Cinema Rediscovered 2025 Programme

This daring and progressive account of a complex love triangle broke all manner of taboos to emerge as India’s first queer film and an icon of Parallel Cinema.

Forty years after its release, Donna Dietch’s 1950s set romance remains one of the most influential and beautifully shot lesbian films of all time.

Film Historian Professor Ian Christie, who contributed to Channel 4's Vision series, will talk about the impact it made in film culture in the UK and his own work on programmes about Jean Luc Godard and Raul Ruiz.

Set in the declining North Shields fishing industry, this drama came out of the Channel 4 supported workshop movement and clearly prefigures the localised work of contemporary filmmakers such as Mark Jenkin, with its focus on the realities of marginalised communities.

She wrote, he directed: The Swimmer, adapted by husband-wife duo Frank and Eleanor Perry, is a surreal odyssey through the suburbs starring Burt Lancaster.

After being betrayed by her husband, Leonor embarks on a quest for self-discovery and begins to live new experiences.

Waterside 2, Watershed

Find out how a festival like Cinema Rediscovered is programmed by joining a discussion with some of the festival curators who will share their insight, thinking and journey and discuss how to get involved.

She wrote; he directed: Joan Didion’s modern classic is adapted by Frank Perry in this elliptical, introspective interrogation of 1960s Hollywood starring Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins.

17th-century Mexican nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, defies social expectations, becoming a renowned intellectual and writer during the Spanish Inquisition.

A groundbreaking experimental film essay on race and disorder in Britain, filmed by John Akomfrah from the Black Audio Film Collective in Birmingham and London during the riots of 1985.

In this spirited comedy, an aimless young man’s search for purpose, sex and self-identity becomes a microcosm of Czechoslovakian life amid the height of the Cold War.

This stylish and inventive comedy thriller stars Lucy Sheen as Elaine, a young law clerk, tasked with executing the will of Chinatown businessman Sam Wong who has died in mysterious circumstances.

Waterside 1, Watershed

Made on the Moon is happy to host a friendly post-screening gathering that bridges the community of East and South East Asian creatives and the wider audience together to discuss the film Ping Pong.

Join director Stephen Frears, writer Hanif Kureishi and actor Gordon Warnecke for this 40th anniversary showing of the delightfully transgressive My Beautiful Laundrette, the story of two lovers attempting to open a glamorous laundromat amid the turbulence of life in Thatcher’s Britain.

20th Century Flicks Videodrome and 20th Century Flicks Kino

Uproarious and hugely influential, Sam Raimi’s cabin-in-the-woods horror comedy was the very first title acquired by Stephen Woolley’s Palace Pictures.

A sharp, satirical tale of love, class and female resilience in 1950s Brazil, from globe-trotting auteur Alberto Cavalcanti - newly restored and ripe for rediscovery.

Marianne Basler shines as a Parisian sex worker looking for an authentic connection in this moving drama of identity and class consciousness.

A young Los Angeles couple is invited by the mysterious Diane to her secluded desert home. Unbeknownst to them, she is a centuries-old vampire, and it’s not long before they become the objects of her desires.

Yasuzō Masumura adapts Junichiro Tanizaki’s story as a visually arresting story of sexually charged vengeance.

Opposite Everyman Bristol

Bristol has been an UNESCO City Of Film since 2017, but Bristol and cinema have been entwined since – some would say before – the beginning of moving pictures. Join local enthusiast and historian Mark Fuller for one of two gentle walks.

Projection Rooms, Watershed

Join BFI National Archive Curator Rosie Taylor on a tour of Watershed’s projection booth and discover how the films screening at the festival make it to the screen.

Stanley Kubrick's breathtaking exploration of Wiliam Makepeace Thackeray's novel sees his 18th century Irish adventurer meet his share of women, take part in the Seven Years' War, get recruited as a spy and marry into the English aristocracy, inventing new stories about himself at every turn of the road.

Fact and fiction are intertwined to dazzling effect as the legacy of screen actor Henry Fonda becomes a metaphor for America’s ever-changing landscape.

Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

From state-of-the-art 13th-century warfare to perfumed sex, The Fall of Otrar is a hypnotic epic about one of world history’s crucial battles championed by Martin Scorsese.

Made with an all female crew, Sally Potter’s (Orlando, The Tango Lesson) ground-breaking first feature is a key film of early ‘80s feminist cinema.

Undershed

With a colourful medley of cartoons, an orphaned squirrel, and mind-blowing science on display there is something for everyone in this family screening presented on 16mm.

Waterside 2, Watershed

Join in a Chat & Craft drop-in workshop led by Cressida Williams inspired by the films showing at Cinema Rediscovered.

The Cube Microplex (about 20 min walk from Watershed)

This seminal African allegory by the late Souleymane Cissé (1940 – 2025) exists outside of time and space to act as a powerful commentary on fathers and sons, light and dark.

This is part of a series of events which look at the UK-wide impact of London’s The Film Society in its centenary year. Co-curated by Bryony Dixon (BFI National Archive) and film historian Henry K. Miller.

Structured around fourteen of Shakespeare's sonnets read by Judi Dench, Derek Jarman’s film is an exploration of love and desire between two men.

20th Century Flicks Videodrome and 20th Century Flicks Kino

An extraordinarily inventive fantasy from Terry Gilliam in which schoolboy Warnock is rescued from a dull suburban existence by a band of time travellers.

Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Two tapes, two Parisian mob killers, one corrupt policeman, an opera fan, a teenage thief, and the coolest philosopher ever filmed.

Undershed

Ever wondered how to project 16mm film? As part of the celebrations of the centenary of the creation of the first film society this is an opportunity to get hands-on with 16mm film.

Following a fatal car crash involving a swan outside a zoo, twin-brother zoologists Oliver and Oswald become fascinated by the processes of decay.

The early life of influential American President Abraham Lincoln becomes cinematic nirvana in the hands of director John Ford and actor Henry Fonda.

The plight of the African American Deaf community is put under the spotlight in this moving and ambitious landmark of independent cinema.

Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Toru Murakawa’s gritty and violent thriller is a vital addition to the pantheon of Japanese crime epics, centring on a deeply scarred war photographer turned bank robber.

A white Midwestern divorcee, Julie (Barabara Barrie), and her black co-worker Frank Richards (Bernie Hamilton) fall in love but racial prejudice gets in the way with devastating consequences.

Neil Jordan’s strikingly poetic debut feature explores the numbing violence of the Troubles starring actor Stephen Rea as Saxophonist Danny, one of the first films commissioned by Channel 4.

Who would have thought that this small budget film made for Channel 4 from a script by a then unknown writer about a young Pakistani Londoner (Gordon Warnecke), his ambitions for his uncle’s laundrette and his developing relationship with a skinhead (Daniel Day-Lewis in a breakthrough role) would become one of the most successful and iconic films of the 80s?

Waterside 1, Watershed

We are delighted to be hosting a special Deaf Conversations About Cinema event as part of this year’s Cinema Rediscovered.

Bristol Megascreen (about 1 min walk from Watershed)

Director Yasuzō Masumura broke new ground in Japanese cinema with this progressive exploration of lesbian sexuality.

One of the most moving and committed works of political cinema from the late 1970s America.

Rebelling against dull conformism, Michel Piccoli is mesmerising as a factory labourer suffering a meltdown and regressing to a caveman in this anarchic assault on bourgeois ideals.

Café & Bar, Watershed

Join us in the in Café & Bar to re-ignite the spirit of the original London Film Society screenings with a free-flowing evening of vintage film shorts presented live-in-the-room on 16mm.

Set against a backdrop of emerging teen culture and rising racial tension in late 50s London, Colin MacInnes' cult novel is brought to the screen in Julien Temple's exuberant musical adaptation with a who's who cast of music luminaries from Bowie and Ray Davies to Sade.

Gloriously restored in 4K, Miloš Forman’s triumphant drama examines the rivalry between classical masters Salieri and Mozart through a uniquely inquisitive lens.

College Green Bus Stop

Bristol has been an UNESCO City Of Film since 2017, but Bristol and cinema have been entwined since – some would say before – the beginning of moving pictures. Join local enthusiast and historian Mark Fuller for the second of two gentle walks.

In this, her first European film, Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express) plays a dancer drawn into a tragic romantic triangle when she meets a cabaret knife thrower and his capricious sweetheart.

A young woman finds herself on trial for her husband’s death in this perceptive Japanese drama, presented in a new 4K restoration.

Curzon Cinema (about 45 min bus journey from Watershed)

The ground-breaking first feature from the director of Orlando and The Tango Lesson, The Gold Diggers is a key film of early '80s feminist cinema.

Waterside 2, Watershed

Join John Piedot from Silk Factory, one of the world’s leading Creative Agencies, for a plotted history of the cinema trailer.

Alan Clarke’s screen adaptation of playwright Andrea Dunbar’s uninhibited portrait of working-class life caused outrage at the time and reset the debate about class and representation on screen.

Samuel Fuller combines two favourite topics, crime and GIs, with this gangster film involving crooked ex-soldiers organising a syndicate in occupied Japan.

In her final silent film set in in Paris and the French Riviera, Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express) stars as a Chinese variety dancer who models for a young artist and ends up falling in love.

The festival closes with the UK premiere of Yasuzō Masumura’s impassioned drama, which acts as a fierce critique of Japanese society.

Austrian auteur Michael Haneke places social tensions and cultural neuroses under the microscope with characteristic precision.

Café & Bar, Watershed

It’s time to prove your film knowledge at this year's Cinema Rediscovered Film Quiz — a night where deep-cut movie knowledge meets friendly competition.