Celebrate Christmas at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX

The BFI celebrates the festive season with a packed programme of holiday favourites playing throughout December at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX, plus discover the very best presents and stocking fillers for film fans with our curated selection of gifts, books and Blu-rays at the BFI Shop. 

A line-up of bona fide classics are sure to satisfy any cinephile’s seasonal cravings at BFI Southbank, with Ernst Lubitsch’s definitive Christmas comedy THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940), a mesmerising Judy Garland in Vincent Minnelli’s Technicolor wonder MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944), Frank Capra’s perennial festive favourite IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), Cary Grant and an angelic David Niven in THE BISHOP’S WIFE (Henry Koster, 1947), Alastair Sim’s excellent turn as the curmudgeonly SCROOGE (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1951) and Billy Wilder’s Oscar-winning Jack Lemon comedy THE APARTMENT (1960) all playing on the big screen. Meanwhile, families can also enjoy screenings of THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL (Brian Henson, 1993) and Studio Ghibli masterpiece SPIRITED AWAY (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001) both playing in December. 

Elsewhere, the debate about what is and isn’t a Christmas film rages on. For December’s Big Screen Classics programme of daily screenings for just £9, we’ve brought together a selection of films that might not be your go-to festive favourites, but each features at least one scene set during the holiday period. MY NIGHT WITH MAUDE (Eric Rohmer, 1969), FEMALE TROUBLE (John Waters, 1974), MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (Terry Jones, 1979), FANNY AND ALEXANDER (Ingmar Bergman, 1982), MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE (Nagisa Ôshima, 1983), TORCH SONG TRILOGY (Paul Bogart, 1988), WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (Rob Reiner, 1989), GOODFELLAS (Martin Scorsese, 1990), THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN (Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1995), EYES WIDE SHUT (Stanley Kubrick, 1999), CAROL (Todd Haynes, 2015), TANGERINE (Sean Baker, 2015) and LITTLE WOMEN (Greta Gerwig, 2019) will all be playing at BFI Southbank.  

Finally, Christmas-adjacent titles playing on the UK’s largest screen at BFI IMAX throughout December will include action masterpiece DIE HARD (John McTiernan, 1988), Medieval adaptation THE GREEN KNIGHT (David Lowery, 2021), groundbreaking CGI adventure THE POLAR EXPRESS (Robert Zemeckis, 2004), The Archers’ masterpiece THE RED SHOES (Powell and Pressburger, 1948), Technicolor wonder THE WIZARD OF OZ (Victor Fleming, 1939), and TOKYO GODFATHERS (Satoshi Kon, 2003) with an introduction by Ghibliotheque’s Michael Leader and Jake Cunningham on 7 December.