Subscribe to watch - 14-day free trial, then £6.99 a month

Samsara
Berlin Film Festival award winner Lois Patiño’s assured third feature transports us to magical places in Laos and Zanzibar, where the visible and the invisible merge.
Director: Lois Patiño
Overview
Patiño’s film envelops us in a work of collective meditation and cinematic reincarnation. We observe the daily rituals of a Buddhist temple in Laos and a seaweed farm in Zanzibar, captured on 16mm with an ethnographic eye (and ear) for detail. Infused with sonic wonders, the spiritual becomes profoundly sensorial; at one point we’re even invited to enjoy Samsara’s uniquely transformative spaces with our eyes closed. Transcendental.
Related

Amores perros Amores perros
Drama 2000 148 mins Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu's (Birdman, The Revenant) gripping debut feature is a savagely brilliant triptych around the theme of animalistic desires.

Drugstore Cowboy Drugstore Cowboy
Drama 1989 101 mins Director: Gus Van Sant
Matt Dillon and his not-so-merry band of junkies rob pharmacies and cheat death.

Maurice Maurice
Drama 1987 140 mins Director: James Ivory
Merchant Ivory’s landmark adaptation of E M Forster’s classic LGBTQ+ novel and a precursor to the James Ivory-scripted Call Me By Your Name, starring Hugh Grant, James Wilby and Rupert Graves.

When I Saw You When I Saw You
Drama 2014 94 mins Director: Annemarie Jacir
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, a young Palestinian refugee boy yearns to be reunited with his father and joins a band of freedom fighters.

Birthday Girl Birthday Girl
Drama 2023 95 mins Director: Michael Noer
Heart-pounding Danish drama about a mother’s desperate attempts to unmask her daughter’s attacker on board a cruise ship.

Good Bye, Lenin! Good Bye, Lenin!
Drama 2003 121 mins Director: Wolfgang Becker
After his mother wakes from a coma in 1990, a young man goes to great lengths to pretend East Germany still exists in this wonderfully bittersweet tragicomedy.

Blackmail Blackmail
Police drama 1929 82 mins Silent Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock's first sound film sees a young woman blackmailed for a murder she was forced to commit.

Old Czech Legends Old Czech Legends
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1952 81 mins Director: Jirí Trnka
The world of Czech myths and legends inhabited by puppets is magically brought to life by master animator, Jiří Trnka, in this stunning stop-motion spectacle of folklore.

Little English Little English
Comedy 2022 99 mins Director: Pravesh Kumar
A raucous and audacious comedy following the lives of a dysfunctional British Punjabi family.

In This World In This World
Drama 2003 90 mins Director: Michael Winterbottom
Michael Winterbottom's Berlin Golden Bear-winning docudrama follows the arduous journey made by two young men from their refugee camp in Pakistan to a better life in the UK,

The End We Start From The End We Start From
Drama 2023 102 mins Director: Mahalia Belo
A stunning post-apocalyptic British drama navigating the anxieties of parenthood and the future of the world.

Getting it Back: The Story of Cymande - Q&A Getting it Back: The Story of Cymande - Q&A
Inside Film 2024 22 mins
The director of a documentary about British funk pioneers Cymande joins the band at BFI Southbank to talk about the film.

Amores perros Amores perros
Drama 2000 148 mins Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu's (Birdman, The Revenant) gripping debut feature is a savagely brilliant triptych around the theme of animalistic desires.

Drugstore Cowboy Drugstore Cowboy
Drama 1989 101 mins Director: Gus Van Sant
Matt Dillon and his not-so-merry band of junkies rob pharmacies and cheat death.

Maurice Maurice
Drama 1987 140 mins Director: James Ivory
Merchant Ivory’s landmark adaptation of E M Forster’s classic LGBTQ+ novel and a precursor to the James Ivory-scripted Call Me By Your Name, starring Hugh Grant, James Wilby and Rupert Graves.

Architecton Architecton
Documentary 2024 98 mins Director: Viktor Kossakovsky
Victor Kossakovsky’s film essay looks at the way we have constructed our built world through a series of breathtaking sequences.

Layla Layla
2024 100 mins Director: Amrou Al-Kadhi
A British-Palestinian drag performer catches the eye of a strait-laced white man in Amrou Al-Kadhi’s stunning, semi-autobiographical debut.

When I Saw You When I Saw You
Drama 2014 94 mins Director: Annemarie Jacir
Following the Six-Day War in 1967, a young Palestinian refugee boy yearns to be reunited with his father and joins a band of freedom fighters.