The BFI has announced the programme for 1-31 August 2026 at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX, beginning with Monica Vitti: Creative Force, a season in partnership with Cinecittà and the Cinema Department of the Ministry of Culture dedicated to Italian star and filmmaker Monica Vitti, including a number of 4K restorations by Cinecittà, CSC – Cineteca Nazionale and Minerva Pictures.
“Famous in the 1960s as the face of a new cinematic language she helped create with Michelangelo Antonioni, and internationally celebrated as a hugely influential style icon, Vitti was also a classically trained theatre actor, a natural comedian, a singer, a writer, and eventually a director,” said the BFI.
“Beloved in Italy for the comic films she made in the 1970s and ‘80s, she rebelled against the designation of passive muse. This BFI Southbank season will showcase Vitti’s unruly comic persona alongside her passionate disruption of conventional Italian gender roles, with the range of her performances striking as she moves between humour, pathos, camp and rebelliousness within the same film.”
The programme launches on 6 August with the Monica Vitti Season Introduction: More Than A Muse, when season curator Catherine O’Rawe and invited guests will explore the full breadth of Vitti’s filmography and discuss her status as the face of post-war European cinema, her position within the Italian film industry and her multilayered performances, as well as her drive to direct her final film Secret Scandal.
Meanwhile, films playing throughout August will include her collaborations with director Michelangelo Antonioni, L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961), L’Eclisse (1962), Red Desert (1964) (restored in 4K by Cinecittà and CSC-Cineteca Nazionale), as well as Vitti’s final Antonioni collaboration, the rarely seen The Oberwald Mystery (1980), plus Clever Girls (Mario Amendola, 1958), an early and little-seen film in Vitti’s filmography (screening on 35mm).
One of the biggest style icons of the ’60s, the season also includes the two films Vitti made in swinging sixties London, Modesty Blaze (Joseph Losey, 1966) (screening on 35mm), her first English-speaking role, starring alongside fellow ‘60s icons Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde, and The Girl With A Pistol (Mario Monicelli, 1968), restored in 4K by Cinecittà.
Other 4K restorations include Teresa The Thief (Carlo Di Palma, 1973), I Know That You Know That I Know (Alberto Sordi, 1982) and I Married You For Fun (Luciano Salce, 1967).
The 4K restoration of I Married You For Fun was carried out by Cinecittà in its digital laboratories, using film materials found in Paris (preserved at Eclair Preservation) and owned by StudioCanal.
Among these materials, two scenes cut by the censors at the time were discovered and have now been reinserted, allowing the audience to enjoy the complete restored version of Salce’s film, which premiered at Venice International Film Festival last year.
The season also includes screenings of Tosca (Luigi Magni, 1973) and Stardust (Alberto Sordi, 1973) and features a rare 35mm screening of the only film that Monica Vitti wrote and directed – a bravura meditation on performance and femininity, which also marks Vitti’s final big screen appearance, Secret Scandal (1989).
Elsewhere, No Strings Attached: Puppets On Film “celebrates the craft of puppeteers and the enduring power of practical performance in an increasingly digital age” from 1-31 August at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX.
And System Critical: The Radical Films Of Peter Watkins, a season developed in close consultation with Watkins himself before his death, curated by BFI National Archive curators William Fowler And James Bell, will offer a “rare immersion into nearly 50 years of Watkins’ anti-war vision and interrogative approach to filmmaking – a celebration of work whose prescient warnings remain all-too-urgently relevant today”.
“Radical in form yet profoundly humanist in spirit, his work unwaveringly rejected passive spectatorship and insisted on active engagement,” the BFI said.
The season kicks off with The War Game + Samira Ahmed remembers Peter Watkins in an extended conversation with Kevin Brownlow and Kodwo Eshun on 2 August.
The BFI’s full August highlights are available on its website.
