Battleship Potemkin centenary celebrated with special edition and cinema release, featuring Pet Shop Boys score

To mark the centenary of Sergei Eisenstein’s legendary silent Battleship Potemkin, a special edition of the film – in a restored version made by Deutsche Kinemathek, with the celebrated score by Tennant and Lowe of Pet Shop Boys – will be released for the first time in cinemas and in a two-disc Blu-ray and CD package by the BFI. The new trailer, poster and packshot are revealed today.

On 22 August 2025, Battleship Potemkin. Music by Pet Shop Boys will open in selected cinemas in the UK and Ireland. Ahead of a week-long run, a special double screening event, at BFI Southbank on Friday 5 September 2025 at 6.30pm, will begin with Pet Shop Boys’ feature film It Couldn’t Happen Here (1988), in memory of its late director, Jack Bond, followed by a Q&A with Neil Tennant, hosted by Paul Tickell, and then a screening of Battleship Potemkin.

5 September is also the release date of the BFI’s Blu-ray package of the film, containing both a Blu-ray disc and a CD of the score, along with extra features and an illustrated booklet. Simultaneously, Parlophone will release the score on remastered CD and on vinyl for the first time on a double LP. All three formats are available to pre-order now from the official Pet Shop Boys store.

A fixture in the critical canon almost since its premiere, Eisenstein’s film about a 1905 naval mutiny was revolutionary in both form and content. Battleship Potemkin is renowned for its dynamic compositional strength and editing of such frame-perfect precision that it’s hard not to be swept along. The set-piece massacre on the Odessa Steps still packs a sledgehammer punch.

First revealed at a free outdoor live performance and screening in front of an estimated 25,000 people in London’s Trafalgar Square on 12 September 2004, Pet Shop Boys’ score, performed with the Dresdner Sinfoniker conducted by Jonathan Stockhammer with orchestrations by Torsten Rasch, blends electronic beats with orchestral grandeur to create a rousing contemporary cinematic experience. 

Since the premiere, Pet Shop Boys with Dresdner Sinfoniker have performed the music with the film in European cities including Frankfurt, Bonn, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, and Segovia, Spain. On May 1, 2006, Pet Shop Boys with the Northern Sinfonia, performed the music with the film at a special event at Swan Hunter’s shipyard, Wallsend. The first UK cinema screening with the recorded Tennant/Lowe score took place at BFI Southbank as part of the 2013 Meltdown Festival curated by Yoko Ono. 

The special features on Battleship Potemkin / Pet Shop Boys (Blu-ray & CD), which can be pre-ordered from HMV and other retailers now, are:

• Hochhaussinfonie (2017, 68 mins): a multimedia musical production by the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra and Pet Shop Boys, conceived by Markus Rindt and directed by Sven Helbig, on the evening of July 20, 2006, in Dresden

• Trafalgar Square Highlights (2004, 4 mins): a behind-the-scenes film when Pet Shop Boys performed their newly composed score for Battleship Potemkin, accompanied by the Dresdner Sinfoniker orchestra in Trafalgar Square, London 

• Trailer (2025)

• **Limited Edition** Illustrated booklet featuring new writing by Chris Heath and Sarah Cleary, and archive pieces by Neil Tennant and Michael Brooke

Tickets for the 5 September Q&A screening at BFI Southbank will be on sale to BFI Patrons on 4 August, to BFI Members on 5 August and to the public on 7 August. Prices are: £28.00 standard, £25.50 members, £23.00 concessions.