Programme highlights for August 2026: Monica Vitti, the artistry of puppets on film, and the radical films of director Peter Watkins

The programme for 1 to 31 August 2026 at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX begins with Monica Vitti: Creative Force, a season in partnership with Cinecittà and the Cinema Department of the Ministry of Culture dedicated to Italian star and filmmaker Monica Vitti, including a number of 4K restorations by Cinecittà, CSC — Cineteca Nazionale and Minerva Pictures. 

Famous in the 1960s as the face of a new cinematic language she helped create with Michelangelo Antonioni, and internationally celebrated as a hugely influential style icon, Vitti was also a classically trained theatre actor, a natural comedian, a singer, a writer, and eventually a director. Beloved in Italy for the comic films she made in the 1970s and 80s, she rebelled against the designation of passive muse. This BFI Southbank season will showcase Vitti’s unruly comic persona alongside her passionate disruption of conventional Italian gender roles, with the range of her performances striking as she moves between humour, pathos, camp and rebelliousness within the same film.

The programme launches on 6 August with the Monica Vitti Season Introduction: More Than a Muse, when season curator Catherine O’Rawe and invited guests will explore the full breadth of Vitti’s filmography and discuss her status as the face of post-war European cinema, her position within the Italian film industry and her multilayered performances, as well as her drive to direct her final film Secret Scandal. 

Meanwhile, films playing throughout August will include her collaborations with director Michelangelo Antonioni, L’avventura (1960), La notte (1961), L’eclisse (1962), Red Desert (1964), (restored in 4K by Cinecittà and CSC-Cineteca Nazionale) as well as Vitti’s final Antonioni collaboration, the rarely seen The Oberwald Mystery (1980), plus Clever Girls (Mario Amendola, 1958), an early and little-seen film in Vitti’s filmography (screening on 35mm). Celebrating one of the biggest style icons of the ’60s, the season also includes the two films Vitti made in swinging sixties London, Modesty Blaise (Joseph Losey, 1966) (screening on 35mm), her first English-speaking role, starring alongside fellow ‘60s icons Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde and The Girl with a Pistol (Mario Monicelli, 1968), restored in 4K by Cinecittà. 

Other 4K restorations include Teresa the Thief (Carlo Di Palma, 1973) and I Know That You Know That I Know (Alberto Sordi, 1982) and I Married You for Fun (Luciano Salce, 1967). The 4K restoration of I Married You for Fun was carried out by Cinecittà in its digital laboratories, using film materials found in Paris (preserved at Eclair Preservation) and owned by StudioCanal. Among these materials, two scenes cut by the censors at the time were discovered and have now been reinserted, allowing the audience to enjoy the complete restored version of Salce’s film, which premiered at Venice International Film Festival last year. The season also includes screenings of Tosca (Luigi Magni, 1973) and Stardust (Alberto Sordi, 1973) and features a rare 35mm screening of the only film that Monica Vitti wrote and directed – a bravura meditation on performance and femininity, which also marks Vitti’s final big screen appearance, Secret Scandal (1989).

Celebrating the craft of puppeteers and the enduring power of practical performance in an increasingly digital age, No Strings Attached: Puppets on Film brings together family favourites, cult classics and boundary-pushing comedy. This season, curated by BFI Head of Cinema Programme Justin Johnson, includes a rare opportunity to watch one of the greatest sequels of all time, The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980), at both BFI Southbank and on the UK’s largest screen at BFI IMAX. Special events will include Muppets and Fraggles: A Celebration on 11 August featuring a Q&A with co-creator and writer of Fraggle Rock, Jocelyn Stevenson, with family favourites playing throughout August including the visionary fantasy epic The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson and Frank Oz, 1982) at both BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX, plus The Muppets Take Manhattan (Frank Oz, 1984), The Muppets (James Bobin, 2011), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982), Strings (Anders Rønnow Klarlund, 2004) and The Puppetoon Movie (Arnold Leibovit, 1987) all screening at BFI Southbank.

We also celebrate Television Puppets on 1 August with a journey through the decades, looking at some of the most memorable puppet personalities to have enlivened our homes, while on 2 August we celebrate Yonderland (2013-2016), the comic, fantasy adventure from the creators of Ghosts, featuring a Q&A with Jim Howick and Laurence Rickard. Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (2011–2022) creators Becky Sloan and Joe Pelling also join us on 10 August for a special event celebrating the darkly surreal puppet phenomenon, which evolved from a viral YouTube series into a Channel 4 television show. Further films playing in the BFI Southbank programme will include 40th anniversary screenings of the Director’s Cut of Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986), plus Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1954), Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977), Magic (Richard Attenborough, 1978), Alice (Jan Švankmajer, 1988), Child’s Play (Tom Holland, 1988), The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1991), Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999), Team America: World Police (Trey Parker, 2004) and Annette (Leos Carax, 2021). Further details of the season were announced in a dedicated press release here.

Incisive, insistent, indomitable: the British filmmaker Peter Watkins, who died aged 90 last October, was all of these. After the British government banned his devastating BBC nuclear-war docudrama, The War Game in 1965, Watkins spent decades battling to make films that challenged institutions and audiences, exposing the violence embedded in political power and the media. System Critical: The Radical Films of Peter Watkins, a season developed in close consultation with Watkins himself before his death, curated by BFI National Archive curators William Fowler and James Bell, offers a rare immersion into nearly 50 years of Watkins’ anti-war vision and interrogative approach to filmmaking – a celebration of work whose prescient warnings remain all-too-urgently relevant today. Radical in form yet profoundly humanist in spirit, his work unwaveringly rejected passive spectatorship and insisted on active engagement.

The season kicks off with The War Game + Samira Ahmed remembers Peter Watkins in an extended conversation with Kevin Brownlow and Kodwo Eshun on 2 August. The War Game (1965), Watkins’ harrowing Academy Award-winning docudrama about the aftermath of a nuclear attack on British soil, arguably remains one of the most single most powerful arguments for nuclear disarmament. The season also includes an illustrated introductory event, Peter Watkins: Resistance Isn’t Futile on 4 August with season curator Fowler and Bell, with extracts from Watkins’ films – including some rare material from the BFI National Archive – exploring the complex legacy of one of British filmmaking’s truly singular figures. 

Other works screening in the season include, Culloden (1964), Watkins’ strikingly original reconstruction of the 1746 Battle of Culloden, filmed with handheld cameras and adopting the dynamic style of television reportage, Punishment Park (1970), Watkins’ viscerally intense, fictional journey deep into the brutal heart of sanctioned state violence and Privilege (1967), an extraordinary satire set in a near-future Britain, entangling celebrity culture, advertising and political manipulation, starring Manfred Mann’s Paul Jones as a pop star messiah, driving youth into conformity, starring alongside ‘60s icon Jean Shrimpton. The Gladiators (1968), foreshadows The Hunger Games, adopting a reality TV show framing to depict an international gladiator competition designed to control the masses, and La Commune (2000), Watkins’ monumental account of the 1871 Paris Commune, restaging revolutionary history as if covered by live television.

Rarities include, The 70s People (1975), Watkins’ investigation into the conditions underpinning rising suicide rates in an outwardly affluent and seemingly ideal Denmark, The Media Project (1991), a little known but fascinating piece centring on an after-dinner discussion about Australian TV coverage of the 1991 Gulf War – part video essay, part staged drama, plus the exceptionally rare, Dream of a World (1969), written and directed by Watkins’ co-writer on The Gladiators, Nicholas Gosling, relocates the politics of the Vietnam War to an anarchic, post-1968 UK, in an imaginative film that illustrates the power of Watkins’ influence. Watkins’ recently rediscovered early short The Web (1956), screens as part of a programme of early shorts, alongside contemporary works. The personal and political intertwine in Watkins’ psychological film portraits about troubled, historical figures, Edward Munch (1974) and August Strindberg (The Freethinker 1994), whose inner and outer worlds are probed. A dedicated programme release with full details to follow.

Special events this month will include a preview of Lady (2025) followed by a Q&A with director Samuel Abrahams and actor Sian Clifford on 5 August. Abrahams’ off-beat mockumentary blends satirical comedy with magical realism, anchored by a larger-than-life performance from Clifford as Lady Isabella, a woman desperate to be seen. Revelling in the attention of a camera crew she’s hired to document her every move, the lonely aristocrat’s hunger for recognition soon spirals into something stranger. 

TV previews include a look at Bookish (2026) series 2, followed by a Q&A with creator Mark Gatiss and cast on 18 August. Gatiss and the ensemble cast are outstanding in this compelling portrait of a city emerging from the devastation of war. Series 2 sees Book’s lavender marriage at risk of exposure when he is enlisted to solve a new crime involving a mysterious medium and a seance attended by a group of people who appear to be full of secrets. We also preview Vigil (2026) series 3 including a Q&A with cast members and the series creator on 25 August. The critically acclaimed hit once again offers up an explosive, against-the-clock thriller as we find Amy (Suranne Jones) and Kirsten (Rose Leslie) working fast to catch the killer of a member of covert British forces in the remote arctic, with both their careers and relationship on the line.

Doctor Who: 20 Years On – the Tenth Doctor marks the 20th anniversary of the first full series featuring the tenth incarnation of The Doctor, played memorably by David Tennant. At this special event on 15 August we will screen episodes from the second series and talk about the continued impact of the show more than 62 years since it originally aired. On 24 August we also have a Relaxed Screening of Doctor Who and the Daleks (Gordon Flemyng, 1965) for neurodivergent audiences, with their companions and assistants, in partnership with Stims Collective. Including an extended introduction by Lillian Crawford, author of The Mind of the Doctor: Across the Neurodiverse Universe of Doctor Who, Flemyng’s film is a glorious Technicolor bonanza that expanded the appeal of the series to a global audience. Over the years, Doctor Who has developed alongside increased understanding of autism and neurodivergence, and Crawford’s book explores the show through close readings of its characters and storylines, alongside interviews with neurodivergent Whovians and those who helped bring the Doctor’s adventures to life.

Finally, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926) was an astonishing project to undertake for someone who was just 25 years old, particularly for a woman working in the male-dominated film industry of the time, and during a period of debilitating German hyperinflation. Reiniger’s delicate silhouette animation conceals a grimmer world than Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which too often receives credit for being the first animated feature length film even though it came a decade later. It’s a startling, yet beautiful reminder that fairy tales have never been just for children. Celebrating the film’s centenary, a post-screening discussion on 23 August with musician Hugo Max and Reiniger scholar Tashi Petter will delve into the darker side and themes of this extraordinary work one hundred years young.

New releases playing on the UK’s largest screen at BFI IMAX throughout the month will include the continued run of The Odyssey (2026), projected from a pristine IMAX 70mm print from 17 July. The film recently broke BFI IMAX one day presale records, selling 28,000 tickets in the first 24 hours of on sale for a total gross of £750,000. After his Oscar-winning portrait of Robert Oppenheimer, BFI Fellow Christopher Nolan moves from the atomic to the mythic with his adaptation of arguably the most famous ancient text. The Odyssey is the first feature to be shot entirely with IMAX cameras, showcasing the latest in big-screen technology and BFI IMAX is the ultimate venue to see this epic as intended in IMAX 70mm. 

Tickets for BFI Southbank screenings and events in August are on sale to BFI Patrons on 6 July, BFI Members on 7 July, and to the general public on 9 July.