Press room

Barbican Cinema programme: July 2025

Festivals, Seasons and Special Events: 

• Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective – Fri 20 June – Sun 27 Jul
• Frequencies programme: The Sound of Neurodivergence: Relaxed Screening of Eden + introduction by curator Lillian Crawford – Wed 2 Jul
• Frequencies programme: The Sound of Neurodivergence: Good Vibrations Shorts Programme + ScreenTalk – Tue 8 Jul
• Queer 70s: LGBTQ+ Cinema in the Decade after Stonewall, part 2 – Wed 9 Jul – Wed 16 Jul
• Hidden Figures: Stephanie Rothman – Tue 29 Jul – Thu 14 Aug 
   

Regular Programme strands:

• Cinema Restored: The Innerview + ScreenTalk & Book Launch Event with archivist Ross Lipman and film scholar Elena Gorfinkel – Thu 3 Jul
• Cinema Restored: Record of War – Sat 19 Jul
• New East Cinema: Eighty Plus + recorded intro – Wed 23 Jul
• Senior Community Screenings:
• I'm Still Here – Mon 7 Jul
• To a Land Unknown – Mon 21 Jul
• Relaxed Screenings: The Wedding Banquet – Fri 25 Jul
• Pay What You Can Screenings – Every Fri
   

In July the Barbican is pleased to welcome back Hidden Figures – a strand which celebrates directors who, despite having made ground-breaking films, have been neglected by the film canon – with a programme from the renowned independent filmmaker Stephanie Rothman. Known for her ‘exploitation’ films and bad-ass female protagonists, she made some of the most socially and politically astute films about women’s lives in 1960s and 1970s America. 

Barbican Cinema’s Queer 70s: LGBTQ+ Cinema in the Decade after Stonewall season also continues in July. The programme includes A Woman Like Eve, Nouchka van Brakel’s (1979) Dutch melodrama, Adam & Yves (1974), Peter de Rome’s pornographic film which follows the courtship of two men in Paris; and Sebastiane (1976), Derek Jarman’s homoerotic reimagining of the life and death of Saint Sebastian, which generated major public controversy when it was screened on Channel 4 in 1985.

New East Cinema – a series which showcases auteur-driven films from Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Central Asia – presents the Serbian title Eighty Plus (2005) + recorded intro, in which a Serbian jazz musician reclaims his childhood home after decades living in Germany. His return sparks reunions and revelations, blending humour and nostalgia in an exploration of post-socialist life and personal history.

Cinema Restored screens The Innerview (1973), this is a newly restored screening of Richard Beymer’s trippy 1960s lost film, followed by an event for Ross Lipman's latest book The Archival Impermanence Project. Later in the month Cinema Restored also presents Record of War (1936), a unique dovetailing of two films charting the Italian invasion of Ethiopia 1935-6, from radically opposed viewpoints. 

Further July highlights include two events as part Good Vibrations: The Sound of Neurodivergence, that will be introduced by the curator Lillian Crawford. The first is a relaxed screening of the French film Eden(2014), an immersive odyssey of a DJ’s rise and fall during the height of French rave culture in the 1990's. The second is a relaxed screening of the Good Vibrations Shorts Programme, a diverse selection of shorts, featuring animated and experimental depictions of hypersensitivity. These are both part of the Barbican’s Frequencies: the sounds that shape us​ programme, which offers audiences the chance to go beyond music, exploring the power of sound and the sonic experience to shape how we move, think, feel and to inspire change.

Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, curated by Curzon Film, also screens this month. This is a programme of ten films (including several new restorations) spanning his career, and includes the 2012 Oscar and Palme d'Or-winning Amour. Described by The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw as 'extreme cinema without anaesthetic', Haneke's often unnerving work explores alienation, violence and the disengagement of the European middle-class. 

Festivals, Seasons and Special Events

Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective
Fri 20 June – Sun 27 Jul

Hidden (15)  
France, Austria, Germany, Italy 2005, Dir Michael Haneke, 118min
Fri 20 June – Thu 26 June, times various 
Cinema 2 + 3

The Piano Teacher (18)
France/ Austria 2001, Dir Michael Haneke, 131min
Sun 29 June + Mon 30 Jun, 2.30 pm + 8.30pm
Cinema 2 + Cinema 1 respectively 

Funny Games (18)
United States, Austria, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy 2007, Dir Michael Haneke, 111min
Fri 4 Jul + Sun 6 Jul 
Cinema 3

Benny's Video (18)
Austria, Switzerland 1992, Dir Michael Haneke, 110min 
Fri 11 Jul, 8.45pm 
Cinema 3

Amour (12A)
France, Austria, Germany 2012, Dir Michael Haneke, 128min 
Sun 13 Jul, 2.30pm 
Cinema 3

Time of the Wolf (15)  
France, Austria, Germany 2002, Dir Michael Haneke, 113min
Fri 18 Jul, 8.35pm
Cinema 3

Happy End (15)  
France, Germany, Austria 2017, Dir Michael Haneke, 107min 
Sat 19 Jul, 8.45pm
Cinema 3  

Code Unknown (15)
France, Germany, Romania 2000, Dir Michael Haneke, 117min 
Sun 20 Jul, 2.40pm 
Cinema 3 

The Castle (15)
Austria 1997, Dir Michael Haneke, 123min
Fri 25 Jul, 8.35pm
Cinema 3 

The White Ribbon (15)
Austria, Germany 2009, Dir Michael Haneke, 144min
Sun 27 Jul, 2.30pm 
Cinema 3 

The Sound of Neurodivergence

Relaxed Screening: Eden + introduction by curator Lillian Crawford (15)
France 2014, Dir Mia Hansen-Løve, 131min
Wed 2 Jul, 6.10pm 
Cinema 3 

Inspired by her brother Sven’s musical life and career, Mia Hansen-Løve recreates the spirit and atmosphere of a formative era through a pulsating soundtrack including music by Daft Punk. It is a story of trying to make the big time, and never quite making it.

Screening as part of Barbican’s Frequencies programme, the film pushes the boundaries of what is expected of ‘relaxed screenings,’ considering the positive sensations and emotions audiences may experience through sound and music and will be introduced by curator and co-founder of Stims Collective, Lillian Crawford.

The Sound of Neurodivergence: Relaxed Screening: Good Vibrations Shorts Programme + ScreenTalk (18*)
Tue 8 Jul, 6.30pm 
Cinema 3 

This programme of short films, also screening as part of Barbican’s Frequencies, has been curated by Lillian Crawford with Jonathan Gleneadie and goes on a journey through worlds of silence and noise, mirroring radical and dynamic soundscapes with powerful imagery crafted through experimental techniques and vivid animation. It presents a sonic journey through neurodiverse experience.

This will be followed by a ScreenTalk with Lillian Crawford, plus a panel of filmmakers exploring questions about hypersensitivity and differing relationships to sound. Screened in a relaxed screening context, the panel asks if the volume should be turned down or up. 

Queer 70s: LGBTQ+ Cinema in the Decade after Stonewall
Wed 11 June – Wed 16 July 2025

A Woman Like Eve (Een vrouw als Eva) (15*)
Netherlands 1979, Dir Nouchka van Brakel, 103min
Wed 9 Jul, 6.30pm 
Cinema 2

After leaving her husband for another woman, a mother faces difficult decisions about her future in Nouchka van Brakel’s Dutch melodrama from 1979.Featuring an excellent central performance from van de Ven, A Woman Like Eve captures the feminist zeitgeist of the 1970s without softening the tough consequences of following your heart. 

Adam & Yves (18*) + extended intro by David McGillivray
US 1974, Dir Peter De Rome, 72min
Mon 14 July, 6.20pm
Cinema 1 

Pornography had a boom period in the 1970s. As queer liberation movements thrived, gay men were no longer just shown as victims and villains on film. Finally, they got to have an unapologetically great time, in sex films shot by gay men. Peter de Rome was one of the best in the business, and his romantic, poetic Adam & Yves is one of the most interesting erotic films of the era. This film has it all - filthy jokes, intense sex scenes and even brief documentary footage of Greta Garbo walking across Fifth Avenue.

Screening with:
Trouser Bar + intro from producer David McGillivray
UK 2016, Dir Kristen Bjorn 20 min
Two men enter Sir John's Trouser Bar, but little do they know the adventure that awaits them..

Sebastiane (18) + ScreenTalk
UK 1976, Dirs Derek Jarman + Paul Humfress, 86min
Wed 16 July, 6.20pm
Cinema 1 

British cinema had never seen anything like it, this film is a real one-of-a-kind, a potent clash of beauty and vulgarity, with a glorious Brian Eno score and packed with male nudity. Jarman would go on to become one of Britain’s most exciting filmmakers, directing Jubilee (1978), Caravaggio (1986) and The Last of England (1987). 


Hidden Figures: Stephanie Rothman
Tue 29 July – Thu 14 Aug 

Curated by Selina Robertson (Club des Femmes and Birkbeck) and Isabel Moir (London Film Festival), Barbican Cinema is delighted to showcase Stephanie Rothman’s work as a season to UK audiences, for the first time, with five features, two of which, Terminal Island (US 1973) and Group Marriage (US 1972), are screening as UK restoration premieres. 

Rothman’s career began in the early 1960s when she was hired by the cult director Roger Corman, going on to make seven feature films between 1966 and 1974. At the time her work was celebrated in women’s film festivals and praised by feminist critics, but in recent years it has been re-discovered by a new generation of fans.

Terminal Island(18*) + ScreenTalk with Stephanie Rothman (via Zoom)
US 1973, Dir Stephanie Rothman, 88min 
Tue 29 Jul, 6pm 
Cinema 3

The season kicks off in July with Terminal Island (US 1973), a cult favourite in which Rothman brings sex and bloodshed to the screen with a provocative thriller, that is also a biting commentary on the US Justice system. After the screening, Barbican Cinema fans will have the rare opportunity to hear from Stephanie Rothman herself during a ScreenTalk (via Zoom), who will talk further about the film and her career. 

More screenings to follow in August, to view the full press release: 
www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/hidden-figures-stephanie-rothman 

Regular Programme Strands

Cinema Restored: The Innerview + ScreenTalk & Book Launch Event with archivist Ross Lipman and film scholar Elena Gorfinkel (12A*)

US 1973, Dir Richard Beymer, 88min 
Thu 3 Jul, 6.20pm 
Cinema 3 

In a beat-generation-esque tale of a young kid from Iowa trying to find his feet in big, bad Hollywood, The Innerview explores the dark underbelly of society and 60s psychedelic/psychological culture.

This rare screening of Richard Beymer’s 1975 long-lost psychedelic film newly restored after decades in obscurity. Known for West Side Story and Twin Peaks, Beymer left Hollywood in the '60s to pursue bold, experimental filmmaking. 

Cinema Restored: Record of War (15)
Il Cammino Degli Eroi, Italy, 1936, Dir. Corrado D'Errico
Abyssinia, Soviet Union 1936, Dir. Vladimir Yeshurin & Boris Zeitlin
Sat 19 Jul, 2pm
Cinema 1 

A unique dovetailing of two films charting the Italian invasion of Ethiopia 1935–6 from radically opposed viewpoints. 

In this special performance, marking 90 years since the invasion, our projectionists present a live montage from the Fascist Italian Path of the Heroes, and the Soviet Russian film Abyssinia, conjuring a unique third film that only exists for the duration of the programme: Record of War.

One shows what the other conceals; one is full of Futurist bombast while the other shows those on the receiving end of Mussolini’s war machine. Record of War is a form of counter-propaganda, as relevant now as it ever was.

New East Cinema: UK Premiere: Eighty Plus + recorded intro 
Serbia/ Slovenia 2025, Dir Želimir Žilnik, 118mins
Wed 23 Jul, 6.15pm 
Cinema 2 

After six decades of living in Germany, 80-something jazz musician Stevan returns to his native Serbia where, through a process called restitution, the government has vowed to give him back his father's old mansion, once taken away and nationalised by Yugoslavia's communist regime.

As Stevan is gradually entangled in family politics, past life encounters, and new romance, what initially seems like a political film reveals itself as something else – an ode to the joys of life after 80.

Eighty Plus is the latest film by Želimir Žilnik (Early Works, Marble Ass), one of the Yugoslav Black Wave's household names. Marked by Žilnik's signature documentary aesthetic, use of non-professional actors, and realistic dialogues (co-written with Celts screenwriter Tanja Šljivar), the film is often defined as a piece of docu-fiction.

Senior Community Screenings:
Welcoming 60+ cinema goers to watch the latest new releases every other Monday morning: 

I'm Still Here (15)
Brazil/ France 2025, Dir Walter Salles, 138min
Mon 7 Jul, 11am
Cinema 2 

In 1971 Brazil, Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres) is forced to reinvent herself after her family suffers at the hands of government, from The Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles.

To a Land Unknown (15)
Palestine/UK/France/Germany/the Netherlands/Greece/Qatar/Saudi Arabia 2024
Dir Mahdi Fleifel, 105min
Mon 21 Jul, 11am
Cinema 2 

A Palestinian refugee living on the fringes of society in Athens gets ripped off by a smuggler and sets out to seek revenge. This topical, knife-edge drama is driven by Mahmood Bakri’s powerful central performance.

Relaxed Screenings
Relaxed screenings take place in an environment that is specially tailored for a neurodiverse audience, as well as those who find a more informal setting beneficial:

The Wedding Banquet (15) (AD)
US 2025, Dir Andrew Ahn, 103min
Fri 25 Jul, 6pm
Cinema 3 

Andrew Ahn's heartfelt and hilarious reimagining of Ang Lee’s classic 1993 film delves into new queer family dynamics, and the challenges posed by cultural traditions.