Programme highlights announced for February and March 2025 at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX: Chantal Akerman, Edward Yang, African American westerns and more

The programme for February and the first half of March 2025 at BFI Southbank leads with Chantal Akerman: Adventures in Perception, a (near) complete retrospective that celebrates Akerman’s extraordinary impact on contemporary cinema. 

This major two-month season, presented in partnership with the Chantal Akerman Foundation and CINEMATEK (The Royal Film Archive of Belgium) and curated by Sight and Sound managing editor Isabel Stevens encompasses fiction features, documentaries, shorts and archive interviews, and coincides with a BFI Distribution releasing of a 2K restoration of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) on 7 February, which was voted the Greatest Film of All Time by Sight and Sound’s once a decade poll in 2022. 

Also accompanying the season will be a UK touring cinema package of some of Akerman’s key films including Je tu il elle (1974), News from Home (1976), Les Rendez-vous d’Anna (1978), Golden Eighties (1986), and La Captive (2000), BFI Blu-ray releases and a curated BFI Player subscription collection. 

To launch our major retrospective on 3 February, cellist and composer Sonia Wieder-Atherton, and founders of A Nos Amours collective Joanna Hogg (work permitting) and Adam Roberts join us for Le Rendez-vous de Chantal Akerman, a wide-ranging discussion about the filmmaker’s work, artistic vision and legacy, hosted by season curator Isabel Stevens. 

Sonia Wieder-Atherton, who was Akerman’s partner, will also give a special pre-screening performance, ahead of Histoires d’Amerique on 4 February take part in a Q&A for Akerman’s exuberant feminist musical comedy, Golden Eighties, restored in 4K, on 3 February. 

Meanwhile, a day of talks and discussions providing a deeper exploration of the various facets of Akerman’s oeuvre, Chantal Akerman Symposium on 8 March will open with a Key Scholar Lecture by Ivone Margulies (esteemed Akerman scholar and Professor at Hunter College, City University of  New York), presented in partnership with Department  of Film Studies, King’s College London. Details of further special guests during the season to follow.

BFI London Film Festival programmer Hyun Jin Cho curates Conversations with a Friend: The Films of Edward Yang, taking place in February and March at BFI Southbank. One of the most celebrated Taiwanese filmmakers, Edward Yang’s visionary films bring to life the complexity of Taipei, making visible the ordinarily invisible layers of the city and its habitants. 

All seven of Yang’s distinctive feature films will screen in the season: his heartfelt debut That Day, at the Beach (1983), Taipei Story (1985) starring filmmaker (and co-writer on the film) Hou Hsiao-hsien, a tale of lives connected by one event The Terrorisers (1986), A Brighter Summer Day (1991) which is widely recognised as one of the greatest films of the 1990s, and his New Taipei trilogy of A Confucian Confusion (1994), Mahjong (1996) and A One and a Two… (2000). 

This retrospective season offers a glimpse into Yang’s singular artistic vision, which was cut tragically short by his premature death aged just 59, as well as the effervescent creativity of his circle of friends, notably the filmmakers Hou Hsiao Hsien and Wu Nien-jen. Yang was a key player of Taiwan New Cinema in the 1980s, a movement which will also be celebrated at BFI Southbank in April 2025, with a dedicated season that highlights the inventive, complex nature of the movement both cinematically and politically, primarily focusing on the first wave of films from 1982-1989.

Also taking place from 1 February to 18 March will be Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western. Black westerns boldly reimagined the myths of frontier culture, blending progressive themes, campy characters and anti-establishment flair. 

This season presents a wide selection of revisionist westerns shaped by the Civil Rights era, Black Power politics, anti-war protests and women’s liberation, including Sergeant Rutledge (John Ford, 1960), Duel at Diablo (Ralph Nelson, 1966), Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972), The Harder They Come (Perry Henzell, 1972), Posse (Mario Van Peebles, 1993), Rosewood (John Singleton, 1997), Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012), The Harder They Fall (Jeymes Samuel, 2021), Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022) and many more. 

Introducing Black Rodeo on 10 February will see season curator Mia Mask joined by special guests for a discussion about African American westerns, their rich cinematic history and their visual culture, with an illustrated presentation tracing the evolution of Black westerns and the African American western hero. Mask will be joined by academic Clive Chijioke Nwonka for a conversation about key films, actors and themes present in the season, hosted by film and TV journalist Ellen E Jones. 

Special events in February and March will include the opening night of the Kinoteka Polish Film Festival on 6 March, which this year will be Under the Volcano (Damian Kocur, 2024) about a Ukrainian-blended family on holiday in Tenerife struggling to reconcile their new status as refugees following the Russian invasion, while also dealing with their own troubled relationships. This year’s Kinoteka Polish Film Festival Festival is part of UK/Poland Season 2025, a season of more than 100 multi-artform events taking place in 40 cities in both countries between March and November 2025, organised by the British Council in partnership with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Polish Cultural Institute in London. 

2025 marks 20 years since the inaugural Birds’ Eye View Film Festival – a platform for women filmmakers that was launched at BFI Southbank. Now, as Reclaim The Frame, the charity, is returning to celebrate this milestone together with talent from across the UK, in collaboration with British Council. Join us this International Women’s Day (8 March) for Reframe and Rejoice, a special curated selection of shorts, followed by a conversation with the filmmakers. The shorts programme line-up and further Reclaim The Frame events will be announced in February. 

Presented in conjunction with Lost Reels, an organisation dedicated to showing lost, unavailable and out-of-circulation films, Personal Best (Robert Towne, 1982) is a rarely screened coming-of-age drama that follows the tempestuous relationship between Mariel Hemingway’s college hurdler Chris and Patrice Donnelly’s Olympian pentathlete Tory, as they first become lovers and then competitors during the 1980 US Olympic trials. This tender, poetic film, which screens on 17 February, explores the dynamics of sporting alliances, the rigours of training, sexual fluidity, and what it means to compete, and was a clear influence on Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers.  

There will be a preview of The Stimming Pool (2024) on 17 March presented as part of the BFI’s monthly Relaxed screening programme; crafted by the Neurocultures Collective and Steven Eastwood, this film challenges neurotypical ways of seeing. Its characters move through non-linear time and space, and environments both comforting and distressing, towards a utopia of unmasking: the Stimming Pool. 

This special preview screening is curated by Stims Collective as part of Stimema: The Neurodiverse World on Screen and is followed by a panel with the Neurocultures Collective hosted by Lillian Crawford. Also previewing will be Ernest Cole: Lost And Found (2024) on 27 February, followed by a Q&A with director Raoul Peck. Peck’s film is an intimate documentary portrait of the photographer who paid the price for revealing to the world the true horrors of apartheid in South Africa. Ernest Cole was the first Black freelance photographer in South Africa and his powerful record of the degradation of his people under Apartheid led to his exile. This poignant homecoming hymn restores his legacy and offering an essential story in the ongoing the fight for equity and human rights.  

Two films supported by the BFI Filmmaking Fund, awarding funds from the National Lottery, will preview in March. First, On Falling (2024), the impressive directorial feature debut from Laura Carreira, which is a powerful account of the gig economy, and the loneliness of working-class immigrants caught up in it. With shades of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman and the indelible spirit of Ken Loach, On Falling is a rage against the capitalist machine, and a very worthy winner of the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival. A preview of the film on 7 March will be followed by a Q&A with director Laura Carreira and producer Jack Thomas-O’Brien. 

Karan Kandhari’s darkly funny feminist fable Sister Midnight (2024) is a wonderfully unpredictable film, accompanied by an eclectic and irresistible soundtrack. Fresh from their arranged marriage, Uma moves into her husband’s cramped one-room home in Mumbai. Kandhari’s vibrant and ornate symmetrical compositions have attracted comparisons to Wes Anderson, yet Sister Midnight is a cool original. It operates on its own frequency, thrillingly rebelling against convention, much like its heroine Uma – portrayed by the terrific Radhika Apte, who combines charm with a gift for physical comedy. A preview of the film on 10 March will feature an extended introduction by director Karan Kandhari.

TV events announced today include a Preview of the second season of The Change (C4/Expectation, 2025) on 12 March, followed by a Q&A with series writer, creator and star Bridget Christie. In season two, Linda – played by Christie – faces major repercussions as a result of the lies she told the forest community. Out of the ensuing chaos, Linda inadvertently starts a women’s revolution which ignites the town and makes her a reluctant messiah. 

There will also be a pair of Doctor Who events: a newly restored screening of the first appearance of Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor – Doctor Who: Spearhead from Space – on 1 February and Doctor Who: The Savages (Animated) followed by a Q&A with actor Peter Purves on 28 February, which with all four of the original episodes missing, except for their audio, presents the complete story 59 years after it originally screened for the very first time. 

The UK’s largest festival for young, emerging filmmakers, the BFI Future Film Festival 2025 returns from 20 February to 6 March with a hybrid format that maintains a tradition of live and in-person screenings and events at BFI Southbank (20 to 23 February) alongside a globally accessible online programme, kindly supported by main sponsors Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery. For the second year, the festival will also include a UK-wide programme in collaboration with BFI Film Academy delivery partners, with screenings and events echoing the spirit of the BFI Future Film Festival providing young people across the country a chance to participate in the UK’s largest festival for budding screen creatives. 

Running from 12 to 16 March, will be Cinema Made in Italy, a celebration and exploration of the best new Italian Cinema and the filmmakers creating them. This festival, which is now in its 15th year, represents the best and brightest selection of new films, receiving their first screening in the UK, from some of the most vital and creative contemporary filmmakers working out of Italy. Ten films, curated by artistic director of the festival Adrian Wootton OBE, will screen over five days, encompassing biopics, period drama, historical epics, autobiographical memoirs, gritty modern stories, noir thrillers, drama documentaries and a special archive screening. The films have been created by an eclectic mixture of established talent and first-time feature directors, many of whom will be in attendance, to present and discuss their work. Cinema Made in Italy is presented at BFI Southbank by Cinecittà and the Italian Cultural Institute.

The inaugural edition of the London Soundtrack Festival, presented in partnership with the BFI, takes place from 19 to 26 March at venues across London, including BFI IMAX, featuring special introductions, live scores and masterclasses. The festival has been created to reflect the ever-increasing interest in film, TV and games music, and to acknowledge London as one of the most important centres in the world for soundtracks, with its state-of-the-art studios, and accomplished musicians and leading creative artists whose work spans all disciplines. The programme at BFI IMAX includes Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018) with a live score and introduction by composer Anna Meredith; Crash (1996) and Dead Ringers (1989) both introduced by the films’ director David Cronenberg and composer Howard Shore; The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001, 2002, 2003) introduced by composer Howard Shore; Gladiator II (Ridley Scott, 2024) introduced by composer Harry Gregson-Williams; and Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) and Joker: Folie à Deux (Todd Phillips, 2024) introduced by composer Hildur Guðnadóttir.  

Mark Kermode Live in 3D returns on 10 February and 10 March. Joined by surprise guests from across the film industry, Kermode explores, critiques and dissects current and upcoming releases, cinematic treasures, industry news and even some guilty pleasures. 

Finally, for those looking for a Valentine’s Day outing, BFI Southbank will screen My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985) and Love and Basketball (Gina Prince-Bythewood, 2000) on 14 February, while BFI IMAX will present a Twilight All-Nighter on 15 February.