BFI Player’s October 2025 line-up

Thirty-eight films arrive in October, with an impressive range of themes. We celebrate Black History Month with some pioneering titles, and revisit two very different British contributors to cinema: Terence Davies and Laura Mulvey. We pay tribute to melodrama, and have some stunning exclusives, including Sister Midnight, Late Shift and Islands.

Bushman
1971/United States
Neglected since its release in 1971, Bushman follows a Nigerian student in San Francisco but is interrupted by the arrest of its leading man.

Hunger
2008/United Kingdom
Artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen made his cinema debut with this provocative portrait of Irish republican prisoners defying the British government.

Sister Midnight
2024/United Kingdom
Subscription exclusive
A genre-bending comedy about a frustrated and misanthropic newlywed who discovers certain feral impulses that land her in unlikely situations.

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song
1971/United States
Melvin Van Peebles’ seminal, taboo-breaking Blaxploitation thriller about a young Black man on the run from corrupt cops in 1970s Los Angeles.

The Long Day Closes
1992/United Kingdom
Terence Davies’ mosaic of childhood, imagination, time and memory is one of the greatest cinematic experiences.

The Deep Blue Sea
2011/United Kingdom
Buried passions boil over in a buttoned-up postwar Britain in Terence Davies’ acclaimed adaptation of Rattigan’s play, starring Rachel Weisz.

Sunset Song
2015/United Kingdom
Agyness Deyn stars in Terence Davies’ moving drama about a strong young woman facing many adversities in the run up to WWI.

Benediction
2021/United Kingdom
Terence Davies’ devastatingly moving, lyrical portrait of the life of celebrated war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Julie Keeps Quiet
2024/Belgium
Subscription exclusive
Psychological drama in which a talented young tennis player comes under pressure to talk when her coach is investigated for abusing his position.

Little Trouble Girls
Subscription exclusive
2025/Slovenia
A young girl experiences the turmoil of love and friendship in this nuanced coming-of-age tale with echoes of Céline Sciamma.

Penthesilea: Queen of the Amazons
1974/United Kingdom
The first collaboration of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen is a radical reimagining of myth through the lens of feminist theory.

Amy!
1980/United Kingdom
Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s essay film commemorating pilot Amy Johnson’s pioneering solo flight to Australia in 1930.

Crystal Gazing
1982/United Kingdom
Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s 1982 film presents an at-once grounded yet heavily staged portrait of London, which was then in recession.

Dogtooth
2009/Greece
Yorgos Lanthimos’ scary, witty tale of a dysfunctional Greek family is original, ingenious and sadly relevant as a study of parent-child relationships.

Hardcore 
1979/United States
Schrader’s neo-noir about a devout conservative businessman venturing into a sordid Californian underworld in search of his runaway teenage daughter.

Late Shift
2025/Switzerland
Subscription exclusive
Gripping drama in which a nurse finds herself caught in a race against time during an unrelenting night shift.

Sorcery
2023/Chile
Subscription exclusive
A richly rendered story of anticolonial score-settling in 19th century Chile that dabbles in magical realism, folk horror and fairytale iconography.

Within Our Gates 
1919/United States
Oscar Micheaux’s startling silent classic – the earliest surviving feature from an African-American director.

Body and Soul 
1925/United States
Paul Robeson’s remarkable film debut, the star playing dual roles in this key work of African American cinema from pioneering filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.

Aventurera 
1950/Mexico
Deliriously entertaining Mexican melodrama about an innocent young woman tricked into prostitution.

Victims of Sin 
1951/Mexico
Sizzling, feverish melodrama set amid Mexico City’s red-light district nightclubs.

Floating Clouds 
1955/Japan
Mikio Naruse’s masterpiece about a wandering woman trying to find her identity amid the devastation of post-war Japan.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs 
1960/Japan
Mikio Naruse’s best-known film is a masterful study of a Ginza hostess struggling under constant pressures to compromise her honour.

Cairo Station 
1958/Egypt
Youssef Chahine’s masterpiece holds a mirror up to toxic masculinity and Egyptian society.

Red Angel 
1966/Japan
A potent and blood-soaked tale of saints and sinners set at the height of the Sino-Japanese war.

Volver 
2005/Spain
Family secrets echo around a Spanish clan, ringing loud enough to rouse the dead, in Pedro Almodóvar’s assured melodrama.

Dancer in the Dark 
2000/Denmark
Lars von Trier’s unique and divisive dissection of the American Dream, featuring Björk as an immigrant worker finding escape in musical cinema.

Breaking the Waves 
1996/Denmark
A man is injured in an oil rig accident, leaving his wife wracked with guilt, willing to do anything to restore her marriage and relationship with God.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire 
2019/France
Céline Sciamma’s BAFTA-nominated film about the tentative love between a painter and her subject in 18th-century France.

The Damned Don’t Cry 
2022/France
Fyzal Boulifa’s (Lynn + Lucy) striking film about the perils of falling foul of community and social expectations.

Rouge 
1987/Hong Kong
Gorgeous romantic melodrama from queer cinema master Stanley Kwan about the haunting power of lost love starring the late Cantopop singer Anita Lui.

Center Stage 
1991/Hong Kong
Stanley Kwan’s rich and unconventional biopic of the tragic 1930s Chinese film star, Ruan Lingyu, starring Maggie Cheung.

It Follows
2014/United States
David Robert Mitchell’s remarkable, terrifying shocker is a fresh and stimulating meditation on sexual paranoia, steeped in horror cinema history.

Beauty and the Beast
1978/Czechoslovakia
Macabre and singular Czech reimagining of the classic fairy tale about a merchant’s daughter held captive by a mysterious winged beast.

Laurin
1989/Germany
Richly atmospheric, gloriously morbid and menacing Gothic chiller about a child killer in 19th century Germany.

The Descent
2005/United Kingdom
Six friends on a caving expedition get trapped deep underground and discover they are not alone in this visceral, claustrophobic horror.

Swallowed
2022/United States
It’s drugs, bugs and unrequited hugs in this deliciously grotesque queer body horror from Carter Smith.

The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue
1974/Italy
A chemical leak causes a zombie outbreak amid the picturesque landscapes of the Lake District, in this superbly chilling undead classic.

Islands
2025/Germany
Subscription exclusive
A mysterious disappearance sets off this noirish thriller with echoes of Hitchcock and Highsmith, starring Sam Riley and Stacey Martin.