Watch film curator George Crosthwait’s take on Pretty Red Dress, the debut feature from writer and director Dionne Edwards.

Evidence perhaps, alongside Raine Allen Miller’s Rye Lane, of an emerging wave of South London-set films made by fresh (and female) voices. Pretty Red Dress is a sweet, funny, and very timely, exploration of black masculinity, brought to life by a superb central cast. Queerness emerges here as a universal sensibility, rather than something paradoxically binary. Also, it’s a musical!

Throughout July and August, we’re excited to present an array of screenings and special events around South Asian Heritage Month 2023, which is themed ‘Stories to Tell.’ The films chosen include suggestions by our members and local residents, alongside partnership events with curator Anupma Shanker, SUPAKINO, and London Bengali Film Festival. The screenings will explore a range of themes, from identity and community to gender, faith, and family, with a special focus on music, dance and drama.

The season opens with Jean Renoir’s intoxicating first colour feature The River, a glorious tribute to the sights and sounds of Indian culture. The film will be introduced by Anupma Shanker and preceded by an Odissi dance performance by Prachi Hota. We also screen Satyajit Ray’s debut feature, Pather Panchali, which revolutionised Indian cinema.

On India Independence Day, there’s chance to see Sandhya Suri’s remarkable, Around India with a Movie Camera, which draws exclusively from the BFI National Archive and features some of the earliest surviving footage from India.

From Bangladesh, we are proud to present Tareque Masud’s rarely screened masterpiece, The Clay Bird, and London Bengali Film Festival also presents a preview of Muhammad Quayum’s award-winning debut feature, The Golden Wings of Watercocks.

For the 40th Anniversary of Octopussy, SUPAKINO brings Turbans Seen On Screen to The Garden Cinema: film screenings featuring notable characters wearing turbans. This under-screened Bond film is surrounded by many fascinating stories linking British film history to the British South Asian experience.

Saim Sadiq’s dazzling Joyland, one of the most acclaimed films of the year, will return to our screens, as well as Gurinder Chadha’s Bruce Springsteen jukebox comedy Blinded by the Light as part of Musical Fridays. Our Films For The Family screening is the Oscar-nominated animation, The Breadwinner.

Following a screening of Sean Baker’s Tangerine, we hosted a panel discussion in partnership with oestrogeneration, a magazine platform highlighting the voices of trans women and transfeminine people in the UK.

In this clip, Jaye Hudson, Bambi Jordan Phillips, and June Bellebono discuss the accessibility of iPhone filmmaking, what kind of films are made on lower budgets, and desires to see trans representation in genre films.

Watch film programmer Erifili Missiou’s take on Medusa Deluxe, the audaciously original debut from writer-director Thomas Hardiman.

This one-take, labyrinthine whodunnit could be easily pigeonholed as another technical marvel. Oscar-nominated cinematographer Robbie Ryan (Fish Tank, The Favourite) surpasses expectations, blending pop grittiness with a snake-like camera movement that slyly progresses from conversation to conversation, room to room, suspect to suspect. Yet, Medusa Deluxe never ceases to be a gripping murder mystery that keeps us at the edge of our seats.

The film’s real appeal though is its hydridic tone, a unique osmosis of campness and pub talk, comedy and thriller. The seamless result is also due to outstanding performances, which give it character and depth. To say that emerging director Thomas Hardiman shows promise with this bold debut is an understatement.

A joint presentation from Chinese Cinema Project and The Garden Cinema. Director Wang Xiaoshuai was in conversation with Tony Rayns following this screening. Wang Xiaoshuai’s epic, multi-generational portrait of lives lived under China’s one child policy is both breathtaking and heartbreaking.

The Garden Cinema is delighted to host a weekend of screenings and events celebrating the films and music of one of the UK’s foremost artists: Sally Potter.

This retrospective anticipates the 14 July release of Sally’s debut album, Pink Bikini, a semi-autobiographical collection of songs about growing up female in London in the 1960s, as a young rebel and activist.

Sally will be live at the Garden Cinema for Q&As following Orlando and Yes and giving special introductions to The Party and Ginger & Rosa. Additionally, Sally will be discussing her album, film music, and more with Miranda Sawyer on Friday 9 June.

We recently joined forces with the International Booker Prize, global film distributor and streaming service MUBI and the award-winning bookseller Foyles for a very special live event and screening.

The organisers of the International Booker Prize, which celebrates the best in fiction translated into English from another language, want to encourage people who love translated fiction to explore more global cinema, and vice versa, so they have invited the team at MUBI to match six great films from around the world with the books on the shortlist for this year’s prize. The curated films reflect the themes or tone of the relevant book and have been approved by each author.

On May 26, we hosted a special live event: an intimate Q&A featuring the winners of this year’s International Booker Prize 2023: Georgi Gospodinov, author of Time Shelter, and the book’s translator, Angela Rodel. The Q&A, hosted by writer and editor Sarah Shaffi, was followed by a screening of One Fine Morning, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (France, Germany, 2022), which MUBI has paired with Time Shelter.

Mike Leigh and Gary Yershon’s ongoing discussion of the acclaimed director’s films continued at The Garden Cinema with a screening and Q&A for Another Year (2010).

Over the course of four seasons, Another Year explores the life of a sublimely happy older married couple, Tom and Gerri (Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen), and their various friends and family members, who struggle to find the happiness that Tom and Gerri have cultivated.