The BFI has announced its programme for BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX from 1-30 June, beginning with Marilyn Monroe: Self Made Star, a major two-month season celebrating the centenary of the birth of cinema’s “most enduring film star”.
Curated by the BFI’s lead programmer Kimberley Sheehan, the season opens on 1 June to coincide with Monroe’s 100th birthday and runs throughout June and July.
Following May’s survey of Brazilian cinema’s modern foundations, Brazil on Film continues across June, moving between points of origin, rupture and renewal in a journey through almost a century of filmmaking.
The BFI will also mark 80 years since the birth of Héctor Babenco with a selection of his key works.
“Argentine by birth and Brazilian by choice, Babenco redefined Latin American cinema and we celebrate his powerful blend of realism, lyricism, and his enduring focus on marginalised lives with screenings of his Academy Award-nominated Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Lúcio Flávio, o Passageiro da Agonia (1977) and the newly restored Pixote (1980), introduced by Babenco’s companion, director and actress Bárbara Paz on 21 June, when she also joins us for a Q&A screening of her film Babenco: Tell Me When I Die (2019), a moving and deeply personal reflection on Babenco’s last days and on his life, cinema and the immortality of art,” said the BFI.
On the centenary of his birth, the BFI will also celebrate the cinema of Ritwik Kumar Ghatak, a “visionary, influential filmmaker and committed chronicler of Partition and uprooted peoples”, with the season Revolutionary Cinema: The Passion of Ritwik Ghatak.
“Ghatak was the most original, radical and uncompromising filmmaker to emerge from South Asian cinema after Independence,” the BFI revealed.
“Coming from Kolkata’s Communist theatre scene, he battled constantly until his untimely death in 1976, completing only eight feature films. Barely seen in his lifetime, most of Ghatak’s films have since been difficult to source.”
This programme, curated by filmmaker, author and academic Sanghita Sen, includes new restorations of every feature, alongside three unfinished films, three he wrote, one he acted in, and 13 fiction and documentary shorts.
Through “dazzling innovations in cinematic storytelling, Ghatak examined the human cost of political betrayal, probing the fractures of family, culture and social justice, always with hope and courage”.
The season launches on 2 June with introductory event A River Called Ritwik – an illustrated introduction to Ghatak’s body of work, with invited guests discussing the trajectory of his filmography and his contribution to world cinema as an actor, writer, director and educator.
Skateboarding continues to be a rich subject for film, and in turn, film has inspired skaters and artists to explore their own creativity and ways of seeing the world and their place within it.
Widely considered as the birthplace of British skateboarding, before becoming a global destination for skaters, the BFI marks 50 years of the Undercroft Skate Space – the area that skaters have made their home beneath the Southbank Centre, neighbouring BFI Southbank – and coinciding with Southbank Centre’s multimedia exhibition Skate 50 and Go Skateboarding Day, the BFI weekend programme Push Play celebrates this ongoing relationship between skateboarding and film.
Both in venue at BFI Southbank (19-21 June) and online on BFI Player, Push Play is curated by Ben Luxford, BFI director of UK wide audiences, and Film Studies lecturer Siobhan Browne to celebrate skate cinema’s vibrant cultural space for dialogue between cities, generations, and creative practices, beyond nostalgia or surface subculture.
Elsewhere, Spike Jonze in Conversation Live from New York on 21 June will revisit key clips and highlights from his groundbreaking skate videos on the big screen, from Video Days to Pretty Sweet and everything in between, followed by an in-conversation with Jonze beaming in live from the Big Apple.
Artist, skateboarder, model and skate wear brand founder Blondey McCoy also joins the BFI on 20 June to talk about his film choice for Push Play, Robert Hamer’s classic Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), starring Dennis Price and Alec Guinness.
McCoy will discuss his career, his relationship with film, and how titles including Kind Hearts and Coronets continue to inspire him.
Finally, Refugee Week from 15-21 June is the world’s largest arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions, creativity and resilience of refugees and people seeking sanctuary.
Films screening during the festival at BFI Southbank will include the London premiere of Allies in Exile (2026), Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi’s firsthand documentary on the atrocities of the war in Syria, including a Q&A with Hassan Kattan.
Elsewhere, Khartoum (Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy, Anas Saeed, Timeea M Ahmed, Phil Cox, 2025), presented in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), sees the filmmakers – displaced by the war in Sudan – weave together a personal and insightful film comprising footage shot prior to the escape, staged reenactments, and stories of migration and survival, highlighting the human cost of this conflict.
The full BFI June programme is available on its website.
