The BFI announce the programme for April 2025 at BFI Southbank, starting with MYRIAD VOICES: REFRAMING TAIWAN NEW CINEMA, curated by BFI London Film Festival programmer Hyun Jin Cho and presented in partnership with Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute and Ministry of Culture, Taiwan.
This innovative film movement was grounded in a collective spirit of creativity, playfulness, and humility. Yet, while auteurs like Edward Yang (TAIPEI STORY, THE TERRORISERS) and Hou Hsiao-Hsien (A CITY OF SADNESS, THE SANDWICH MAN) are internationally recognised, many pivotal figures remain lesser known. This season hopes to paint a fuller picture of this vibrant film movement and shift the spotlight towards lesser known but vital contributors, whose work helped shape this new cinematic expression, with around half of the features never having screened in UK cinemas before. Several films in the season, such as MY FAVORITE SEASON (Chen Kun-hou, 1985) and THIS LOVE OF MINE (Chang Yi, 1986), draw on feminist writing, centring women’s lives in a transitional space where tradition and aspiration collide. Boldly confronting both artistic and political challenges, Taiwan New Cinema continues to resonate within the world of cinema today.
A highlight of the season will be the Taiwan New Cinema Symposium on 12 April, which will feature a series of engaging talks and discussions that offer deeper insights and new interpretations of the movement, industry practices of the 1980s, feminist perspectives and the complexities of Taiwanese identities. Special guests at the symposium will include renowned filmmaker and founder of the Women Make Waves International Film Festival, Huang Yu-shan, whose narrative feature debut, AUTUMN TEMPEST (1988), features in the season. Also visiting for the season will be director and cinematographer Chen Kun-hou, who will introduce his films OUT OF THE BLUE (1984) on 10 April and MY FAVORITE SEASON (1985) on 11 April, as well as Hou Hsiao-hsien’s THE BOYS FROM FENGKUEI (1983) on 11 April, on which he was the cinematographer. The season follows on from CONVERSATIONS WITH A FRIEND: THE FILMS OF EDWARD YANG, taking place in February and March at BFI Southbank, dedicated to one of the most celebrated Taiwanese filmmakers, Edward Yang, and his visionary films.
Also taking place in April will be THE LONG STRANGE TRIPS OF WOJCIECH JERZY HAS, a retrospective of the celebrated Polish director behind the surrealist masterpiece THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM (1973) and the cult classic (and favourite of filmmakers including Luis Buñuel and Martin Scorsese), THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1964). The season, which coincides with what would have been his 100th birthday, is presented at BFI Southbank and the ICA as part of the twenty-third edition of the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival (6 March – 25 April), and also forms part of the UK/Poland Season 2025, organised by the British Council, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Cultural Institute in London. For many decades, Wojciech Has seemed perilously close to being recognised as a one-film director, so disproportionately famous was THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT. However, as dazzling as that masterpiece undoubtedly is, he also produced an impressive body of work comprising 14 features and 12 shorts, with his ostentatiously extravagant, quasi-Surrealist, distinctly Wellesian sensibility emerging fully formed with his 1957 feature debut THE NOOSE. Whether in black and white or colour, Academy or widescreen, Has was a great visual stylist and a superb director of actors (especially Zbigniew Cybulski, Gustaw Holoubek and Barbara Krafftówna – all Polish A-list talent). This complete retrospective, with all films recently restored, reveals Has’ strong affinity with themes of nostalgia and the inexorable pull of history, peppered with the filmmaker’s distinctive use of sarcasm. Selected titles screening at BFI Southbank will also be available to watch on BFI Player, including THE NOOSE (1957), THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1964) THE DOLL (1968) and THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM (1973).
Many great directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the 1930s to 1950s, radically changed course in the later years of their career – a theme that runs through the new season of the podcast You Must Remember This and a new BFI Southbank retrospective programmed by presenter and curator Karina Longworth, who will attend the season to introduce a number screenings. The men behind undeniable classics like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, MY FAIR LADY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, GIGI and PSYCHO, attempted – or were forced – to engage with massive changes in technology; shifts in attitudes towards race and gender, and a new generation of studio executives and audiences who could be sceptical that an ‘old man’ had anything to offer in a world obsessed with burning down the past and starting fresh. Some railed against the new ‘degenerate’ cinema made by, in Billy Wilder’s phrase, ‘the kids with beards’ and tried to preserve the status quo; others attempted to make films that confronted the generation gap and a transformed society – YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS PRESENTS… THE OLD MAN IS STILL ALIVE will be a season of late career work from Hollywood greats such as Frank Capra (A HOLE IN THE HEAD, 1959), John Ford (CHEYENNE AUTUMN, 1964), Alfred Hitchcock (FRENZY, 1972), Vincente Minnelli (FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, 1962), Otto Preminger (SUCH GOOD FRIENDS, 1971), William Wyler (THE LIBERATION OF L.B. JONES, 1970) and many others.
Completing the line-up of seasons for April will be BONG JOON HO: POWER AND PARADOX, charting the ascendancy of Korea’s most successful filmmaker, as the hotly anticipated MICKEY 17 (2025) is released in cinemas including BFI IMAX. Korean cinema can be divided into two eras: before and after the emergence of director Bong Joon Ho. With films that spanned everyday life and the realms of alternative or futuristic worlds, Bong Joon Ho has balanced critical acclaim with commercial heft. His themes explore power through paradox, where control meets chaos, and humour intertwines with horror, laying bare the intricacy of societal systems; with audiences better positioned to identify the structures of power that his characters appear oblivious to. This season, which is presented with the Korean Cultural Centre, includes all of Bong’s features: BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE (2000), MEMORIES OF MURDER (2003), THE HOST (2006), MOTHER (2009), SNOWPIERCER (2013), OKJA (2017) and PARASITE (2019), alongside an early short – INCOHERENCE (1994) – that reveals a brilliance fully formed, all of which have conjured a compelling and immensely entertaining cinematic universe. Black and white versions of MOTHER and PARASITE will both screen in the season (as will their colour counterparts), while a special event, The Creative Collaborations of Bong Joon on 24 April, will welcome two of the director’s close collaborators, production designer Lee Ha-jun and translator Darcy Paquet, to discuss working with director Bong on some of his most acclaimed films.
BFI Distribution releases screenings at BFI Southbank in April will include the Audience Award Winner at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival, Darren Thornton’s FOUR MOTHERS (2024), released in cinemas on 4 April. This wonderfully accessible riff on Gianni Di Gregorio’s 2008 film Mid-August Lunch, FOUR MOTHERS follows a queer up-and coming novelist, who is juggling work with caring for his elderly mother. Finally finding himself on the brink of success, he finds pressure mounting from his publisher to go on a US book tour, but plans hang in the balance when his three closest friends go off on an impromptu Pride holiday and leave their ageing mothers in his care. A perceptive look at mother and son dynamics and singledom, Thornton’s film manages to be moving, heatwarming, political and very, very funny.
Also released by BFI Distribution on 25 April is Dea Kulumbegashvili’s sophomore feature, APRIL (2024), which also premiered at the BFI London Film Festival last year. Nina is a top gynaecologist at a hospital in an ostensibly religious town in rural Georgia. When a new-born dies during a difficult birth, blame is directed at her, with accusations of malpractice coming from the grieving father. An internal investigation shows Nina’s values align with respecting women’s wishes regarding their bodies. Matters are complicated by the fact that she performs illegal abortions to women who need it; under scrutiny and in a compromised position, she continues providing them with care, stoically unshakeable in her beliefs and irrespective of personal risk. Kulumbegashvili’s affecting and atmospheric drama brilliantly examines the confluence between womanhood and existence.
TV events coming to BFI Southbank in April include a celebration of GREEN WING on 6 April, with a Q&A featuring the show’s creator Victoria Pile and actors Mark Heap, Pippa Heywood, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Tamsin Greig and Stephen Mangan. This special event celebrates the brilliant hospital sitcom’s 21st birthday with a screening, hand-picked clips and an on-stage interview with the series’ major players, from both sides of the screen. There will also be a TV preview of REUNION (Luke Snellin, 2025) on 3 April, followed by a Q&A. Matthew Gurney plays a Deaf man attempting to reintegrate into his Sheffield neighbourhood following a decade in prison. Set between the worlds of the hearing and non-hearing, this gripping emotional thriller charts one man’s path to redemption as he tries to confront his past and salvage a relationship with his daughter. The screening will be fully accessible, with BSL interpretation during the Q&A.
Film previews this month will include TREADING WATER (Gino Evans, 2024) on 14 April, followed by a Q&A with director Gino Evans and actors Jow Gill and Becky Bowe. Unfolding against the Manchester skyline, this impressive and compassionate feature debut presents an internalised yet strikingly realistic portrait of obsessive-compulsive disorder and obtrusive thoughts, as a man tries to take control of his mental health following his release from prison. On 31 March we preview LAST SWIM (Sasha Nathwani, 2024) followed by a Q&A. Sasha Nathwani’s astute, confident and freewheeling debut features a standout performance from Deba Hekmat that captures the tremulous energy of a group of teenagers on the cusp of adulthood. Meanwhile, a preview of THE BAD PATRIOTS on 29 April will include an intro and panel hosted by film historian Ian Christie and director Victor Fraga. The British mainstream media has bestowed some very unsavoury accolades on the world-renowned filmmaker Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the Labour Party. They now step forward to bust some old myths and challenge mainstream media narratives in Fraga’s impassioned plea for genuine debate.
QUEER EAST, the cross-disciplinary festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQIA+ cinema, live arts and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia, and its diaspora communities, returns to BFI Southbank this April. For its sixth edition, playing at venues across London, the festival explores notions of what it means to be queer and Asian today.
Screening as part of the national Turner 250 series of events to mark 250 years since the birth of JMW Turner, Mike Leigh’s extraordinary drama exploring the artist’s flawed yet fascinating life MR. TURNER (Mike Leigh, 2014) will play on 27 April followed by a Q&A with Mike Leigh and Dr Jacqueline Riding, Jacqueline Riding, an authority on JMW Turner who was a historical advisor on the film. Timothy Spall gives a career-best performance as the curmudgeonly, brilliant painter and the film traces his relationships with the art establishment and the two women who played a pivotal role in his life. It’s a singular work by a filmmaker at the height of his powers. Elsewhere, this month’s Silent Cinema offering is THE COHENS AND KELLYS (Harry Pollard, 1926), presented by the Irish Film Institute on 2 April with an introduction by Ross Keane, Director of the Irish Film Institute. Multi-award-winning Irish accordionist Dermot Dunne and saxophonist Nick Roth, Artistic Director of the Yurodny Ensemble, will draw on Irish and Jewish folk music traditions to create an exciting live musical score for this warm and timelessly entertaining comedy of feuding Irish and Jewish families in 1920s New York.
The BFI Flipside screening of ECLIPSE (Simon Perry, 1977) on 16 April, ahead of the film’s release on BFI Blu-ray on 21 April, will include a Q&A with Tom Conti and director Simon Perry. A remote cliff-side house on the Scottish coast is the windswept setting for Perry’s eerie, atmospheric psychological thriller, barely seen since it was shot almost 50 years ago. Conti stars as a bereaved brother troubled by memories of his deceased twin. Meanwhile, FLEISCHER STUDIOS: GREATEST HITS on 26 April is a special opportunity to watch newly restored animated shorts, in their UK premieres, from Max and Dave Fleischer’s studio, and FLEISCHER STUDIOS: ACTION AND ADVENTURE on 27 April will present a programme of first-class, recently restored animated action shorts. Finally, MARK KERMODE LIVE IN 3D returns on 7 April. Joined by surprise guests from across the film industry, Kermode explores, critiques and dissects current and upcoming releases, cinematic treasures, industry news and even some guilty pleasures.
