Directed by Michael Apted • Documentary • With Bruce Balden, Jacqueline Basset, Symon Basterfield, Andrew Brackfield, John Brisby, Suzanne Dewey, Nicholas Hitchon, Neil Hughes, Lynn Johnson, Paul Kligerman, Susan Sullivan, Tony Walker, Charles Furneaux • 2012 • 138 minutes

”Give me the child ...

Directed by Franco Rosso • Documentary • 1985 • 92 minutes

In this compelling and thought-provoking documentary, sports writer and novelist Gordon Williams uses archive footage, as well as interviews with family members and friends, to investigate the troubled life of the mixed-race British boxi...

Directed by Claus Withopf • Documentary • 2017 • 81 minutes

Anne Clark, English poet and spoken word-artist, has been celebrated worldwide on stage for more than 30 years. She set standards as an iconic eloquent, yet modest rebel and is a pioneer of electronic music. Shaped by the punk scene, An...

Directed by Olivier Magis • Documentary • 2019 • 82 minutes

Fifty years ago, the entire Creole population of the Chagos Islands was expelled by the British authorities. This secret operation took place to facilitate the leasing of the main island, Diego Garcia, to the US government so that it co...

Directed by Steve Sullivan • Documentary • With Frank Sidebottom, Chris Sievey, John Cooper Clarke • 2019 • 100 minutes

Frank Sidebottom was a performer who happened to wear a huge paper mâché head. Or he was a real person. It rather depended whom you asked. Either way, to his legion of devoted ...

Directed by Margaret Tait • Drama • With Celia Imrie, Jack Shepherd, Gerda Stevenson, James Fleet • 1992 • 84 minutes

Margaret Tait's tale of three generations of women in a Scottish family swirls out through a series of interlinking stories and recollections, taking place in Edinburgh and the O...

Directed by Sean Blacknell & Wayne Walsh • Documentary • With Annie Miller, David Graeber, Diane Coyle, George Monbiot, Guy Standing • 45 minutes

THE COST OF LIVING is a documentary that explores the current socio-economic state of Britain and considers how the idea of a basic income could minim...

Directed by Stuart Legg • Documentary • With Lorne Greene • 1941 • 22 minutes

Winner of the first Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject! It presents the strategy of the Battle of Britain, showing with penetrating clarity the relationships between the various forces made up the island's defens...

Directed by Clare Beavan, Nic Stacey • Documentary • With Steve Wozniak, Ed Stoppard, Henry Goodman • 2014 • 81 minutes

"Codebreaker" tells the remarkable and tragic story of one of the 20th century's most important people. Alan Turing set in motion the computer age and his World War II codebrea...

Directed by Terrence Davies • Drama • With Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston • 2012 • 98 minutes

In The Deep Blue Sea, Master chronicler of post-War England, Terence Davies directs Rachel Weisz as a woman whose overpowering love threatens her well-being and alienates the men in her life. In a deeply ...

Directed by John Pilger • Documentary • 2019 • 106 minutes

Britain's National Health Service, the NHS, was the world's first universal public health service. Designed to give millions of people "freedom from fear" following World War II, the NHS today is under threat of being sold off and conver...

Directed by John Grierson • Documentary • 1929 • 50 minutes

Story of the North Sea herring fleets. Filmed around the coast of Yarmouth and Lowestoft and Lerwick in the Shetlands in all weathers, but using some studio sets for interiors.

Directed by Owen Gower • Documentary • 2015 • 112 minutes

In 1984, a Conservative government under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared war on Britain's unions, taking on the strongest in the country, the National Union of Mineworkers. Following a secret plan, the government began announcin...

Directed by Michael Grigsby • Documentary • 1959 • 21 minutes

Produced just in time to be screened under the banner of the late–1950s ‘Free Cinema’ documentary movement, Enginemen records the life and work of engine workers in a locomotive shed just outside Manchester. At the time of British Rai...

Directed by Lindsay Anderson • Documentary • With Alun Owen • 1957 • 40 minutes

Lindsay Anderson followed his Free Cinema debut O Dreamland with this affectionate tribute to working-class life, depicting the hustle and bustle of Covent Garden market. On the back of his renowned Free Cinema film ...

Directed by Elizabeth Russell • Documentary • 1959 • 29 minutes

Food for a Blush is a documentary of worry, satirising some aspects of London life.

Directed by Barnaby Southcombe • Drama • With Charlotte Rampling, Gabriel Byrne, Eddie Marsan • 2016 • 93 minutes

The lives of a beautiful divorcee and a troubled detective intersect during the investigation of a vicious murder on the grimy, rain-soaked streets of London, sparking a tangled web ...

Directed by Norberto López Amada & Carlos Carcas • Documentary • With Norman Foster, Buckminster Fuller, Cai Guo-Qiang, Anish Kapoor, Richard Rogers, Richard Serra • 2010 • 80 minutes

Born in Manchester, England, on the wrong side of the tracks, Norman Foster rose from a humble working class bac...

Directed by Roger Michell • Drama • With Jim Broadbent, Lindsey Duncan, Jeff Goldblum • 2013 • 93 minutes

Academy Award winner Jim Broadbent (IRIS, TOPSY-TURVY, ANOTHER YEAR) and Lindsay Duncan (ABOUT TIME, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, MANSFIELD PARK) give exquisite performances as Nick and Meg, a long-...

Directed by Patrick Keiller • Documentary • With Paul Scofield • 1994 • 85 minutes

A 'fin-de-siecle' personal portrait of London from an English experimental filmmaker, shot over a period of twelve months, which saw the election of John Major as prime minister, renewed IRA bombings, the 'Black W...

Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2011 • 52 minutes

The ill-fated coal mining communities in North East England are the subject of this inspired documentary by multi-media artist Bill Morrison. Their story is told entirely without words, yet the film is far from silent: it features a rem...

Directed by Stuart A. Staples • Documentary • With tindersticks • 2016 • 55 minutes

This meditative, immersive film by tindersticks' Stuart A. Staples is a tribute to the astonishing work and achievements of naturalist, inventor and pioneering British filmmaker F. Percy Smith (1880-1945).

Based...

Directed by Karel Reisz & Tony Richardson • Documentary • With Chris Barber, Monty Sunshine, Pat Halcox, Ron Bowden • 1956 • 22 minutes

This lively Free Cinema short captures a night out at the Wood Green Jazz Club, where teenagers jive to trad jazz. Funded by the BFI Experimental Film Fund, it ...

Directed by George Hoellering • Drama • With Leo McKern, T.S. Eliot • 1952 • 114 minutes

George Hoellering’s powerful adaptation of T.S. Eliot's classic verse drama is a stark and highly atypical example of British historical cinema. Little-seen despite winning a top prize at the Venice Film Fes...