The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021)
★★★★☆
The Real Charlie Chaplin directed by Peter Middleton and James Spinney is an immersive documentary that focuses on how Chaplin compulsively reflected his personal life in his films.
BFI Player
BFI LFF 2021: Awards
★★★★☆
BFI LFF 2021 Award winners
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) – on demand – Oscar winner
★★★★☆
Oscar-winning Judas and the Black Messiah directed by Shaka King, a tragic true story of a brutal state assassination in the US starring LaKeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya, is gripping, heart-wrenching and sadly still topical.
BFI Flare: Firebird (2021) – on demand
★★☆☆☆
At an Estonian air base in the Cold War a junior officer falls for a new lieutenant, leading to a forbidden romance which affects a number of lives in director Peeter Rebane’s romantic drama Firebird.
BFI Flare: Jump, Darling (2020) – on demand
★★★☆☆
Following a break-up, a struggling drag queen visits his ailing grandmother in the country and finds himself staying as the pair support each other in various ways in writer/director Phil Connell’s Jump, Darling.
Ammonite (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
Francis Lee’s second feature after his stunning, award-winning debut God’s Own Country is another queer love story, this time between two women in 1840s Lyme Regis, starring Kate Winslet and Saorse Ronan.
BFI Flare: Cowboys (2020) – on demand on Curzon Home Cinema on 7 May
★★★☆☆
In writer/director Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys a father and his transgender son journey through the Montana mountain ranges escaping the boy’s mother, who is unable to accept his gender dysphoria.
BFI Flare: Sublet (2020) – on demand
★★★☆☆
In Eytan Fox’s Sublet a middle-aged American travel writer visiting Tel Aviv forms an unexpected connection with his young Israeli landlord and in the process learns new things about himself.
BFI Flare: Boy Meets Boy (2021) – on demand
★★★☆☆
After meeting high in a Berlin nightclub, Johannes and Harry casually drift around the city coming down and getting to know each other in Daniel Sanchez Lopez’s Boy Meets Boy
BFI Flare: My First Summer (2020) – on demand
★★★★☆
In My First Summer by Katie Found, in rural Australia a sheltered teenage girl suffers a devastating loss but is unexpectedly brought to life by a sudden special connection with a fellow teen.
Billie (2019) – On demand
★★★★☆
Billie is no bio-pic in the conventional sense. James Erskine’s documentary transcends the clichés and presents a new angle on the Billie Holiday legend.
Perfect 10 (2019) – on demand
★★★★☆
Perfect 10 is a bold, moving and immersive coming-of-age debut by rising star writer-director Eva Riley.
Proxima (2019) – On demand
★★★★☆
The French female astronaut in woman-centred Proxima, directed by Anna Winocour, is torn apart by the conflict between needing the freedom to achieve and the pain of separation from her daughter.
African Apocalypse (2020)
★★★★☆
The BFI London Film Festival 2020 premiered African Apocalypse, a brilliant new documentary by British-Nigerian poet and activist Femi Nylander that uncovers a hidden part Africa’s colonial history.