Features and reviews
Discover the latest from the BFI, the UK’s lead organisation for film, television and the moving image.
John Smith in the time of Covid: “I wanted to capture the melancholy of watching people through their windows”
With two new short film projects, Citadel and Covid Messages, the veteran British artist filmmaker has been busy during the pandemic – indeed, because of it.
By Ian Christie
5 things to watch this weekend – 22 to 24 January
By Samuel Wigley
It’s a Sin is a love letter to 1980s gay culture – and hate mail to the era’s homophobic hegemony
By Alex Davidson
How to dramatise a plague: a brief history of Aids on screen
By Simon McCallum
BFI Future Film Festival announces 2021 film programme, awards jury and award nominees
BFI Future Film Festival announces 2021 film programme, awards jury and award nominees10 great last films by British directors
By David Parkinson
60 years of La notte: How Antonioni’s film walked over the empty glamour of the 1960s
By Adam Scovell
Blue Sky: The 1990s nuclear drama that won Jessica Lange her second Oscar
By Alex Ramon
Bridgerton’s meeting of Regency era and Gossip Girl makes a far from heavenly match
By Hannah McGill
Where to begin with Patricia Highsmith on screen
By Chloe Walker
5 things to watch this weekend – 15 to 17 January
By Samuel Wigley
The man in the cryogenic freezer: an interview with John Carpenter
By Tom Milne and Richard Combs
Ham on Rye: a haunting, dreamlike portrait of American adolescence
By Ryan Gilbey
MLK/FBI narrows America’s race struggles to fit its spotlight
By Chrystel Oloukoi
Death to 2020 puts our torments in the rear-view mirror
By Leigh Singer
Enormous makes ill-conceived comedy from nonconsensual pregnancy
By Ginette Vincendeau
Wonder Woman 1984 shrinks history, stretches patience
By Adam Nayman
Wong Kar Wai season coming to BFI Player and the ICA’s Cinema 3 throughout February 2021
Wong Kar Wai season coming to BFI Player and the ICA’s Cinema 3 throughout February 2021Dear Comrades! uncovers a Khrushchev-era Soviet state massacre
By Michael Brooke
Blithe Spirit unbuttons Noël Coward’s marital farce
By Philip Kemp
100 great films streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime – updated for winter 2021
By Samuel Wigley
How to make the most of film from home — updated weekly
How to make the most of film from home — updated weekly5 things to watch this weekend – 8 to 10 January
By Samuel Wigley
Remake/remodel: 45 weird and wonderful alternative film cuts
By James Bell, Tom Charity and others
Joan Micklin Silver made her own film ground
By Carrie Rickey
The Basilisks perfectly evokes the languor of the Italian South
By Elizabeth Sussex