Sight & Sound

2 days ago | bfi.org.uk | Tara Judah |Adam Nayman |Francesca Steele |Nicolas Rapold

The Encampments uses the natural momentum of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University in New York as its structural spine. What began with 50 students pitching tents in the campus’s designated protest zone soon became a national and international movement of students occupying campus lawns, demanding university administrations divest from Israel and weapons manufacturing.

2 days ago | bfi.org.uk | Adam Nayman |Tara Judah |Francesca Steele |Nicolas Rapold

“Fight like a girl,” the heroine of Ballerina is instructed. Apparently, taken to its logical conclusion (to the extent that any movie set in the John Wick universe can be said to have a logical conclusion) this imperative means duelling with flamethrowers and using ice skates like bayonets, impressively inventive bits of carnage in a movie whose body count is in triple digits before the end of the first act.

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).

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.

1 week ago | bfi.org.uk | Francesca Steele |Nicolas Rapold |Jonathan Romney |Christina Newland

Like a jauntier Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), The Ballad of Wallis Island is an affecting comedy that contemplates the pains and pleasures of a musical career in freefall. And as it happens, like the Coen brothers’ film, it stars Carey Mulligan as a woman who represents the protagonist’s romantic failure. Tom Basden is McGwyer, an arrogant, embittered musician racked with self-loathing over desperate celebrity behaviour, like teeth-whitening.