Press room

 Seasons, Festivals and Special Events: 
 

• All Kaiju Attack! All Stars Assemble – Thu 1 Oct – Tue 20 Oct  
• Contemporary 75: Stalker – Sat 3 Oct  
• Experiments in Film: Critical Affection Trilogy by Michelle Williams Gamaker + Discussion – Wed 7 Oct  
• Haruki Murakami: A Season – Sat 10 Oct – Sun 11 Oct  
• Dance Umbrella: Sunday Shorts: Spaces of Encounter – Sun 18 Oct 
• I Am Furious Black: The Films of William Greaves – Wed 21 Oct – Tue 24 Nov    
• Doc’n Roll – Thu 22 Oct – Fri 30 Oct  
• Family Film Week – Sat 24 Oct – Sun 1 Nov  
• Animation in Love: Night is Short, Walk on Girl – Wed 28 Oct 

Regular Programmes: 

• Family Film Club:  
• The Songbird’s Secret – Sat 3 Oct  
• Missing Link – Sat 10 Oct  
• Kiki’s Delivery Service – Sat 17 Oct 
   
• Senior Community Screenings:  
• Familiar Touch – Mon12 Oct  
• Effi O Blaenau – Mon 26 Oct  

• Relaxed Screenings:  
• Whisper of the Heart – Sun 11 Oct  
• Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma – Mon 26 Oct  
• Night is Short, Walk on Girl – Wed 28 Oct  

In October Barbican Cinema is delighted to present I Am Furious Black: The Films of William Greaves, a retrospective tracing the career of the trailblazing William Greaves, a filmmaker, producer, actor and activist. Greaves was one of the most influential yet overlooked figures in twentieth century American cinema, and this season aims to reinstate his legacy.  
 

Haruki Murakami: A Season also takes place in October and is a cross-arts programme celebrating the renowned Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The Barbican is honoured to welcome Murakami for an on-stage Q&A, with a screening of Tony Takitani, an adaptation of his celebrated short story of the same name. The programme also includes the cult Japanese horror Battle Royale, with an introduction by the lead actor Tatsuya Fujiwara. 

This month also sees the final screenings of All Kaiju Attack – All Stars! – a season 
celebrating some of the greatest Japanese kaiju superstars to emerge from the genre in the run-up to the release of Godzilla Minus Zero; with movies including Frankenstein vs. Baragon, King Kong Escapes and Godzilla Minus One. 
 

Contemporary 75 is a London-wide festival bringing together bold cinema that inspired generations of British audiences and filmmakers and this month screens Stalker, Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 hypnotic science-fiction from the former Soviet Union.  

October’s Experiments in Film is a special screening of the completed Critical Affection Trilogy by Michelle Williams Gamaker, which reimagines overlooked film histories and the inequalities of the early film industry. 
 

Further October highlights include Barbican Cinema’s Family Film Week, which returns with an international programme to inspire the next generation of film fans; and a screening of the life affirming animé Night is Short, Walk on Girl, about a young woman’s enchanting night out in Kyoto, which screens as part of the year-long Animation in Love series.  
 

Festivals, Seasons and Special Events 
 

All Kaiju Attack – All Stars! 
Thu 1 Oct – Tue 20 Oct  
 

Frankenstein vs. Baragon + Introduction (12A*) 
Japan 1965, Dir Ishirō Honda, 90min 
Thu 1 Oct, 6.20pm  
Cinema 1   
As with the best kaiju films, Frankenstein vs. Baragon boasts a wild, fantastic plot, 
involving Frankenstein’s heart being transported to Japan, resulting in the materialisation of 
a humanoid monster following the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Can Frankenstein end the 
destruction of this new menace?  
 

King Kong Escapes [dubbed] + Introduction (PG) 
Japan 1967, Dir Ishirō Honda, 96min  
Sat 17 Oct, 4pm  
Cinema 1  
 

Following the runaway success of King Kong vs. Godzilla, Ishirō Honda took the reins 
once again on another Kong vehicle, one of the most colourful and delightful kaiju movies from the 1960s. The film bursts with colour from its opening moments, and boasts a memorable villain, grand monster battles and a thrilling finale.  
 

Godzilla Minus One + Introduction (12A) 
Japan 2023, Dir Takashi Yamazaki, 124min  
Tue 20 Oct, 6.10pm  
Cinema 1  
Godzilla was rebooted once more to thrilling effect with Takashi Yamazaki’s 2023 mighty blockbuster, becoming the first Godzilla film to win an Oscar.  
Set in the aftermath of WWII, Takashi Yamazaki’s take on the classic channels the tone and energy of the original Godzilla from 1954, unleashing a terrifying creation upon a nation seeking to rebuild after unfathomable trauma.  
 

Contemporary 75 
Stalker (Сталкер) [35mm] + Introduction by writer Ian Christie (PG) 
USSR 1979, Dir Andrei Tarkovsky, 162min  
Sat 3 Oct, 2.30pm  
Cinema  
Stalker imagines a deserted rural settlement, overgrown and haunted by unseen fears. ‘The Zone’, as it is designated, is closed to all but those who can sneak through the defences and traverse the quietly menacing landscape. 
A writer and a professor are led through this uncanny journey by a ‘Stalker’, leaving his family at home, who guides those who wish to cross the Zone to visit ‘the room’, where it is believed your inner wishes can be realised.  
 

Experiments in Film 
Critical Affection Trilogy by Michelle Williams Gamaker + Discussion (15*) 
UK 2025, Dir Michelle Williams Gamaker 
Wed 7 Oct, 6.20pm  
Cinema 1  
Across this trilogy, the artist reimagines critical alternatives to colonial and imperialist storytelling in early 20th-century British and Hollywood studio films. Williams Gamaker's latest, Strange Evidence, focuses on the 1930s Hollywood star and Academy Award nominee Merle Oberon, who kept her mixed Sri Lankan, Indian and British heritage secret to protect her industry status. The film offers a speculative exploration of Oberon's selfcensorship, examining the racial stigma, trauma and industry pressures that shaped her 
choices. 
 

Haruki Murakami: A Season  
Thu 8 Oct – Sat 21 Nov 
Barbican Cinema, Theatre & Hall  
This season launches with the European premiere of the first-ever stage adaptation of End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Haruki Murakami’s cult 1985 novel. Starring Tatsuya Fujiwara (Death Note, Battle Royale), End of the World… presents a captivating dystopian vision of contemporary Japan, following the protagonist's descent into a Kafkaesque Tokyo underworld (Thu 8 Oct – Sun 11 Oct). This follows with two film screenings of Battle Royale and Tony Takitani. that showcase the author’s emotional worlds and then closes with the concert Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat: a Japanese Jazz Night, an immersive reimagining of his iconic Tokyo jazz club, which takes place in the Barbican Hall (Sat 21 Nov), as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. 
 

These live events across cinema, music and theatre showcase the sensibilities and aesthetics of one of Japan's most celebrated authors.  
For further info: www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2026/series/haruki-murakami   
 

Battle Royale + Introduction by actor Tatsuya Fujiwara (18) 
Japan 2000, Dir Kenji Fukasaku, 94min 
Sat 10 Oct, 4pm  
Cinema 2  
Revisit the landmark of Asian Extreme Cinema, with an introduction by lead actor  
Tatsuya Fujiwara. In a dystopian near-future Japan where juvenile delinquency is out of control, 42 senior school pupils each year are forced into the government’s ‘Battle Royale’ programme. Taken to a remote island and fitted with an explosive collar around their necks, each pupil is given a weapon, food, water, map and compass. Their only order: kill or be killed.   

Blood-drenched, savage, and darkly funny, the film was a sensation at home and abroad upon first release, and introduced Fujiwara to the world as Shuya Nanahara, the resilient schoolboy who refuses to play the deadly teen death game and fights to survive.   
 

Haruki Murakami in Conversation + Tony Takitani (U) 
Japan 2004, Dir Jun Ichikawa, 86min 
Sun 11 Oct, 5.45pm  
Cinema 1  
We are honoured to welcome the celebrated Japanese author on stage to read aloud from his book The City and Its Uncertain Walls (2023) and discuss his work with interviewer Simon McBurney. Following the talk, we screen Tony Takitani, the 2004 adaptation of Murakami’s short story of the same name. A gifted technical illustrator, Tony lives a life of near-total isolation and monk-like self-sufficiency until mid-life brings an unexpected romantic awakening. The only problem: his new love has an expensive addiction to designer clothes…   
 

Dance Umbrella 
Sunday Shorts: Spaces of Encounter (15*) 
Dirs various  
Sun 18 Oct, 2pm  
Cinema 3  
A programme of shorts selected by Omar Rajeh, bringing together works that explore the relationship between body, memory and place, revealing the social, political and emotional landscapes we inhabit. The screening follows the presentation of Rajeh's intimate solo performance, Dance is Not for Us, in The Pit (16-17 Oct) 
Spanning streets, apartments, rooftops, ruins, public squares and temporary architectures, the selected works explore how movement transforms our experience of place and of one another. Together, these films offer a rich and layered meditation on encounters, belonging and coexistence, inviting audiences to consider how bodies move through and are shaped by the spaces they inhabit. 
 

This screens as part of Dance Umbrella Festival 2026 
 

I Am Furious Black: The Films of William Greaves – a two month retrospective 
Wed 21 Oct – Tue 24 Nov 
The Voice of La Raza & Nationtime (12*) 
The Voice of La Raza, USA 1972, Dir. William Greaves, 39min 
Nationtime, USA 1972, Dir. William Greaves, 80min 
Wed 21 Oct, 6.20pm  
Cinema 3  
Two films that open a window to early 1970s America, Black politics, migrant experiences and the political temperature of a changing time. In The Voice of La Raza, Greaves blend interviews and staged scenes to explore the struggles of Mexican immigrants and Spanishspeaking families.  

In Nationtime, Greaves follows the three-day National Black Political Convention in 
Indiana, capturing speeches by prominent figures such as Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, Amiri Baraka, and Bobby Seale.  

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (15) + introduction by filmmaker Jessica Sarah 
Rinland  
USA 1968, Dir. William Greaves, 75min  
Tue 27 Oct, 6.30pm  
Cinema 3  
Fascinated by sociology and philosophy, William Greaves created the hyper-meta 
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One to explore human behaviour through the lens of social roles and pressures. Playing out like a documentary about a documentary about making a film; all these ideas come together to reflect 1960s US counterculture, and playfully subvert audience expectations at every turn, set to In A Silent Way by Miles Davis. 
 

To view the full William Greaves season press release:  
www.barbican.org.uk/our-story/press-room/barbican-cinema-presents-i-am-furious-black-the-films-of-william-greaves-a-two  
 

Doc’n Roll Film Festival 
Thu 22 Oct – Fri 30 Oct  
Cinema 1 + 2 
Doc’n Roll Film Festival is back in the Barbican Cinemas for its 13th edition from Thu 22 October with a line-up that rocks, grooves and moves. From punk to folk, Latin to jazz, these music stories bring the noise, the struggle and the soul to the big screen. This year’s line-up champions voices that shaped genres and influenced generations, from underground rebels to global icons.  
 

Each screening comes with a chance to hear directly from the filmmakers and artists who lived it. Running through to Fri 30 October, it’s a front-row seat to music history in the making. 
 

Doc’n Roll Film Festival announce their full line-up on Tue 22 September  
 

Family Film Week 2026 
Sat 24 Oct – Sun 1 Nov  
Cinema 2 & 3  
The Barbican’s Family Film Week returns for another edition, featuring the best children’s films from around the world, with new releases, special previews, activities, introductions and special events.  
 

The programme will be announced on Tue 22 September  
 

Animation In Love 
Night is Short, Walk on Girl (15) 
Japan 2017, Dir Masaaki Yuasa, 93min  
Wed 28 Oct, 6.20pm  
Cinema 1  
A young student dreams of orchestrating the perfect romantic meet-cute with his crush, The Girl With the Black Hair, and searches for her across town.  
Meanwhile, the girl herself has a series of strange encounters with local characters as she roams through an abstract, bustling night in Kyoto – taking in everything from pub crawls to book fairs to impromptu musical happenings. Director Masaaki Yuasa is a true maverick of Japanese animation, and this colourful caper is the perfect canvas for his freewheeling, eccentric and exuberant animation style.  
 

Regular Programme Strands 
 

Family Film Club 
 

The Songbird’s Secret (U*) 
France 2005, Dir Antoine Lanciaux, 77min 
Sat 3 Oct, 11am 
Cinema 2 
An enchanting feature-length animation made entirely from cut paper. Lucie lives most of the year with her dad but moves for the summer to be with her archaeologist mum. While her mum works on a dig, Lucie is left to her own devices, to explore the countryside, make new friends, including a pair of songbirds and, perhaps, uncover some hidden family secrets.  
Age suggestion: 6+ 
 

Missing Link (PG) 
US 2019, Dir Chris Butler, 94min 
Sat 10 Oct, 11am  
Cinema 2   
This intricate stop-motion animation from LAIKA studios is a witty romp set in the world of competing Victorian explorers! Mr Link hires Sir Lionel Frost, a leading investigator of myths and monsters, in an attempt to travel to America's Pacific Northwest and find his missing relatives. This is a must-see on the big screen and a fantastic comedy adventure for young film-lovers.  
Age suggestion: 7+ 
 

Kiki’s Delivery Service (U) 
Japan 1989, Dir Hayao Miyazaki, 104min 
Sat 17 Oct, 11am  
Cinema 2 
This charming film from Hayao Miyazaki is a delightful story of a young girl growing up and beginning to make her own choices. This is Ghibli animation at its best.   
Age suggestion: 6+ 
 

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

Familiar Touch (12A) 
USA 2026, Dir  Sarah Friedland, 92min  
Mon 12 Oct, 11am  
Cinema 2  
Kathleen Chalfant stars in this coming-of-old-age film about an older woman's transition into assisted living, balancing her shifting memory, identity and desires. 
 

Effi o Blaenau (15) 
Wales/ UK, Dir Marc Evans, 91min  
Mon 26 Oct, 11am  
Cinema 2  
A beautiful, gritty Welsh language drama that paints a portrait of life in the Northern 
Welsh hills as Effi bounces between unemployment, clubbing and hangovers.  
 

Relaxed Screenings  
Whisper of the Heart (U) 
Japan 2026, Dir Yoshifumi Kondô, 102min  
Sun 11 Oct, 12pm, Cinema 3  
Pure Studio Ghibli magic unfolds as a bookish 14-year-old follows a cat to find the person who has borrowed all the same books as her from the library in this touching coming-of-age story. 
 

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (15) 
UK, USA and Canada 2026, Dir Jane Schoenbrun,112min  
Mon 26 Oct, 6.10pm 
Cinema 3  
Bloody and bewildering, Jane Schoenbrun brings a film-within-a-film that unpacks a meta world of queer desire, pop-cultural gaze and identity. Starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. 
 

Night is Short, Walk on Girl (15) 
Japan 2017, Dir Masaaki Yuasa, 93min  
Wed 28 Oct, 6.20pm  
Cinema 3  
One wild night on the streets of Kyoto as a student plans the perfect meet-cute from the irrepressible anime auteur Masaaki Yuasa.