BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Bye Bye Brazil

Carlos Diegues on ‘Bye Bye Brazil’ Bye Bye Brazil is a film about one country in decline and another that is taking its place. I cannot specify exactly what is ending and what is beginning, all I ...

May 9, 2026 |

The Margin

A rowing boat drifts towards the margin of São Paulo’s Tietê river. People on shore stare as it passes by; we might imagine that we are its passengers. This impression remains even after the boat m...

May 8, 2026 | Brazil on Film

Cronos

+ intro by Guillermo del Toro Fresh and bracing, del Toro’s feature debut announced the arrival of a strikingly original cinematic voice. Antiques dealer Jesús Gris discovers an ancient mechanical...

May 8, 2026 | Guillermo del Toro

Hollywood Shuffle

In a recent survey conducted by the Black American magazine Ebony, film historians and representative filmmakers were asked to list their personal selection of the ten best Black films of all time....

May 6, 2026 | Big Screen Classics

Blade II

The legendary superhero Blade was first introduced in the pages of Marvel comics and brought to life in the 1998 hit film, Blade. Producer Peter Frankfurt and screenwriter David S. Goyer’s working ...

May 4, 2026 | Guillermo del Toro

The Devil's Backbone

The Devil’s Backbone, director Guillermo del Toro’s masterly supernatural thriller set in an orphanage haunted by the ghost of a young boy, is the latest in a distinguished line of features explori...

May 2, 2026 | Guillermo del Toro

Black God, White Devil

The cinema novo movement of the 1960s was envisioned as a challenge to the conventions that had been imported into Brazilian filmmaking through the influence of Hollywood. In his manifesto of 1965,...

May 2, 2026 | Brazil on Film

The Way Back

With a night-time blizzard as cover, seven prisoners, caught up in Stalin’s Reign of Terror, escape a Soviet Gulag in 1940. They are now free men and, almost certainly, dead men… for their impendin...

April 26, 2026 | Finding Your Way
The Films of Peter Weir

The Razor's Edge

Jocelyne Saab on ‘The Razor’s Edge’ This film represents four years work but also a struggle against war. Whether in France or Lebanon, no-one on the production side of things was willing to believ...

April 20, 2026 | Restored

Kinaesthesia

+ Q&A with director Gerald Fox In the small canon of filmmakers basing characters in their work on real teachers they once had, few examples may prove as flattering and charming as what BAFTA ...

April 17, 2026 | Preview

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. It’s not uncommon for films about talented individuals to position personal and professional fulfilment as sworn opponents. Fun and ...

April 17, 2026 | The Cinematic Life of Boxing

The German Retreat and Battle of Arras

+ intro by Dr Toby Haggith of Imperial War Museums The German Retreat and Battle of Arras records the British Army’s big Easter offensive on the Western Front during the First World War. The third...

April 12, 2026 | Silent Cinema

Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society is a compelling story about courage and self-awakening set against a rare and unusual backdrop: poetry and romanticism. Of paramount importance to the filmmakers was choosing a d...

April 11, 2026 | Finding Your Way
The Films of Peter Weir

The Fighter

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Inspired by an incredible true story, comes the gritty, affectionately humorous, yet stirring comeback tale of the unlikely boxing h...

April 9, 2026 | The Cinematic Life of Boxing

Million Dollar Baby

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. ‘It isn’t really a boxing story,’ Clint Eastwood has remarked about his new film. But then, when are boxing films ever just about th...

April 8, 2026 | The Cinematic Life of Boxing

A Hard Day's Night

+ intro by broadcaster Samira Ahmed Shot in a documentary style inspired by the French New Wave, the Beatles’ first feature film captured Britain at a moment of social transformation, with a portr...

April 8, 2026 | Events

Fearless

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The conventions of the air-disaster movie are well established. First we’re introduced to a stock company of passengers and crew (ne...

April 7, 2026 | Finding Your Way
The Films of Peter Weir

Ed Wood

Only in America: Tim Burton, one of the most bankable filmmakers who ever lived, expends the credit of his success in sincere, black-and-white tribute to the obscure, tawdry vision of Edward D. Woo...

April 7, 2026 | Trash! The Wildest Films You’ve Ever Seen

Ali

Chicago 1964. Soul singer Sam Cooke is belting out an ecstatic medley of his most popular songs to an excited crowd in a nightclub; outside, the young boxer then known as Cassius Clay is doing road...

April 6, 2026 | The Cinematic Life of Boxing

The Year of Living Dangerously

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Peter Weir has always been a filmmaker in the grand manner. In retrospect, this was clear as early as The Cars That Ate Paris, where...

April 4, 2026 | Finding Your Way
The Films of Peter Weir

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