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This special preview of London Film School graduate Antonio Sequeira’s heartwarming, intimate and award-winning debut feature is followed by a live-on-stage Q&A with the director and the cinematographer Anastasiia Vorotniuk.

In a small Portuguese town, a family is turned upside down when the eldest son leaves to study in London. As Winter turns into Spring and Summer becomes Autumn, a daughter comes of age, a father experiences a mid-life crisis and a mother learns to cope with an ‘empty nest.’

Exquisitely acted, written, photographed and directed, AUTUMN offers a poignant yet powerful reflection on the challenges of growing up, growing old and moving on.  

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Celebrate the epic two-part end of season finale of DOCTOR WHO 2025 and experience time and space on the big screen with Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, Varada Sethu as Belinda Chandra, and Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday.

The screening starts at 18:00 with Wish World, followed by The Reality War.

Belinda Chandra has been kidnapped by robots, faced a terrifying god and a creature of pure evil on her travels with the Doctor. With the TARDIS still unable to get her home to Earth, Belinda must fight for her life as the Doctor faces an almighty threat to reality itself

Dream Emulator presents Fast Forward: Dark Souls Trilogy Speedruns

Fashion in Film Festival 2025 presents GROUNDED: Fashion’s Entanglements with Nature, a major UK-wide season exploring the relationship between fashion and nature through the lens of cinema in an era marked by escalating ecological crises

Spanning the late 19th century to present day, GROUNDED examines fashion’s role as simultaneously a barrier and a connecting tissue between humans and the natural world. With over 80 films from around the world, including rare screenings and UK premieres, the season offers a decentred perspective on themes such as production, disposal, hybridity, migration, social justice, and environmental harm. It also presents diverse narratives addressing ecological and geopolitical concerns while exploring imaginative spaces of poetry, comedy, beauty, joy, horror, and transgression.

The programme is co-curated by Marketa Uhlirova and Dal Chodha, with guest curators. It is possible with the support of the BFI, awarding funds from the National Lottery. Fashion in Film Festival is based at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London.

website: www.fashioninfilm.com

ANIMATION SHORTS: States of Emergence:

Operating at the edges of reality and fantasy, serenity and grotesqueness, this programme harnesses animation as a language through which to express complex ideas about the relationships between bodies, objects and environments.

What does a body look like when it is turned inside out? And perfume, when materialised as a woodland substratum of abundant growth and decay? Might a plastic bag (arguably the most popular, if unwanted, fashion accessory) possess feelings and agency? Operating at the edges of reality and fantasy, serenity and grotesqueness, this programme harnesses animation as a language through which to express complex ideas about the entanglements of fashion and nature. Showcasing a variety of techniques, the films attend to moments in which physical bodies, plants and inanimate things push against and mould into each other. Through relentless adaptation and transformation, the films highlight the aliveness of both bodies and things, their shared nature as matter. Fashion here is conceptualised not only as the body’s textile covering but, more expansively, as its malleable surface.

Asparagus

USA, 1979. Dir. Suzane Pitt, 17min, English

Flora

Czechia, 1989. Dir. Jan Švankmajer, 1min

Moth

USA, 2019. Dir. Allison Schulnik, 4min

Plastic Bag

USA, 2020. Dir. Robin Frohardt, 8min

There is a Garden in My Head

Netherlands, 1987. Dir. Jacques Verbeek, Karin Wiertz, 4min

22 Light Years

USA, 2021. Dir. Janie Geiser, 14min

Trembled Blossoms

USA, 2008. Dir. James Lima, 5min

Wonderwood

UK, 2010. Dir. Brothers Quay, 3min

The 27 residents of the tiny island of Mandø are used to severe weather and flooding, but climate change is making things worse and serious catastrophe looms. Yet the island's last farmer, Gregers, whose family has lived there for eight generations, hasn’t given up. He refuses to build a life elsewhere and hopes to find a wife to manage the farm with him. Accompanied by masterfully crafted shots of the distinctive landscape and shifting skies, As The Tide Comes In is a charming and compelling portrait of a universal fate that affects us all.

Young people seamlessly weave into the fabric of nature, swim in crystalline lakes and revel in the calm presence of the ancient trees. But this idyllic harmony is imperilled as the forest faces man-made extinction. Driven by her love for the forest, 22-year-old Ida becomes the leader of the new Forest Movement, coming face to face with industry giants and confronting generational bias. Unfolding as a modern fairy tale in the enchanting embrace of the Finnish forest, Once Upon a Time in a Forest is a hopeful ode to nature and its protectors.

2021 was the year climate change came home. From the streets of Brooklyn to the forests of Siberia, a relentless barrage of fires, floods, and storms made devastatingly clear that the extreme weather climate scientists had been predicting for half a century had arrived. In a production of unprecedented scope, Emmy-winning filmmakers Jon Siskel and Greg Jacobs chronicle that pivotal year through the eyes of everyday people, transforming the ordinary act of shooting a phone video into the radical act of bearing witness. Epic and intimate, the film is a wake-up call with the message that we’re all in this, together.

Hackney History Festival presents SAVE OUR HERITAGE and HANDS OFF Followed by a Q & A with Winstan Whitter director of SAVE OUR HERITAGE and HANDS OFF and Bill Parry-Davies solicitor activist with a bias against social and environmental injustice.

SAVE OUR HERITAGE: In anticipation of London’s Olympic bid, a new tube line for Hackney and urban regeneration efforts were planned. The site of the old theatre at Dalston (a.k.a The Club Four Aces, a.k.a Labyrinth) lies very close to Dalston rail station and the famous Ridley Road market. An organisation called OPEN formed to try to protect the site because of its cultural heritage, with support from an active cross-section of Hackney’s people. 

HANDS OFF tells the story of two Gentlemen's club's in Shoreditch targeted by the Hackney Council Nil Policy Act. The act proposed to shut down all “Strip/sex establishments" in the borough. Challenged by a solicitor, business owners, a church reverend and the strippers themselves, The White Horse and Browns battle to retain their licences.

Hackney History Festival presents a new documentary followed by a Q&A with with directors Winstan Whitter, Elin Moe and the star of the film Rabbi Herschel Gluck.

How To Get On with Everybody is an intimate portrait of the unique life of Herschel Gluck, a Rabbi from the Haredi Jewish community in north London. Herschel has dedicated himself to dissolving barriers and building friendships in unlikely places, in turn highlighting bonds that defy stereotypes and expectation. Herschel is one of life's true optimists, and in a time of global tension and division, he reminds us that power lies in empathy, humour and in our shared humanity.

Please note that tickets for this screening are available only from the Cinematik website. 

An intimate portrait of trans trailblazer Munroe Bergdorf as she navigates identity, race, activism, and hope.

Weaving past and present, Olivia Cappuccini’s LOVE & RAGE: MUNROE BERGDORF explores both the journey of the model, trans activist, and author and the balance between personal needs and public responsibility.

MOTEL DESTINO delivers heat, desire and danger as it fuses crime thriller and unbridled eroticism in a gloriously debauched piece of neon-noir set on the sun-drenched coast of Northern Brazil.

Welcome to the neon-hued Motel Destino, a roadside sex hotel run by hot-headed Elias and his restless younger wife Dayana. The arrival of 21-year-old Heraldo, on the run after a botched robbery, disrupts the established order. Loyalties and desires intertwine as destiny weaves its own mysterious and inevitable path...

With smouldering performances from its three leads, Karim Aïnouz's stylish and provocative MOTEL DESTINO is a sweaty, sensual dance of power, desire and liberation.

Following the screening of STUD LIFE award-winning British filmmaker Campbell X joins us for a live Q&A. 

Set in mid 2000s London, Stud life explores the city’s queer community centring on black queer perspectives and explorations of love, relationships, sexuality and gender.

Lesbian JJ works as a wedding photographer with Seb her (male) gay best friend. After JJ falls in love with gorgeous diva Elle, her friendship with Seb becomes strained as she’s stuck between choosing Seb or her lover.

Between the beautiful experiences of love and relationship, the film still addresses the hardships faced by those of JJ and Seb’s community, as they face violence and caution to exist and love the people they do.

With so few studs on the big screen, writer/director Campbell found his inspiration for the film in his community and on the Internet. “The film is inspired by London and its very vibrant multicultural life and where it comes into creative collision with diverse LGBT people. It’s also inspired by all the bois on YouTube, who are inadvertently creating an archive of female masculinity for generations to come,” Campbell says. 

A breathtaking journey showing that there is nowhere more vital for our survival, more full of life, wonder, or surprise, than the ocean.

99-year old David Attenborough reveals how his lifetime has coincided with the great age of ocean discovery. Through spectacular sequences featuring coral reefs, kelp forests and the open ocean, Attenborough shares why a healthy ocean keeps the entire planet stable and flourishing.

Stunning, immersive cinematography showcases the wonder of life under the seas and exposes the realities and challenges facing our ocean as never-before-seen, from destructive fishing techniques to mass coral reef bleaching. Yet the story is one of optimism, with Attenborough pointing to inspirational stories from around the world to deliver his greatest message: the ocean can recover to a glory beyond anything anyone alive has ever seen.

Pink Palace presents the Directors Cut of 54, a film that was butchered by the studios after test audiences ran screaming from all the homo content, Miramax ordered 45 gay/bi minutes cut and 25 minutes of new hetero footage be added, the film flopped.

In 2015 director Mark Christopher reassembled the cut footage and delivered this darker, queer centric look at the lives of the staff who worked at 54, and the hot bi triangle between the three leads.

The story centres on Shane, a working class Jersey boy who dreams about making it to Studio 54 meeting Julie Black (Neve Campbell), a starlet he has a crush on. His luck turns one night after 54’s kooky owner Steve Rubell (Mike Myers) is smitten with Shane’s abs and lets him in the club. Shane eventually gets a job as a busboy and lives the dream of Studio 54, snorting, swallowing, and screwing anything he can get his hands on. This new cut then centres on Shanes relationship with Julie to a love triangle between his best friends, the married Studio 54 employees Anita (Salma Hayek) and Greg (Breckin Meyer).

“During those years of rebounding — and unbeknownst to Christopher — a VHS bootleg of the two-hour-long 54 rough cut began to circulate among film geeks, and, despite being distorted by its poor technical quality, it became the focus of a word-of-mouth campaign: This movie was really good. Petitions to Miramax to release 54 as Christopher intended it began to appear online, and in 2008, the New York LGBT film festival Outfest had a “secret screening” of the director’s cut. “ They sold out immediately“ says Christopher of the Outfest airing. “There’s been an appetite for this cut for a long, long time.”

“The director’s cut captures the freedom of the time,” says Phillippe, “but also the impending sobriety that would come with AIDS. It resonates.” Driven by character and atmosphere rather than soapy plot, Christopher’s film is permeated by a melancholy that adds depth to the ecstatic party scenes. Mike Myers nails the pathos and charm behind Rubell’s ‘luded-out lechery, while Phillippe’s measured performance, finally given space to breathe, is vulnerable, amoral, and sexy. There are no easy heroes or villains in this 54, only people looking for something they’ll likely never find.” Vulture

Please note there are NO ads or trailers, we start on time!

Pink Palace is a super low fi highly relaxed event that takes place in the basement bar, its a safe queer space so come along and catch some queer film and pop culture history, each week the film is introduced by curator Andrew Woodyatt, and feel free to stay and chat afterwards, participation is encouraged!

Pink Palace presents an incredible work from 1986 filmed locally at the Chisenhale Dance Space in Victoria Park and on location in and around Hackney Wick by avant garde film maker Charles Atlas.

Throughout his career, Atlas has collaborated with key figures from a range of disciplines, expanding the relationships between dance, music, theatre, video, fashion, and television.

Atlas’s experimental works from the 1980s integrate fiction and documentary in uniquely stylized portraits of urban subcultures. His video Hail the New Puritan depicts a fictionalized day in the life of the Scottish dancer and choreographer Michael Clark as he and his company prepare for a performance of his 1984 work New Puritans. Atlas uses the inherently theatrical nature of dance as the departure point for an exploration of the unstable boundary between fantasy and reality, a boundary further tested by the work’s inclusion in a regular program of dance documentaries on British public television in 1986. 

“Combining mock interviews with footage of the company’s surreal productions, Hail the New Puritan is a vivid time capsule of Clark’s milieu at a moment when London’s fashion, clubbing, and art scenes intersected and reverberated throughout popular culture. With production design by Leigh Bowery—and a soundtrack by The Fall, Glenn Branca, Bruce Gilbert and Jeffery Hinton, it emphasizes the creative cross-fertilization that is at the core of both Atlas’s and Clark’s work.” MOMA

Programmer – seeing this late night on C4 in 1986 I was mesmerised by the talent and hotness of Michael Clark, and transfixed by the larger than life persona of Leigh Bowery, in 86 the film was inspirational, now it serves as a document to the avant garde Hackney art scene.

Please note there are NO ads or trailers, we start on time!

Pink Palace is a super low fi highly relaxed event that takes place in the basement bar, its a safe queer space so come along and catch some queer film and pop culture history, each week the film is introduced by curator Andrew Woodyatt, and feel free to stay and chat afterwards, participation is encouraged!

Pink Palace presents a newly made documentary about the legendary East London Leather Club The Backstreet, we are also delighted to welcome the film makers and special guests for this screening, and the basement bar will be suitable decorated!

Sweat, moans, the haze of smoke and the rugged smell of leather. This is The Backstreet – London's secret haven for leathermen. After 37 years in existence, the club stands on the brink of permanent closure. Facing the demolition of their erotic haven, regulars and staff recount their memories – the sweaty darkroom encounters, a master-slave couple’s first kiss, a spiritual encounter during a BDSM session, and the terror and loss of the HIV pandemic. Meanwhile, the owner, the manager and a curator from the Museum of London go through boxes, finding erotic birthday cake designs, leather jockstraps and homophobic tabloid cuttings. As the space awaits demolition, what will The Backstreet’s legacy be?

“At the age of 32, following negotiations with Benjy’s nightclub in Mile End, John Edwards was granted permission to take on the failing Benjy’s 2, the smaller, downstairs bar and transform it into what would become London’s longest-running and strictest, men-only leather bar, The Backstreet. Its opening night took place on Friday, 12 April 1985, with a dress code of both leather and/or rubber, and was an instant success. John was motivated by the belief that he could run such a venue better than anyone, which he ultimately proved.

At the time of our opening, the leather scene in London was only The Coleherne in Earls Court, which wasn’t strict on dress code. The Cellar Bar at the back of the nightclub Heaven (in Charing Cross) had just closed, so there wasn’t really anywhere with a late licence for serious leather guys.

In the late 780’s Edwards wrote to the Finnish artist Touch Valio Laaksonen (1920–1991), better known under the pseudonym ‘Tom of Finland’, with a commission of two drawings to help promote The Backstreet. The drawings, one a leather man and the other a rubber man, replaced the earlier club logo of a pair of boots. They became synonymous with The Backstreet, and appeared on just about all of the club’s future posters, flyers, newsletters and other promotional material.” The London Museum

Please note there are NO ads or trailers, we start on time!

Pink Palace is a super low fi highly relaxed event that takes place in the basement bar, its a safe queer space so come along and catch some queer film and pop culture history, each week the film is introduced by curator Andrew Woodyatt, and feel free to stay and chat afterwards, participation is encouraged!

To celebrate its 40th anniversary and the work of its director, a special screening of Agnes Varda’s VAGABOND (Sans Toit Ni Loi) with an introduction by the Rio’s own Bells Kennedy-Compston, film programmer and producer.

With an unforgettable performance from Sandrine Bonnaire, VAGABOND premiered at the 42nd Venice International Film Festival and won Varda the Golden Lion.

In the dead of winter, a young woman's body is found in a ditch. With interviews and flashbacks, the intriguing life story of the young woman, Mona, is revealed.

Also showing in the programme:

Varda’s ALONG THE COAST, a 1958, rarely screened, short film commissioned by the French office for tourism.

Vampire thriller meets serious intent in Ryan Coogler’s weighty and soulful SINNERS featuring Michael B. Jordan in a dual role. 

 “You keep dancing with the devil, one day he’s gonna follow you home.” 

 Mississippi 1932. Trying to leave their troubled lives behind gangster twin brothers Smoke and Stack return home after a stint in Chicago working with Al Capone, with plans to open a juke joint – drinking, dancing and the Blues. An eerie encounter with musician Remmick is met with suspicion by the brothers and rightly so…

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Visionary filmmaker Wes Anderson continues his gloriously subversive path of cinematic mainstream destruction with a poignant tale of love and regret, espionage and intrigue, and the power of second chances.

Zsa-zsa Korda, one of the richest men in Europe has survived six plane crashes and fathered nine sons and one daughter – a nun- whom he appoints as the sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, the pair soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins…

Alongside Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton, the stacked all-star ensemble cast includes both familiar Anderson favourites and new arrivals - Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend and Hope Davis among them.

It’s full throttle Cage Rage as Nicolas Cage is pushed into hallucinatory madness in Irish director Lorcan Finnegan’s deliriously sweaty psycho-thriller played out on Australia’s sun-drenched beaches.

A man returns to the idyllic beach of his childhood to surf with his son but his paradise is now the territory of surfing gang the Bay Boys and their policy is “locals only.” But this washed-up wanderer is chasing a dream and not going to give in without a fight…

With its exceptional cast and hypnotic, pulsating score THE SURFER is an impeccably scripted descent into the abyss that is topped by Cage at its most gloriously unhinged—feral, desperate, and utterly hypnotic.

More than just a remake of the 1993 hit movie, THE WEDDING BANQUET is a joyfully loving and fresh reimagining of a classic comedy of errors about a family navigating cultural identity, queerness, and family expectations as they live, love, fight and make up again.

Frustrated with his commitment-phobic boyfriend Chris and running out of time, Min makes a proposal: a green-card marriage with their lesbian friend Angela in exchange for her partner Lee’s expensive IVF. Elopement plans are upended, however, when Min’s grandmother surprises them with an extravagant Korean wedding banquet…

With a pitch-perfect multigenerational cast that includes the great Lily Gladstone, THE WEDDING BANQUET boils over with humour and heart and a poignant reminder that being part of a family means learning to both accept and forgive.

In celebration of Windrush Day, FEARLESS is a heartwarming and revealing documentary that features six women aged between 78 and 90 who as young people left everything behind to start new lives far from home. All were part of the generation of people from British colonies invited to help rebuild the mother country after WWII. They came and thrived despite the tumultuous times and often hostile reception they received. Today, these pioneering women are almost invisible to a modern society. Until now, their voices haven’t been heard.

FEARLESS interweaves achieve footage from pivotal moments in recent history with the women’s memories and stories. These are the moments and movements that impacted women then and now. They include taking on traditional men’s work, the Notting Hill Uprising and fight for racial equality, and the workers’ rights changes forced by women such as the Grunwick factory strikers.

The screening is followed by a live-on-stage Q&A with director Noella Mingo and producer and cinematographer Damian Paul Daniel, moderated by broadcast journalist Samina Kiyani.