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Battle of Soho

Take a journey through London's most notorious district, meeting residents and campaigners at the forefront of a battle to keep its eccentric, diverse spirit alive.

  • Documentary
  • 2017
  • 100 mins
  • Aro Korol

A Moving Image

The gentrification of London’s Brixton is examined in this probing and stylistically ambitious debut feature.

  • Drama
  • 2017
  • 74 mins
  • Shola Amoo

Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle

Maxine Peake narrates this forthright polemic on the consequences of the 1980s Right-to-Buy scheme on the nation's affordable housing.

  • Documentary
  • 2017
  • 82 mins
  • Paul Sng

The Party's Over

The partying of a wild group of beatniks lead by Oliver Reed has shocking consequences. Written by Marc Behm, directed by Guy Hamilton and with music by John Barry.

  • Drama
  • 1965
  • 92 mins
  • Guy Hamilton

London Symphony

A poetic journey through the capital, presenting an artistic snapshot of London as it stands today, and a celebration of its rich diversity of culture, architecture and religion.

  • Documentary
  • 2017
  • 72 mins
  • Alex Barrett

Nighthawks

A schoolteacher juggles everyday life with nights spent cruising for Mr Right in this fascinating landmark in British gay cinema

  • Drama
  • 1978
  • 113 mins
  • Ron Peck

My Brother the Devil

Sally El Hosaini's feature debut tells of the love and disenchantment of two British-Egyptian brothers as gangs, drugs and sexuality come between them.

  • Drama
  • 2012
  • 107 mins
  • Sally El Hosaini

London

The first in Patrick Keiller’s highly imaginative trilogy of films is a photographic trip through London, recounted by our unseen narrator.

  • Animation & Artists Moving Image
  • 1994
  • 85 mins
  • Patrick Keiller

Peeping Tom

Michael Powell’s dark, disturbing, once controversial tale of a shy camera technician who films women as he kills them is now rightly deemed a classic.

  • Drama
  • 1960
  • 101 mins
  • Michael Powell

Deep End

Jerzy Skolimowski’s darkly comic and utterly compelling story of teenage infatuation in a run-down swimming pool.

  • Drama
  • 1970
  • 92 mins
  • Jerzy Skolimowski

Bullet Boy

Ashley Walters impresses in the hard-hitting Hackney drama that’s still one of the best of Britain’s black urban crime films.

  • Drama
  • 2005
  • 86 mins
  • Saul Dibb

Brick Lane

Sarah Gavron’s subtle and intelligent adaptation of Monica Ali’s acclaimed novel charts the experiences of a Bangladeshi woman in London.

  • Drama
  • 2007
  • 97 mins
  • Sarah Gavron

This Is Tomorrow

The final part of Saint Etienne and Paul Kelly’s London trilogy follows the renovation and reopening of the Royal Festival Hall through 2005-7.

  • 2007
  • 54 mins
  • Paul Kelly

What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day?

Paul Kelly’s second collaboration with pop band Saint Etienne traces the hidden history of East London’s Lower Lea Valley before its Olympic makeover.

  • Documentary
  • 2005
  • 45 mins
  • Paul Kelly

Finisterre

A journey from London’s suburbs to its heart, charting the influence of the city on indie pop band Saint Etienne.

  • Documentary
  • 2003
  • 59 mins
  • Kieran Evans and Paul Kelly

The Boy Who Turned Yellow

A London schoolboy’s surprise transformation marks the final collaboration of great British director Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

  • Children's
  • Comedy
  • 1972
  • 54 mins
  • Michael Powell

Underground

The BFI National Archive restoration of one of Anthony Asquith's finest silent films set in London's Underground, with a new score.

  • Romance
  • 1928
  • 93 mins
  • Anthony Asquith

Heart of the Angel

Molly Dineen’s wry, humorous and sometimes touching look at the trials faced by the staff and passengers of London’s dishearteningly dilapidated Angel tube station, before its modernisation.

  • Documentary
  • 1989
  • 40 mins
  • Molly Dineen

Electricity

Agyness Deyn stars in a powerful story seen through the eyes of a young woman whose epilepsy brings extraordinary hallucinations.

  • Drama
  • 2014
  • 96 mins
  • Bryn Higgins

London the Modern Babylon

The story of London told through a century of popular music and film archive treasures.

  • Documentary
  • 2012
  • 128 mins
  • Julien Temple

Pressure

Hailed as Britain's first black feature film, Pressure is a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted black youths in 1970s London; now available in its new restoration.

  • Drama
  • 1978
  • 121 mins
  • Horace Ové

Burning an Illusion

Menelik Shabazz’s pioneering first feature traces the emotional and political growth of a young black couple in Thatcher’s London.

  • Drama
  • 1982
  • 102 mins
  • Menelik Shabazz

Bronco Bullfrog

A fascinating record of 1960s suedehead youth culture which is largely improvised by a non-professional cast of teenagers from east London

  • Drama
  • 1970
  • 87 mins
  • Barney Platts-Mills

Private Road

A compelling tale about the struggle for personal freedom, starring Bruce Robinson (Withnail and I).

  • Drama
  • 1971
  • 89 mins
  • Barney Platts-Mills

Chelsea Bridge Boys

Made for Swedish television, a look at a gang of "Rockers" who meet at a tea-kiosk on Chelsea Bridge.

  • Documentary
  • 1965
  • 31 mins
  • Peter Davis and Staffan Lamm

Duffer

A bizarre study of obsession focusing on a teenage boy who is torn between the charms of a fleshly female prostitute and the sadism of an older man.

  • Drama
  • 1971
  • 75 mins
  • Joseph Despins and William Dumaresq

The Moon over the Alley

The Moon Over the Alley is a bizarre and compelling musical exploring the problems of multicultural Notting Hill residents in the early 1970s.

  • Musical
  • 1977
  • 108 mins
  • Joseph Despins

Face

Robert Carlyle and Ray Winstone are members of a criminal gang that tears itself apart after a heist goes wrong, in Antonia Bird’s stylish thriller.

  • Crime
  • Gangster
  • 1997
  • 101 mins
  • Antonia Bird

The Day the Earth Caught Fire

The BFI’s HD remaster of the British sci-fi classic. A journalist discovers that the Earth has been knocked off its axis and is moving ever closer to the sun. Is the Earth doomed?

  • Science Fiction
  • 1961
  • 100 mins
  • Val Guest

Quatermass and the Pit

One of Britain’s finest sci-fi films, based on Nigel Kneale’s masterful script, about the discovery of ancient alien craft beneath central London.

  • Horror
  • Science Fiction
  • 1967
  • 94 mins
  • Roy Ward Baker

Nightbirds

Dark drama about the doomed relationship of two down-and-outers living in the squalid East End of London in the early 1970s.

  • Drama
  • 1970
  • 78 mins
  • Andy Milligan

Carousella

A controversial, well-made documentary that follows the lives of three young striptease artistes working in Soho.

  • Documentary
  • 1965
  • 26 mins
  • John Irvin

Pub

Short documentary originally made for Swedish television which opens the doors a typical working-class pub in East London.

  • Documentary
  • 1962
  • 15 mins
  • Peter Davis

Strip

Documentary about the lives of the women who work at a striptease club called The Phoenix on Old Compton Street, in the heart of Soho in the swinging sixties.

  • Documentary
  • 1966
  • 26 mins
  • Don Defina, Peter Davis & 1 others

Oliver Twist

Arguably the essential Dickens adaptation, David Lean’s evocative portrayal of Victorian London in sooty black and white features Alec Guinness as a memorably sinister Fagin.

  • Period drama
  • 1948
  • 116 mins
  • David Lean

Seance on a Wet Afternoon

Bryan Forbes’ stylish psychological thriller about a medium who plans to kidnap a child and help the police solve the crime to bolster her reputation as a clairvoyant.

  • Crime
  • 1964
  • 111 mins
  • Bryan Forbes

The Elephant Man

David Lynch's moving true-life tale of the severely deformed Joseph Merrick and his rescue from the hell of a Victorian circus sideshow.

  • Biopic
  • Historical drama
  • 1980
  • 124 mins
  • David Lynch

She, a Chinese

British-Chinese director Xiaolu Guo’s story of a young woman's journey from a remote Chinese village to London, in an attempt to realise the Western consumer dream.

  • Drama
  • 2010
  • 99 mins
  • Xiaolu Guo

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

Ivor Novello plays a strange lodger who may be behind a number of Jack the Ripper-style killings in Alfred Hitchcock’s silent thriller.

  • Crime
  • 1926
  • 91 mins
  • Alfred Hitchcock

Terry on the Fence

11-year-old Terry runs away from home and is drawn into a gang of bullies, in a gritty Children's Film Foundation drama.

  • Children's
  • Crime
  • 1985
  • 70 mins
  • Frank Godwin

The Monster of Highgate Ponds

A boy receives a mysterious egg, but when it hatches a baby monster, mayhem ensues.

  • Children's
  • Comedy
  • 1961
  • 59 mins
  • Alberto Cavalcanti

The Salvage Gang

John Krish directs this beautifully photographed Children’s Film Foundation caper about four children scavenging bomb-damaged London for scrap metal.

  • Children's
  • Comedy
  • 1958
  • 52 mins
  • John Krish

Operation Third Form

John Moulder Brown (Deep End) fronts a crack children’s spy unit in this ripping boy's own adventure.

  • Children's
  • 1966
  • 58 mins
  • David Eady

Hide and Seek

Gary Kemp (The Krays) becomes entangled with a borstal escapee known as the Deptford Dodger in this cracking drama from the Children’s Film Foundation.

  • Children's
  • 1972
  • 61 mins
  • David Eady

Soapbox Derby

Children’s Film Foundation adventure that sees a young Michael Crawford scrapping with a rival South London gang in Battersea.

  • Children's
  • 1957
  • 64 mins
  • D'Arcy Conyers

It Always Rains on Sunday

Austerity noir: Ealing's downbeat but compelling East End thriller.

  • Drama
  • 1947
  • 88 mins
  • Robert Hamer

Swandown

Filmmaker Andrew Kötting and writer Iain Sinclair embark on a quest from Hastings to East London by pedalo.

  • Documentary
  • 2012
  • 107 mins
  • Andrew Kötting

Welcome to Britain

Ben Lewin’s 1976 film captures a moment in Britain's evergreen immigration debate, focusing on new arrivals at Heathrow as they wrestle with immigration law.

  • Documentary
  • 1976
  • 73 mins
  • Ben Lewin