Festival films on BFI Player

Prefer the comfort of your own home? Our line-up of films on BFI Player, including free short films, is available to enjoy wherever you are in the UK.

Watching festival films on BFI Player

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Becoming Cousteau

Get your woolly red beanie ready. This riveting doc brings a fresh take on the life of the inspiring inventor, explorer, environmentalist and filmmaker Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau.

A Cop Movie

Be prepared to be surprised by this wildly inventive, hybrid documentary drama by Mexican director Alonso Ruizpalacios, following two Mexico City police officers on the beat.

Between Two Worlds

Juliette Binoche plays an undercover reporter investigating the conditions faced by France’s working women in this insightful, involving drama.

Boiling Point

An emotionally scarred London chef struggles to keep it together in this formally extraordinary and beautifully acted single-take thriller.

Brother’s Keeper

A young boy must fight to save his sick friend in this thrillingly unpredictable boarding school drama.

Citizen Ashe

An ultimate origin story, Arthur Ashe was not only a pioneer within the world of tennis but a revolutionary social activist for many global causes.

The Feast

You are cordially invited to the dinner party from hell, courtesy of Lee Haven Jones’ Welsh-language horror opus.

The First Wave

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, hospital staff found themselves on the front line. This essential film documents the first wave as experienced by New York City’s emergency medical workers.

BFI Flare Special Screening

Flee

Winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance Film Festival, Flee is a testament to friendship, family and acceptance.

Hit the Road

Panah Panahi’s thrilling debut is by turns tender, quirky, even laugh-out-loud funny – a wondrously-observed reflection on family and the ambivalence of saying goodbye.

La Mif

A raw, in-your-face drama that offers a glimpse of life within a residential care home for at-risk teenage girls.

Memory Box

A package of keepsakes from 1980s wartime Beirut arrives in contemporary Montreal, in this stylish intergenerational drama from acclaimed directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.

Mr Bachmann and His Class

Winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Maria Speth’s enjoyable and profoundly moving documentary searches for the true meaning of home and community.

Natural Light

Dénes Nagy’s riveting drama follows a lieutenant in a Hungarian special unit as he hunts partisans in occupied Soviet Union during the Second World War.

Petrov’s Flu

A comic book artist contracts flu during an epidemic and subsequently embarks on a strange journey through Russian society.

Playground

The harsh world of playground politics is seen through the eyes of a seven-year-old girl in a gripping debut from Belgian writer-director Laura Wandel.

Queen of Glory

In Nana Mensah’s self-assured and charming comedy, a Ghanaian-American woman’s life is thrown into disarray when she inherits her mother’s Christian bookshop.

The Real Charlie Chaplin

A stirring new take on the life and work of one the most elusive cinema icons, revealing a never-previously-broadcast interview.

Rehana

An assistant medical professor faces her own #MeToo moment when she discovers that her colleague has assaulted one of her students, in this gripping feminist drama from Bangladesh.

Sediments

A group of Spanish trans women go on a road trip and share openly about their life experiences in this warm and honest documentary.

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas

Affectionate, fascinating and unconventional documentary portrait examining the long and illustrious career of one of the UK’s most iconic producers, Jeremy Thomas.

The Story of Film: A New Generation

Mark Cousins returns with another journey across the landscape of film, examining what changes the 21st century has brought.

True Things

Harry Wootliff returns to the Festival with this fascinating psychological drama, starring Ruth Wilson and adapted from Deborah Kay Davies’ novel True Things About Me.

Users

A sci-fi of our time, Natalia Almada’s stunning documentary considers how an imitation of life is becoming second nature.

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?

When Lisa and Georgi fall in love their future is threatened by the Evil Eye, which unaccountably changes their appearance overnight.

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Along with Drive My Car, this triptych is one of two new films from LFF favourite Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Happy Hour, Asako I & II).

Wild Indian

Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr’s sleek and stylish psychological thriller centres on two very different men bound together by a violent secret from their childhood.

Shorts

Small but perfectly formed. Watch short films for free 6 to 17 October on BFI Player.

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