and a Venice Critics Week winner.

In the heart of the Nepalese Himalayas, the spirited Pema embraces a polyandrous marriage with Tashi and his two younger brothers. They initially lead a harmonious life, but when Tashi fails to return from a trading trip, the legitimacy of Pema’s unborn child is questioned by her community. Determined to prove her love and purity, she embarks on a quest to find Tashi.  Accompanied by her brother-in-law, her now de facto spouse Karma, who is a monk, she embarks on a journey into the unforgiving wilderness to find him, evolving into a quest of self-discovery and liberation.

Belinale 2024- Competition

Locarno- Piazza Grande

Aagya Pradhan is a freelance film programmer based in London. Their interest lies in cinema from the South Asian diaspora, centred on films exploring identity and the complexities of cultural heritage. Their work has also focused on highlighting Nepali voices in cinema, particularly of Nepali Women filmmakers as captured in the Hamro Katha shorts programme, curated for the ICO's Cinema of Ideas.

The grumpy ogre Shrek finds his swap overrun with magical creatures exiled by a villanous lord. In exchange for his home back, Shrek agrees to go on a quest to rescue a princess.

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 will feature a digital introduction by curator Tuyết Vân Huỳnh.

The rare and much-anticipated Hát Giữa Chiều Mưa (Singing in the Rainy Afternoon), is a cinematic gem from 1990 that blends drama, humor, and radiant style. This hidden masterpiece, a hallmark of “instant noodle cinema” is a story of love, music, loss, and resilience, featuring Mai, a young woman who loses her sight in a fireworks accident and must navigate the pain of her father’s thirst for revenge, while holding on to the emotional strength that music offers. The film culminates in a whimsical, moving musical finale set in the rain, a moment of joy and transcendence.

Presented by Tuyết Vân Huỳnh

With support from Arts Council England, the British Council Connections Through Culture programme, and the BFI Audience Projects Fund, awarding funds from the National Lottery.

In collaboration with TPD: The Centre for Assistance and Development of Movie Talents, the Vietnam Film Institute and Varan Hanoi.

This is a fundraiser screening. It will be preceded by a small crafts souk in the bar, and a short performance by Lebanese poet Rayanne Chami, and an introduction by the programmers. You'll have a chance to purchase Lebanese wine and Al Rifai nuts.

A raw and riveting documentary about Slave to Sirens, the Middle East’s first all-woman thrash metal band.

Set against the backdrop of Lebanon’s political and economic turmoil, Sirens explores what it means to be a musician in a country where censorship constantly looms. Struggling to draw local crowds and enduring relentless online abuse, the band pushes forward, undeterred. Director Rita Baghdadi deftly weaves scenes of protest with the band’s internal struggles, capturing their strength in every frame while exposing a society eager to silence them. The result is an inspirational yet deeply meditative film that serves as a fierce testament to freedom, female solidarity, and the power of our voices.

The film was part of the official selection at Sundance, CPH:DOX, Guadalajara and Thessaloniki film festivals, amongst others.

We are showing Sirens in collaboration with film programmer Caroline Cassin to raise funds for two grassroots organisations in Lebanon: Haven for Artists, a feminist, decolonial initiative supporting cultural workers, and Marsam Alhakaya, a tuition-free 2D animation programme for refugees and marginalised communities in the country.

We will be selling handmade items by Viridiana Marin and Chachoulie by Rima, beautiful photographs of Lebanon by Rabih Arasoghli, and ceramics by Amina Rawat

Event timings:

15:30-16:30 Crafts and snacks for sale in the Atrium Bar

16:30-16:45 Poetry and introduction

16:45-18:05 Screening of Sirens

We are adding Lebanese Château Kefraya Les Bretèches White wine and mixed nuts from Al Rifai to our bar menu throughout the season.

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.

Often overlooked, thresholds are the spaces in between: a doorway, a border or a pause. In architecture, a threshold marks the moment we pass from one place to another. It's both connector and divider that holds tension and potential. More than a physical transition, it's a state of ambiguity where boundaries blur and everything feels possible.

In film, thresholds take many forms. A simple door can lead a character into another room, shifting the mood and moving the story forward. Directors use these moments to collapse boundaries between spaces, between realities and even between the screen and the viewer. Sometimes we’re drawn in and at others we are pushed to reflect on our own role in the act of watching.

This event explores thresholds as spaces of transformation between conscious and unconscious, interior and exterior, seen and unseen.

Speakers include:

Anissa Colaco Souza

Malltwen Freeman

Space Popular

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

Connie is fifteen, bored, and beautiful—with nothing much to do but hang around the mall, try on new identities, and flirt with boys. Her mother doesn’t understand her, her sister resents her, and the summer stretches out in every direction. Then a strange older man pulls up in a gold convertible...

Based on a Joyce Carol Oates story and starring baby Laura Dern, Smooth Talk is all about the danger of an endless summer afternoon. Sun-drenched and deeply unsettling, it’s a female-directed, teen-girl centred masterclass in dreamy dread.

Trigger Warning: Contains sexual threat

Summertime Sadness

Long, hot summers have always been fertile ground for anxiety, danger and despair on screen. From holiday horrors to angsty coming-of-age tales, summertime sadness is a microgenre all on its own. Even the way we watch – sitting in a dark room – goes against the spirit of warm, sunny days. Escape the packed pubs, hay fever, and heatwave irritability, and come wallow with Zodiac Film Club in a mini-season of sad girl summer classics that lull you with sunshine... then give you a shock.

A Q&A fundraiser with three of the UK's leading female screenwriters as they step down from executive roles in the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.

Join Olivia Hetreed (GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS), Andrea Gibb (SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS, MISS AUSTEN, ELIZABETH IS MISSING) and Line Langebek (THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE, I'LL COME RUNNING) for an informative and inspiring Q&A as they discuss their careers to date, and how they’ve balanced this with their long involvement with the WGGB, and mentoring and supporting other writers.

50% of the proceeds from this event will go to support the WGGB Welfare Fund.

Join members of the WGGB Film Committee in the bar afterwards to learn more about the work of the trade union for UK writers.

About the speakers

Olivia Hetreed is the screenwriter of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING and WUTHERING HEIGHTS. International films include FINDING ALTAMIRA, starring Antonio Banderas, Iraqi Oscar entry THE JOURNEY, and Bosnia’s first animated feature, BIRDS LIKE US. MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS, starring Lesley Manville and Isabelle Huppert, is a global box office hit. Olivia is an international mentor of new writing, with a particular focus on under-represented writers. As President of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, she led campaigns on bullying & harassment, gender equality and greater visibility for screenwriters.

Scottish screenwriter Andrea Gibb’s most recent TV work is MISS AUSTEN, a four-part adaptation of the Gill Hornby novel, for the BBC and PBS, which has received glowing reviews. She adapted Andrew O’Hagan’s bestselling novel MAYFLIES, which aired on BBC in 2022 to rave reviews, and won Best Scripted Television Drama at the 2023 Scottish BAFTAs. She won an RTS Scotland writing award and was nominated for a BAFTA Television award for her single TV film adaptation of Emma Healey’s book ELIZABETH IS MISSING for STV and BBC in 2020. Some of her other credits include SANDITON, CALL THE MIDWIFE, and SWALLOWS & AMAZONS (BBC Films). She won Scottish Screen Filmmaker of the year award for her first two feature screenplays, DEAR FRANKIE and AFTERLIFE, which also garnered a BAFTA Carl Foreman (for Best Outstanding Debut) award nomination.

Danish-born screenwriter Line Langebek’s recent feature film, THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE, was in competition in Cannes 2024, nominated for a Golden Globe and Academy Award and for Best Screenplay at the EFAs 2024. It won an Eagle for Best Screenplay at the Polish Film Awards. Other credits include I’LL COME RUNNING, SINK OR SWIM, FIELD STUDY and ROYALS NEXT DOOR. In 2015, Line co-founded Raising Films, to support greater diversity and campaign for parents and carers in the UK film & TV industry. She is an active member of the WGGB’s Film Committee and as part of the Dissonant Futures Collective, she has worked on an ACE-funded project about climate grief.

The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain is the trade union for professional writers in the UK working in TV, film, theatre, audio, books, poetry, comedy, animation and videogames. Our members also include emerging and aspiring writers, including students. If you’re a writer in the UK – whether you have professional credits or not – we’re your union!  Our movement is growing and our community of writers is working collectively to campaign for a better, fairer industry and improve the pay and conditions of all writers.

The screening on 8 June will be introduced by Chris Berry (KCL).

These screenings are part of 'Lou Ye: Chaotic Desires', a special presentation by the Chinese Cinema Project dedicated to one of China’s great contemporary auteurs, and featuring a collection of Lou's key works across two decades, alongside the release of his new title An Unfinished Film.

A poignant and romantic queer drama whose outtakes and behind-the-scenes footages are featured in Lou Ye’s latest docufiction work An Unfinished Film.

Hired to spy on a philandering husband, Luo Haitao soon becomes entangled in a clandestine affair with the other man. Along with Luo's girlfriend, they succumb to the delirium of drunken nights, but how long can their tryst last?

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side. Starring Toshiro Mifune as the rookie cop and Takashi Shimura as the seasoned detective who keeps him on the right side of the law, Stray Dog goes beyond crime thriller, probing the squalid world of postwar Japan and the nature of the criminal mind

In a Sudan torn apart by years of war, become immersed in the daily fight of young Sudanese activists, yearning for freedom and reform. Both harrowing and rousing, their fight reminds us of the human ability to find hope in the most oppressive of circumstances. Sudan, Remember Us bears witness to a lost revolution and within it unearths a tribute to the power of creativity as a tool of survival and resistance.

These screenings are part of 'Lou Ye: Chaotic Desires', a special presentation dedicated to one of China’s great contemporary auteurs, and featuring a collection of Lou's key works across two decades, alongside the release of his new title An Unfinished Film.

China, 1989. Two young lovers play out their complex, erotic, love/hate relationship against a Chinese volatile backdrop of political unrest. Beautiful Yu Hong leaves her village, her family and her boyfriend to study in Beijing, where she discovers a world of intense sexual and emotional experimentation, and falls madly in love with fellow student Zhou Wei. Their relationship becomes one of dangerous games, as all around them, their fellow students begin to demonstrate, demanding democracy and freedom.

4K restoration. These screenings are part of 'Lou Ye: Chaotic Desires', a special presentation by the Chinese Cinema Project dedicated to one of China’s great contemporary auteurs, and featuring a collection of Lou's key works across two decades, alongside the release of his new title An Unfinished Film.

The feature will be preceded by the short film In Shanghai (2001, 17 mins), a personal portrait of Lou Ye's hometown, and the setting of Suzhou River.

On the banks of the Suzhou River, which winds precariously through Shanghai, Marda falls in love with a beautiful young woman named Moudan. When he tries to kidnap her in order to demand ransom money from her rich father, she escapes, jumping in to the river and disappearing forever. Marda serves a three-year jail sentence for his attempted crime. Upon his release, he meets a woman that looks exactly like Moudan, named MeiMei.

Paul Verhoeven's last film produced in the Netherlands before he created his Hollywood classics Robocop and Total Recall, invites us into the twisted psyche of Gerard Reve, a troubled writer whose life becomes entangled with mysterious women, murder, and the supernatural. As Reve spirals into a world of erotic desire and deceit, he must navigate the blurred lines between reality and fantasy to uncover the truth. Indulge your senses, challenge your perceptions, and join us for The 4th Man.

Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with The American Friend, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game. Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ill German everyman, played by Bruno Ganz, in a seedy criminal underworld as revenge for a personal slight - but when the two become embroiled in an ever-deepening murder plot, they form an unlikely bond. Filmed on location in Hamburg and Paris, with some scenes shot in grimy, late-seventies New York City, Wenders’s international breakout is a stripped-down crime story that mixes West German and American film flavors, and it features cameos by filmmakers Jean Eustache, Samuel Fuller, and Nicholas Ray.

This Cannes prize-winning documentary takes us on an intimate and emotional journey with the travelling cinemas of India, which yearly bring the wonder of the movies to faraway villages. Filmed over five years, it accompanies a shrewd exhibitor, a benevolent showman and a maverick projector mechanic who all bear a beautiful burden: to keep the last travelling cinemas of the world running.

Our screening on Thursday 26 June will be introduced by Jinhee Choi (KCL).

An eerie, foreboding hospital is the setting for this tense psychological thriller from one of the most acclaimed genre filmmakers of the South Korea Golden Age. An ambitious doctor, set to wed the hospital owner’s daughter, has designs on being chief surgeon. However, when his affair with one of the nurses puts those plans in jeopardy, he takes diabolical steps to ensure his plans aren’t thwarted. Kim Jin-gyu turns in an uncharacteristically menacing performance, while Moon Jeong-sook shines as the nurse who will not be silenced.

The Encampments is a brave and powerful new documentary following the Palestine solidarity protests that erupted across university campuses in 2024.

With gripping footage of the protesters’ struggle, the film shows the peaceful nature of the movement and the momentous challenges it faces. Featuring detained activist Mahmoud Khalil, alongside professors, whistleblowers and organisers, the film captures the deeper stakes of a historic moment that continues to reverberate across the globe.

Timely, urgent and filled with a clear-eyed fury, The Encampments is a rallying cry for those who refuse to be silenced and a message of hope for the people of Palestine.

The Garden Cinema View:

A rousing, enraging, but ultimately hopeful record of the student encampments that mushroomed around the world, following the lead of - initially - a few dozen students at Columbia University. The Encampments tracks student organisers demanding divestment on the part of their universities from companies involved in the sale of weapons to Israel, and subsequently facing attacks from Zionist groups and police violence, as they attempt to hold these places of learning to account.

Practically made in real time and with a sense of urgency, the documentary highlights the way academic institutions are enmeshed with these companies, thereby exposing their complicity in both the killing of Palestinian civilians and the repression of their own students whose interests they are meant to defend. We hear from Palestinian journalists on the ground in Gaza, as well as students and activists from the four corners of the world, which, if nothing else, leaves us with a sense of hope driven by how connected and global the movement for justice and accountability has become.  

“The forest is alive. It will only die if the whites persist in destroying it. (...) Then we will die, one after another, both whites and us. All the shamans will eventually die. When there are no more of them alive to uphold the sky, it will collapse.”- Davi Kopenawa

In collaboration with Brazil’s indigenous Yanomami people, The Falling Sky follows the Yanomami leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa as he fights to return the world to balance in closely observed rituals and trenchant comments on the ruthless logic of a materialistic outside culture. Illegal logging, gold mining, and the deadly mix of epidemics these intrusions spread threaten the existence of the Yanomami.

Based on an acute understanding of geopolitical forces, Davi Kopenawa holds up a mirror to capitalist societies of “the merchandise people” and the unsustainable lifestyle of the so-called “developed countries” that threatens the survival of humanity as a whole.

The film is a presentation of the cosmology of the Yanomami people, the work of the shamans to hold up the sky and heal the world from the diseases produced by non-indigenous people, illegal mining, the siege promoted by the ‘people of merchandise’ and the revenge of the Earth.

The screening will be preceded by an introduction by the Cine Brazil.

Survival International also have copies of the book that inspired the film on sale in the Atrium Bar from 19:00.

The Fisherman and the Banker is a modern-day David and Goliath tale, chronicling a fishing community in India’s Gulf of Kutch as they take on the World Bank’s private lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), for funding a coal-fired power plant that threatens their way of life. Filmed over a decade, the documentary captures the fishermen’s fight against industrial encroachment and their alliance with US lawyers to file a groundbreaking lawsuit, which reaches the US Supreme Court in 2018. With a poetic and observational lens, the film explores their legal battle and profound bond with the environment, posing a powerful question: can the resilience of a community rewrite the rules of global power—or will the might of corporations and institutions crush their fight for justice?

“Compelling…witnesses an astonishing fight for justice against all odds”

– The Guardian

“Moving and necessary. A David and Goliath story for an age that desperately needs such stories, on our screens and in our hearts, to revive hope that justice is not doomed in the face of finance “

– Yanis Varoufakis

The film was nominated for best feature film at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Sheena Sumaria.

Sheena Sumaria, a British-Gujarati documentary filmmaker, transitioned from a career in international development to filmmaking. With degrees in Economics and Development Studies from Cambridge and SOAS, her passion for social justice drives her work. She began with “Still Standing,” highlighting life in Medellin’s slums, followed by films on the Chilean student uprising and the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. Her short films address various social issues, including Brexit and homelessness.

While trying to lead a quiet suburban life, a family of undercover superheroes are thrown back into the world of super-heroism when Mr Incredible receives a mysterious communication summoning him to a remote island for a top-secret mission.

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.

An emotional and hilarious story with a life-affirming message, The Last Journey is a cinematic experience that explores a loving son’s attempts to coax his aging father into reengaging with life by embarking on a joyous, heartfelt road trip through the South of France.

The Garden Cinema View:

Filip & Frederick are an extremely popular TV double act in their native Sweden, and that style permeates The Last Journey which feels, at times, like an extended episode of television. There are a number of sequences that feel artificially constructed, and are designed to recreate Frederick’s father Lars’ memories of France - a bit like Good Bye, Lenin!. Beneath these sometimes awkwardly construed moments, and the documentary's sentimental music, is Lars himself. It is very touching to watch a man, who lived a good life, undertake a clearly very demanding trip. And it is hard not to be moved when witnessing his seemingly authentic emotional reactions to places, sights, and music that has touched his life.

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

This delightful selection of films includes a bouncy song about the unlimited contents of a hippie's bag, a magical ping-pong tournament, peculiar hedgehogs, happy hippos, a fox who can play the most beautiful tunes on a violin and many more charming stories.

For more information about the London International Animation Festival and our programmes please check out our website at https://liaf.org.uk/

Cornershop “What did the Hippie have in his bag?”

Director: Rude, UK, 2011, 4’15

He had be-bop, German jazz, a dragon that was half-Welsh and a massive, massive cake amongst other things.

Magic Cube and Ping Pong

Director: Lei Lei, China, 2009, 4’15

In the city of the Magic Cube there is a ping-pong tournament.

Dunder

Director: Endre Skandfer, Norway, 2016, 10’00

Bulder, a wild and funny monster, is playing with his best friend Modika. Their snowball fight is interrupted when quiet Lex invites Modika to study snowflakes.

The Adventure Of The Afternoon

Director: Vance Yang, Stella Huang, Taiwan, 7’45, 2016

One beautiful afternoon, a little boy meets an unexpected friend, with whom he starts an adventurous journey.

The Kid And The Hedgehog

Director: Marc Riba, Anna Solanas, Spain, 3’00, 2016

A kid is climbing a hill. On the hill he’s about to meet a very peculiar hedgehog.

Spider Web or The Gossamer

Director: Natalia Chernysheva, Russia, 4’05, 2016

A mutual friendship is weaved when a small spider finds inspiration in a woman's knitting patterns.

Hippo and Juice

Director: Alexey Minchenok, Russia, 2’30, 2015

Hippo works as an airline pilot and he lives in a comfortable little house, where his refrigerator is always stocked with a blueberry pie and a jug full of juice.

The Fox Who Could Play the Violin

Director: Natalya Nilova, Russia, 10’50, 2015

The fox can play the violin really well – and the other woodland animals start to take notice.

Tekkol

Director: Jorn Leeuwerink, Netherlands, 2017, 2’00

A dog decides to help a hen and her chicks in crossing the river, but then he lets all kinds of animals walk all over him.

The Birdie

Director: Yekaterina Filippova, Russia, 2’00, 2015

Once upon a time the birdie met a hippo. They became friends and built a lovely house together.

Murky Papers

Director: Heta Jokinen, Finland, 2011, 8’00

A woman is reading but her cutout paper is determined to have its own way.

Hu Lulu, Hong longlong, Hua lala

Director: Lei Lei, China, 2010, 5’35

A small village is disrupted by heavy rain which threatens to disrupt the people’s peaceful lives.

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 bid to secure his family’s legacy, an international tycoon brings his nun-daughter into his most daring scheme yet in this tale of espionage and intrigue from legendary filmmaker Wes Anderson.

The Garden Cinema View:

With pastel colours, deadpan humour, and an all-star cast playing it with typical emotional detachment, The Phoenician Scheme feels like Anderson has (once again) made a pastiche of Wes Anderson. Unlike Asteroid City though, Anderson's latest offering makes no pretence of exploring profound philosophical themes. Instead, he uses the redemption story of business tycoon Zsa-zsa Korda (played with deadpan gusto by Benicio Del Toro) as an excuse to unleash his remarkable comedic instincts and showcase his artistic prowess.

Featuring cartoonish airplanes drifting alongside puffy clouds, harmless crashes, and grenades that never detonate, the film evokes the aesthetics of animation more than any of his previous works. With a parade of cameo appearances (Bryan Cranston, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson) dressed in outrageously funny costumes and delivering absurd lines with impeccable timing, together with finely tuned, sharp camera movements, the film provides a highly entertaining viewing experience.

There are seeds of larger concepts such as corruption, hubris, and redemption, but Anderson doesn't seem eager to develop these ideas further. Nevertheless, the level of craftsmanship is exceptionally high, and it's clear that Anderson had a blast making it!

Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Conservatory in Vienna. In her early forties, she lives at home, cooped up with her mother, whose influence Erika escapes only on her regular visits to porn cinemas and peepshows. Her sexuality is an affair of morbid voyeurism and masochistic self-mutilation. Erika and life travel separate paths. Until one day, one of her students gets it into his head to seduce her...

This UK premiere of the director's cut of The Shadow Play is presented in a double bill with Ma Yingli’s Behind the Dream: A Documentary on The Shadow Play on Saturday 14 June. Due to popular demand, an extra screening of The Shadow Play is added on 13 July.

All screenings are part of 'Lou Ye: Chaotic Desires', a special presentation by the Chinese Cinema Project dedicated to one of China’s great contemporary auteurs, and featuring a collection of Lou's key works across two decades, alongside the release of his new title An Unfinished Film.

Yang Jiadong, a naive rookie cop, witnesses the death of a controversial real estate tycoon. He immediately begins investigation, but is brutally dismissed from his job and pursued by unknown enemies. Escaping to Hong Kong, he encounters the daughter of the deceased victim. With her help, he continues his search for answers, but finds himself falling into a trap of love.

Karsh, a creative entrepreneur who lost his spouse, develops a machine designed to communicate with deceased individuals.

The Garden Cinema View:

You'll likely know within a few minutes whether The Shrouds is to your taste. That is to say whether you can tune into Cronenberg's peculiar register of tone and dialogue that evokes both J.G. Ballard and Don DeLillo (two authors that Cronenberg has adapted brilliantly). This is a painfully autobiographical work for Cronenberg, who lost his wife in 2017. His onscreen avatar is an elegant Vincent Cassel, bearing a rather uncanny physical resemblance to the legendary director.

This is certainly a mournful and moving film, but also contains a subversive strain of humour, and a peculiar eroticism (Ballard smiles in his grave). As The Shrouds shifts into a twisty mediation on conspiracy theories (DeLillo nods approvingly), the narrative threatens to collapse. But, perhaps the nature of conspiracy itself means the core of this intelligent, yet corporeal film, inevitably remains something of a mystery.

A soul-searching story about three friends, Wolf, Alan and Sophie, who have different conditions of deafness. When Sophie graduates from the university and starts a new job, she realises she has been struggling to be seen as normal. Tensions grow between the three friends as they find themselves conflicting over how best to communicate with the world while remaining true to themselves.

A selection of 10 short films of different genres from UK and International filmmakers competing for awards at the London Vaporetto Shorts Film Festival.

Running Order:

Night Whispers, directed by Adrian León, 6’, UK

L’Acquario (The Aquarium), directed by Gianluca Zonta, 13’, Italy

The Image Seller, directed by Donavan Richard, 13’, Canada

Pas De Deux, directed by Sofia Soto, 13’, UK

House Hunters, directed by Joe Warner, 10’, UK

Fever, directed by Bianca Bothma, 10’, South Africa

A Few More Minutes Please, directed by Dylan Scott, 10’, UK

Period Party, directed by Georgia Brogan, 8’, Aaustralia

Tumbas Vecinas (Neighboring Graves), directed by José Antonio Gutierez, 16’, Spain

Applause, Marie Andrée Lemaire, 5 mins, UK

The program will be followed by networking and the announcement of the winners at the bar.

Some of the films deal with issues that may be sensitive or distressing to some viewers.

Content includes:

Depictions of emotional distress, suicide, blood, depression, death, sex, flashing images and intense soundtracks.

Viewer discretion is advised.

Timings

18:30-20:23: Screening

20:23-21:30pm Networking + Winners Announced

Book for both this screening and the 16:30 screening and a £2 discount will be applied at the checkout.

A selection of 5 short films from filmmakers in the Vaporetto Films community. Vaporetto Picks is an opportunity for our audience to discover new talent in film and for these filmmakers to share their latest work in a celebratory, non-competitive setting.

Running Order:

Split Ends, directed by Barrett Loades, 17’, UK

Lo Natural, directed by Rafael Nieto, 4’, Spain

Twenty Dollars, directed by Francisco Vargas Luz, 11’, Portugal

Bi-Nocular Panic, directed by Anouk Witkowska Hiffler, 7’, UK

And a surprise film!

After the screening we are holding a pitching activity for filmmakers. You will have the opportunity to pitch an idea for a film in front of the festival judges and other industry guests for feedback. Stay tuned on the @vaporettofilms instagram for more info on how to participate.

Timings

16:00: Screening

17:00-17:10: Quick break

17:10-18:00 Project Pitching

Book for this screening and the 18:30 Competition screening and a £2 discount will be applied at the checkout.

A treasure of Mexico’s cinematic golden age, this deliriously plotted blend of gritty crime film, heart-tugging maternal melodrama, and mambo musical is a dazzling showcase for iconic star Ninón Sevilla. She brings fierce charisma and fiery strength to her role as a rumbera - a female nightclub dancer - who gives up everything to raise an abandoned boy, whom she must protect from his ruthless gangster father. Directed at a dizzying pace by filmmaking titan Emilio Fernández, and shot in stylish chiaroscuro by renowned cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa amid smoky dance halls and atmospherically seedy underworld haunts, Victims of Sin is a ferociously entertaining female-powered noir pulsing with the intoxicating rhythms of some of Latin America’s most legendary musical stars.

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

Recommended for ages 9+

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

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

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

This film was chosen as Films of Resistance's pick for the Lebanese season, to highlight the way Lebanese and Palestinian communities are interconnected.

This screening will be introduced by Lebanese-Palestinian curator Taghrid Choucair.

In this award-winning documentary, directors Masri and Chamoun focus on the women who played a crucial role in fighting the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. Preserving their stories on camera, Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon is a poignant documentary about courage, resistance, and hope.

Contemporary films in cinema from the Middle East often find inspiration in the history of the country. As part of this season on New Lebanese Cinema, it was therefore important to include a film which celebrates key players in the history of the Lebanese and Palestinian people and how their fates have been, and continue to be, interconnected.

Wild Flowers: Women of South Lebanon could be considered as a sister act to Heiny Srour's Leila and the Wolves (1984), in the way that Mai Masri gives us an intimate look inside the experiences lived by guerilla groups of Lebanese and Palestinian women in South Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War and Israeli occupation. The result is a gentle yet powerful recollection of the fight and the pain lived by those women, contrasted by scenes of joy, desires and creativity captured with compassion and accuracy by Mai Masri's camera.

Mai Masri is one of the pioneers of Palestinian documentary, with most of her work focusing on the linked histories of Lebanon and Palestine. Her films have been screened internationally and won over 90 awards. She is mostly recognised for her poetic and humanistic approach, centering women and children in her stories. Mai worked closely with her late husband Lebanese filmmaker Jean Chamoun and earned international acclaim with her films, including Children of Fire, Woman for Her Time, Children of Shatila, and Beirut Diaries.

Films of Resistance are a collective offering a decentralised screening and fundraising resource. All funds raised through their screenings are reinvested into Palestinian filmmaking.