Press room

Chronic Youth Film Festival returns to Barbican Cinemas in its 11th year with a bold lineup of international screenings and hands-on activities programmed by Young Film Programmers.

Curated for young people by young people, this year’s festival explores the creative possibilities of self-documentation, celebrating artists turning the camera into a tool of memory, self-expression, and resistance. Across documentary, fiction, found footage, and DIY filmmaking, these works repurpose personal archives and experimental approaches to tell stories from within their communities. 

Nineteen Young Film Programmers have worked together since October 2025 to curate this year’s Chronic Youth Film Festival. Organised by the Barbican’s Creative Collaboration and Cinema teams and guided by course leader Isra Al Kassi – an experienced programmer and co-founder of T A P E Collective (who took part in the first Young Film Programmers scheme) – this free, six month scheme equips and inspires new young voices to the art of film programming. Film industry leaders across distribution, programming, exhibition and marketing also joined sessions throughout the six-month programme to share knowledge and create a wider network for these young aspiring curators. 

The Chronic Youth weekend brings together premieres, archive revivals, experimental works, and a vibrant shorts programme that showcase the many ways filmmakers document their own lives and communities. Alongside screenings, audiences can join free Q&As, panels, workshops and social activities across the Barbican’s foyers.

The festival opens on Saturday 25 April with With Hasan in Gaza, an experimental work by Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari that revisits miniDV footage he shot in Gaza in 2001. Unearthed decades later, the tapes become the basis for a haunting meditation on memory, friendship and resistance, documenting a world that has since been erased.

This is followed by Liminal Traces, a programme of international shorts exploring how physical, digital, and emotional “third spaces” can offer opportunities for self-knowledge and connection. Through experimental and narrative approaches, these filmmakers document their communities and personal histories in ways that challenge dominant narratives.

Saturday closes with Go Fish, Rose Troche’s 1994 underground classic. Made from within the lesbian community it portrays, this exuberant and sharply observed portrait of queer life in 1990s Chicago remains a landmark of independent filmmaking and a testament to the power of telling stories from within one’s own cultural milieu.

On Sunday 26 April, the festival continues with the London premiere of Fifth Cinema, Nguyễn Trinh Thi’s boundary-defying essay film that interrogates the colonial gaze through archival footage and poetic reflection. Structured around Māori filmmaker Barry Barclay’s influential lecture on Indigenous cinema, the film offers a hypnotic exploration of history, representation and the possibilities of new cinematic language.

Later in the day, Chronic Youth presents a revival of Faiza Ahmed Khan’s Supermen of Malegaon. The beloved documentary following a group of passionate amateur filmmakers in an industrial Indian town as they unite their community to create a low-budget superhero parody. Funny, moving and deeply affectionate, the film celebrates the collaborative spirit and imagination of grassroots filmmaking.

The festival closes on Sunday evening with the UK premiere of Puppygirl, Henry Hanson’s provocative and darkly humorous “gonzo documentary” following a trans woman’s journey to confront years of sexual repression. Blurring the boundaries between performance and confession, the film offers an unfiltered exploration of gender, vulnerability and self-examination, embodying the festival’s theme of reclaiming the camera as a tool for personal storytelling.

The Barbican Young Film Programmers say: “We’ve chosen to make this year’s Chronic Youth Festival a love letter to filmmakers inventing new forms to speak for themselves and their communities. Each of us came to this programme driven to reflect on the state of the world, and we’ve all discovered a sense of hope and empowerment in the ethos of DIY cinema. We hope the films do the same for you too.

Young Film Programmers offered the creative, resistant, and connected space we were seeking. We landed on the theme of self-documentation as a form of empowerment, celebrating the act of telling your own stories while creating spaces for audiences to engage, reflect, and connect.

This year, our programme showcases artists reclaiming the camera to document their lives, communities, and histories in ways that are inventive, intimate, and often surprising. Through screenings, workshops, and participatory activities, we hope to inspire curiosity, creativity, and connection for everyone attending the festival.”

DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL IMAGES HERE