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3 days ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Katie McCabeInterviews |Katie McCabe |Rachel Pronger |Isabel Stevens
The Australian stop-motion animator discusses his latest film, a ‘clayography’ of a snail-loving hoarder whose difficult life has caused her to retreat into her shell. 30 May 2025Sadness is Adam Elliot’s happy place. In his stop-motion animated films, his oddball characters face all manner of misfortunes – a life-threatening lightning strike and testicular cancer for Harvey Krumpet (2003), bully-inflicted hearing loss for Ernie Biscuit (2015), despairing loneliness for Mary and Max (2009).
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4 days ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Rachel Pronger |Isabel Stevens |Sam Wigley |Josh Slater-Williams
How do you plan a retrospective around a filmmaker with a limited body of work? This question lies at the heart of Wanda and Beyond: The World of Barbara Loden, a new season screening at BFI Southbank this June. Many fans of feminist and US independent cinema will have heard of Wanda, a low budget 1970 US indie road movie, and the sole directorial feature of actor turned filmmaker Barbara Loden.
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Josh Slater-Williams |Blake Simons |Rogan Graham |Rōgan Graham |Rachel Pronger
This article contains spoilers for the first two seasons of Gangs of London. On an early April morning in 2024, I arrive at a gated warehouse in Aberfeldy Village in east London. It’s very windy and noisy on the main road outside, but things on the premises are oddly quiet for the set of one of the more maximalist programmes to emerge from British television this century.
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Blake Simons |Rogan Graham |Rōgan Graham |Rachel Pronger |Lou Thomas
A producer, screenwriter, scholar, former studio head and director, James Schamus has an extensive, storied CV. His career was launched along with that of Taiwanese director Ang Lee, with whom he co-wrote the ‘Father Knows Best’ trilogy of Pushing Hands (1991), The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), and produced countless others.
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Rogan Graham |Rōgan Graham |Rachel Pronger |Lou Thomas |Josh Slater-Williams
In the follow-up to their 2019 relationship drama Test Pattern, director Shatara Michelle Ford continues their streak of humanist, political filmmaking. Where Test Pattern saw an interracial couple contend with sexual assault and the near impossibility of obtaining a rape kit in Texas, Dreams in Nightmares centres on a friendship group of Black queer femmes embarking on a trip across the states to reconnect with a friend who has fallen off the grid.
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2 months ago | 
bfi.org.uk | Arjun Sajip |Anton Bitel |Annabel Jackson |Rachel Pronger
What does it say about India that so many recent films from the subcontinent feature key scenes set on trains? Kiran Rao’s charming comedy Laapataa Ladies (2023) begins with a case of mistaken identity in the carriage of a sleeper train; almost all of Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s visceral thriller Kill (2023) is set on board a high-speed locomotive; and the Mumbai metro is a recurring location in last year’s Grand Prix winner at Cannes, All We Imagine as Light.
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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 28, 2025 | 
bfi.org.uk | Jessica Kiang |Sam Wigley |Rachel Pronger
Anderson sparkles as the older Vegas showgirl Shelly, but Gia Coppola’s film is overly dependent on the blurred lines between its character and star. 28 February 2025As much as it loves tearing them down, Hollywood loves to build its icons back up. Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is a small, breathy indie that’s precision-tooled to kickstart the career resurrection of 1990s über-babe Pamela Anderson.
