What's On

This Valentine’s Day at Category H we ask, can love be limited to the living and breathing? Where does the line between desire and obsession sit? Find out at OBJECT LOVERS, a late night double bill of CHRISTINE X KILLER SOFA dedicated to love beyond the human body. This Friday 13th February, 23:30 until late. Down in the Rio’s basement screen, we will begin with John Carpenter’s seminal Stephen K...

Token Homo and Loose Willis invite you to a very special screening of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) with a live shadow cast of London’s finest drag kings, queens and things. Get dressed up, sing and dance-along as QUEER HORROR NIGHTS projects the ultimate movie musical. “THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW would have flopped if it wasn’t for audiences taking it to their hearts, devising callbac...

An exciting afternoon at Rio Cinema Dalston filled with amazing short films created by neurodivergent talent and a Q&A with some exciting industry guests. Get ready to be inspired, moved, and entertained by the unique perspectives showcased on screen. Don't miss out on this exciting gathering of innovative storytellers! Films are shown with captions.

Bold, raw, and highly dykey — Dyke TV shook up cable airwaves from 1993 to 2005, broadcasting weekly to over 6.5 million households and carving out space for lesbian voices, politics and culture. Co-founded by Ana María Simo, Linda Chapman and Mary Patierno (of the Lesbian Avengers), this DIY powerhouse amplified stories across art, health, activism and sex — always unapologetically queer, always ...

Featurette Film Club Special Good Taste Made Bad Taste – The Making of Peter Jackson’s BAD TASTE dir. Tony Hiles ? 1988 ? Documentary/Film ? 25 mins ? From original VHS One of the most inspiring making-of-docs, giving us fascinating insights into the ingenuity of the 25 year old Peter Jackson as he brings a group of friends together to make of his first feature — the aliens-amok-in-Makara splatt...

Dap (Laurence Fishburne) and Julian, Big Brother Almighty (Giancarlo Esposito) conflict over their opposing political views in Spike Lee’s second joint, SCHOOL DAZE, one of the first feature length theatrical films focused on presenting the Black American college experience. At historically black Mission College, the activist-minded Dap immerses himself in a world of political rhetoric and soci...

Welcome to the second screening of Dream Emulator’s very own LSD Season, a season of screenings + rave celebrating Osamu Sato’s cult classic (not)game, LSD: Dream Emulator, alongside the many pieces of art/film/video games that it inspired directly and indirectly as part of its lasting legacy in our digital imaginations. After an introduction to 90s Digital psychedelia through Osamu Sato, Peaking...

All tickets free We made a film! Back in September we challenged the queer community in Hackney to film themselves and send those clips in, the aim was to record one ordinary day in the queer lives of Hackney residents, to show queer folks at play, at work, at rest. More than ever LGBTQI+ lives are under pressure and threat from the media and society, queer venues are disappearing, queer ...

Sürreal Sinema presents their first ever film programme VANILLA IS A TURKISH WORD; a selection of shorts, many never shown before in the UK, that shine a light on the bizarrity and beauty of everyday life in Türkiye. As London's go-to film club for films from Türkiye, Sürreal Sinema is dedicated to showcasing and celebrating a side of the region that you don't see in the news. This event is Sürr...

In DESSERT FOR CONSTANCE (1981), Bokolo and Mamadou are sweepers in the city of Paris, looking for a way to pay for the return home of one of their sick comrades. FILMS FOR WORKERS is a season of low-cost cinema for trade union members running at the Rio Cinema from January to February 2026, celebrating worker solidarity and empowerment and exploring labour conditions on screen, as well as creati...

Martin Parr’s Moving Pictures dir. Martin Parr ? 1998 ? Documentary/Art ? 49 mins ? From original VHS Celebrate the late, great photographer Martin Parr’s travels around England during the summer of 1998, armed with a DV camera and a mission to define ‘Englishness’ through the nation’s own subjects.?Shown as part of the BBC’s Modern Times series. Think of England shows Parr talking to the many pe...

At just 14 years old, Molly Russell came home from school, finished her homework and said goodnight to her family. A few hours later, she took her own life. Surrounded by a loving circle of family and friends, it was a life-shattering mystery to all who knew her. In search of an answer Ian, her devastated father, pieces the final months of her life back together only to discover that, when Molly ...

Award winners, audience favourites from the opening night – all unforgettable stories from the 2025 Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival, held annually in Cardiff and followed by Iris on the Move, a touring showcase bringing outstanding short films to venues across the UK. From a haunted tollhouse to a high-rise reckoning, from quiet self-discovery to a love song by the sea, these films capture the ...

Party Monster: A Shockumentary dir. Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato ? 1996 ? Documentary ? 57 mins ? From original DVD Tells the story of the rise and fall of Michael Alig, a kid from Middle America who aspired to take the place of Andy Warhol. Michael quickly rose to become the biggest party promoter in New York and King of the so-called Club Kids. But after spiralling into drug addiction, Michael ...

A Rio Feminist Film Programming Group x Women’s History Month East London 2026 special! My Dear Theo is an intimate and moving documentary by Ukrainian filmmaker Alisa Kovalenko, made in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Unable to continue making films in the conventional sense, Kovalenko instead creates video diaries and poetic letters addressed to a future grown-up Theo, that ca...

Welcome to the 3rd and final screening of Dream Emulator’s very own LSD Season, a season of screenings + rave celebrating Osamu Sato’s cult classic (not)game, LSD: Dream Emulator, alongside the many pieces of art/film/video games that it inspired directly and indirectly as part of its lasting legacy in our digital imaginations. You’ve been riding high, but unfortunately, things are taking a turn ...

Murcof is performing at the historic Art Deco Rio Cinema in Dalston, making full use of the cinema screen with a live AV performance of Twin Color. Murcof Mexican-born musician Fernando Corona primarily records and performs under the name Murcof, creating ghostly compositions that fuse elements of classical music, minimal techno, ambient drone, and free improvisation, among other genres. His firs...

Following the decades-long friendship between two French women, Pauline (Valérie Mairesse) and Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard), ONE SINGS, THE OTHER DOESN’T explores the social and political struggle for women’s abortion rights in France across the 60s and 70s. This special screening will include an intro by Bells Kennedy-Compston, programmer of the Varda Film Club. This screening is shown in French w...

Puccini’s La Bohème is one of the world's best-loved operas, and now a classic reborn in 21st-century East London. A tale of love and tragedy, beauty and decay, charting the ups and downs of a group of idealistic graduates... La Bohème marks the feature-film debut of Olivier Award–winner Robin Norton-Hale, Artistic Director and CEO of English Touring Opera, and is all shot in locations a stone’s ...

With a loving lens on East London, this exploration of masculinity and Islamophobia is poignantly told by men facing an identity crisis at the intersection of the generational racism they’ve endured. Behind the loud and intimidating motorcycles of the "Bangladeshi Bad Boys" is a group of second-generation Bangladeshi men who find in their bikes a sense of identity and a way to overcome racism. ...

When Society Collapsed, Music Took Over. Late 80s. In an England suffocated by unemployment and Margaret Thatcher’s policies, a generation found refuge and a voice in music. In abandoned factories and secret fields, underground raves were born—explosions of light and sound where thousands of young people escaped social oppression to the rhythm of a new musical genre: breakbeat. Fusing the ra...

Japanese Film Club returns with another exclusive, 4K premiere - Nobuhiro Yamashita’s incredible, LINDA LINDA LINDA. Originally released in Japan in 2005, the film received a 20th anniversary 4K restoration in 2025. IndieWire describes Linda Linda Linda as, “One of the best Japanese films of the 20th century'“, and the film has received adoration from fans and critics since it’s original release. ...

The Arabic Cinema Club returns for the London Premiere of A Sad and Beautiful World (2025) directed by Cyril Aris. Nominated as Lebanon’s official entry for the 98th Academy Awards and following its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Cyril Aris' drama spans across three decades of passion, loss, and hope, Nino and Yasmina are bound by a magnetic relationship. Torn between love and survival, th...

The Judgement Hall Festival closes with a double presentation on the Rio’s largest screen, bringing together film, live sound, and site-specific curation. The event culminates in a newly commissioned live score by Neptunian Maximalism to THE LEGEND OF SURAM FORTRESS, directed by Sergei Parajanov. The film is presented in a special restoration, shown in collaboration with the Georgian National Fil...

To Top off our LSD Season offering, we invite you join us for a rave inspired by the cult classic game LSD: Dream Emulator, from which we get our name. This will be a party powered by the Dream Emulator Soundsystem, with visuals from LSD: Dream Emulator (1998), and some of the myriad experiences it inspired which you’ll have seen throughout the rest of LSD Season. Such an original game experience...

For our March Classic Matinee, marking Women’s History Month and celebrating it's 75th anniversary, revisit SUNSET BOULEVARD , Billy Wilder’s darkly glamorous Hollywood noir masterpiece. Gloria Swanson delivers an unforgettable performance as Norma Desmond, a former silent-film star clinging to dreams of past fame as the industry moves on without her. Stylish, unsettling and razor-sharp, SUNSET ...

Come Undone... Join us at the Rio this Valentines season for Emerald Fennell's utterly scandalous reboot of Emily Brontë's gothic romance. Starring Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, whose forbidden passion for one another becomes an epic tale of lust, love and madness... Margot Robbie finally gets in front of the camera for one of Fennell’s projects, previously having produc...

From award-winning writer-director Mona Fastvold (The World to Come, The Brutalist) comes the extraordinary true legend of Ann Lee, founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers. Academy Award® nominee Amanda Seyfried stars as the Shaker's irrepressible leader, who - having been born into poverty in Manchester, England - went on to preach gender and social equality and was revered by her fol...

Come Undone... Join us at the Rio this Valentines season for Emerald Fennell's utterly scandalous reboot of Emily Brontë's gothic romance. Starring Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, whose forbidden passion for one another becomes an epic tale of lust, love and madness... Margot Robbie finally gets in front of the camera for one of Fennell’s projects, previously having produc...

From award-winning writer-director Mona Fastvold (The World to Come, The Brutalist) comes the extraordinary true legend of Ann Lee, founder of the devotional sect known as the Shakers. Academy Award® nominee Amanda Seyfried stars as the Shaker's irrepressible leader, who - having been born into poverty in Manchester, England - went on to preach gender and social equality and was revered by her fol...

With a recorded intro by director Elizabeth Purchell and a talk by Molly Miles. “ Wild, wicked, and wanton!” Roommates Lisa, Beth, and Tess are three young women who each share the same goal of hooking up with their respective male bosses. While their attempts at seduction get off to a rough start, their peeping tom neighbour Billy spends his days spying through keyholes and trying to get a ...

Imagine a film that is Deep Throat crossed with Rocky Horror, that film is THUNDERCRACK! A frequent fixture at the legendary Scala Cinema in Kings Cross on grainy old 16mm prints, we can now present this masterpiece of filth fully restored and remastered at Pink Palace. In the beginning, cinema was without form…and then came the dazzling madness of THUNDERCRACK! The home of an alcoholic widow be...

A queer coded classic from 1942, when deviant sexuality was banned from the screen, this pioneering horror by Val Lewton is still a chilling and stylish masterpiece with a dark, queer and terrifying heart, featuring a complex psychological script written by legendary gay screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen. After impulsively marrying an American man she meets at the New York Zoo, Serbian refugee Irena is ...

Party Monster: A Shockumentary dir. Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato ? 1996 ? Documentary ? 57 mins ? From original DVD Tells the story of the rise and fall of Michael Alig, a kid from Middle America who aspired to take the place of Andy Warhol. Michael quickly rose to become the biggest party promoter in New York and King of the so-called Club Kids. But after spiralling into drug addiction, Michael ...

A tender, visually enchanting animated feature, LITTLE AM?LIE adapts Am?lie Nothomb?s autobiographical novel The Character of Rain into a poetic story of curiosity, courage and connection. Growing up in post-war Japan, young Am?lie experiences the world as a peaceful mystery until a revelatory encounter with chocolate awakens her senses. As her bond with the family?s housekeeper, Nishio-san, de...

Join us from 10.15am for craft activities, before the film screening at 11am! The Rio’s beloved and historic Saturday Morning Picture Club continues with a vibrant, feel-good Disney favourite! This February we’re screening THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG , a lively, song-filled fairy tale set in the heart of New Orleans. Before the screening, we will have arts and crafts activities in the lobby led ...

Join us from 10.15am for craft activities, before the film screening at 11am! The Rio’s beloved and historic Saturday Morning Picture Club is back. This month we’re showing the enchanting family classic: MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO, a magical animated adventure where two sisters discover extraordinary creatures and woodland spirits in the countryside. Before the screening, we will have arts and craf...

Join us from 10.15am for craft activities, before the film screening at 11am! The Rio’s beloved and historic Saturday Morning Picture Club is back. This month we’re showing the cracking claymation classic: CHICKEN RUN, a feather-ruffling adventure where a flock of determined hens plot their great escape! Before the screening, we will have arts and crafts activities in the lobby led by Sophie...

A delightfully wicked, razor-sharp, thriller from Park Chan-wook, the ever incisive teller of such chillingly incisive, darkly comic tales as DECISION TO LEAVE, THE HANDMAIDEN and OLDBOY. Model employee Man-soo’s life unravels when he’s abruptly laid off after 25 years. Facing mounting debts and a vanishing sense of dignity, he sets his sights on a coveted job at a rival company, only to discov...

The multi award-winning director of NOMADLAND, Chloé Zhao, is back with a raw and honest, lyrical and passionate, portrait of love, grief and the power of storytelling that features truly captivating performances from Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. England 1580. Impoverished Latin tutor William Shakespeare meets free-spirited Agnes, and the pair, strike up a torrid affair that leads to marriag...