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2 weeks ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Isabel Stevens |Sam Wigley |Josh Slater-Williams |Leigh Singer
More than just one of the world’s most bankable stars, Tom Cruise is an impresario and a powerful advocate for the big-screen theatrical experience. On the occasion of the BFI awarding him a Fellowship, he talks about his lifelong devotion to cinema and his unforgettable work with Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson. Updated: 23 May 2025It took just a pink shirt, white socks and a slide.
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2 weeks ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Sam Wigley |Josh Slater-Williams |Leigh Singer |Katie McCabe
Twenty-five years on from the premiere of In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wai looks back on the complicated genesis of his masterpiece of desire and restraint. 20 May 2025The film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 25 years ago, on 20 May 2000, was not the one that Wong Kar Wai had envisaged when he set out on the project sometime around 1997. Far from it. In the Mood for Love emerged from a succession of rapidly evolving projects. One was called Summer in Beijing – it was a comedy.
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3 weeks ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Josh Slater-Williams |Leigh Singer |Katie McCabe |Lou Thomas
To speak with Fran Rubel Kuzui is to feast on fascinating stories from the international art and film worlds of the late 20th century, to the extent that a full transcript of our entire unedited conversation could plausibly sustain a small fanzine. I mention that specific type of publication for the scrappiness inherent to its form, where vibrant tributes to cultural scenes are born from people pulling together what they can out of sheer love for their subject.
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1 month ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Leigh Singer |Katie McCabe |Lou Thomas |Sam Wigley
After Zoe Flower’s mother Geraldine died, she and her partner Simon Byrt discovered a case of treasured letters, photographs and memorabilia from Geraldine’s life in the 1960s and 70s: heartfelt correspondences from a life of travel and adventure, secrets and passionate love affairs, some even suggesting liaisons with spies… Sharing these with Byrt’s longtime musical collaborator, Icelandic-Italian songwriter Emiliana Torrini, provided the inspiration for an entire new album based on...
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Annabel Jackson |Anton Bitel |Rachel Pronger |Leigh Singer
The South African photographer Ernest Cole documented apartheid with a radical directness; but in even the most candid pictures of the photographer himself there is a feeling of reserve – of some critical fact being withheld. Furtive and austere, or half obscured by the subjects he hoped to catch, such photos of Cole register his tactful mode of observation, and finally the toll of a life spent laying bare political ills.
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Anton Bitel Festivals |Anton Bitel |Rachel Pronger |Leigh Singer
Reviewed from the 2025 Glasgow Film FestivalA middle-aged woman, visibly upset, gets into her car at night, turns on some classical music, drives into secluded woodland, and grabs a shovel to dig a grave. The opening sequence of Jed Hart’s Restless in fact comes near the film’s chronological end, announcing to viewers from the outset that what might otherwise seem a British kitchen-sink drama is headed somewhere darkly different.
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Mar 6, 2025 | 
bfi.org.uk | Rachel Pronger |Leigh Singer |Nicolas Rapold |David Katz
I first watched On Falling, Laura Carreira’s quietly devastating study of late-stage capitalism in action, on Black Friday. That serendipitous timing is the kind of poetic flourish this careful filmmaker would never go for; but to encounter the film for the first time surrounded by algorithmically targeted banner ads and flickering digital billboards provided a sobering counterpoint.
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Feb 4, 2025 | 
bfi.org.uk | Ren Scateni |Nicolas Rapold |Jason Anderson |Leigh Singer
Yamada Naoko has always been fascinated by music, and since the K-On! franchise – an anime series (2009-10) and film (2011) following the lives of four members of a high school’s light music club – it has remained central to her storytelling.
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Feb 4, 2025 | 
bfi.org.uk | Nicolas Rapold Festivals |Nicolas Rapold |Jason Anderson |Leigh Singer
Reviewed from the 2025 Sundance Film FestivalIt’s been a full 17 years since Mary Bronstein’s crackling debut feature, and the long wait has filtered into the simmering anxieties and ambient aggression of her full-on follow-up. Piercingly funny and far from ingratiating, If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You enters the subjective orbit of a Montauk therapist, Linda (Rose Byrne), as she takes care of her sick daughter in a woeful motel while her boat-captain husband is away.
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Jan 31, 2025 | 
bfi.org.uk | Jason Anderson |Leigh Singer |Guy Lodge |Anton Bitel
Kazik Radwanski’s wry Canadian romance follows Mara, a disillusioned creative writing professor, as she reconnects with a man from her past who’s now a successful author. 31 January 2025The protagonist in Kazik Radwanski’s fourth feature belongs to a particular subset of the stymied creatives we so often meet in movies: the writer who doesn’t write any more. Instead, Mara (Deragh Campbell) teaches it, albeit with a listless air that’s largely impervious to the enthusiasm of her keenest students.
