The British Film Institute (BFI) has announced the programme for BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX from 1 to 30 June, beginning with MARILYN MONROE: SELF MADE STAR, a major two‑month season celebrating the centenary of cinema’s most enduring film star. Curated by BFI Lead Programmer Kimberley Sheehan, the season opens on 1 June to coincide with Marilyn Monroe’s 100th birthday and runs through June and July, with a centrepiece BFI Distribution rerelease of The Misfits (1961), directed by John Huston, in cinemas across the UK and Ireland from 5 June.
MARILYN MONROE: SELF MADE STAR
The cultural phenomenon of Marilyn Monroe has endured for generations, though she is often reduced to a frozen sex‑symbol image or a tragic tabloid figure. This season reframes her achievements, legacy and contribution to cinema, highlighting Monroe as a dynamic, intuitive performer who carefully crafted her image and as a determined, ambitious creative who challenged the studio system and became the first woman since the silent era to set up her own production company.
MARILYN MONROE: SELF MADE STAR groups her most memorable work into three loose strands: Star Attractions (musicals and comedies at her “triple‑threat” best), Dramatic Turns (showcasing her depth as a serious performer) and Scene Stealers (small roles with big impact). June highlights include introduced screenings of Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (Jean Negulesco, 1953), The Prince and the Showgirl (Laurence Olivier, 1957), Let’s Make Love (George Cukor, 1960), Monkey Business (Howard Hawks, 1952), There’s No Business Like Show Business (Walter Lang, 1954), River of No Return (Otto Preminger, 1954) and Niagara (Henry Hathaway, 1953). On 6 June authors Joshua John Miller and Mark A. Fortin introduce a screening and launch their visual biography. The Marilyn Monroe Centenary alongside the BFI’s theatrical rerelease of The Misfits.
BRAZIL ON FILM
Following May’s survey of modern Brazilian cinema foundations, BRAZIL ON FILM continues in June, mapping nearly a century of filmmaking defined by reinvention and resistance. The season spans from Limite (1931) by Mário Peixoto, a landmark of early experimentation, through masterpieces of Cinema Novo such as Barren Lives (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1963) and Saint Bernard (Leon Hirszman, 1972), to the radical energies of Cinema Marginal in works like The Woman of Everyone (Rogério Sganzerla, 1969) and The Men I Had (Tereza Trautman, 1973).
The programme charts the 1990s Retomada after the closure of Embrafilme, including the popular success of Carlota Joaquina, Princess of Brazil (Carla Camurati, 1995), and arrives in the present with internationally acclaimed films such as The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (Karim Aïnouz, 2019), The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert, 2015) and The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (Cao Hamburger, 2006). New voices reshaping Brazilian cinema today are also spotlighted, including director Luciano Vidigal, who will join a Q&A after a screening of his film White House (2024) on 6 June, while the programme foregrounds Indigenous and Amazonian perspectives and ancestral knowledge. A discussion hosted by People’s Palace Projects follows the screening of the long‑banned but now restored Iracema: Uma Transa Amazônica (1975), presented as part of London Climate Action Week on 25 June.
REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA: THE PASSION OF RITWIK GHATAK
On the centenary of the birth of Ritwik Kumar Ghatak, BFI Southbank presents REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA: THE PASSION OF RITWIK GHATAK, celebrating a visionary, influential filmmaker and chronicler of Partition and uprooted peoples. Coming from Kolkata’s Communist theatre scene, Ghatak completed only eight feature films before his death in 1976, yet his work—long difficult to access—now stands as a thrilling testament to cinema’s emotional, political and moral power.
Curated by filmmaker, author and academic Sanghita Sen, the programme includes new restorations of every feature film, three unfinished films, three titles he scripted, one he acted in and thirteen fiction and documentary shorts. The season launches on 2 June with the event A River Called Ritwik, a richly illustrated introduction to his filmography and his contribution as actor, writer, director and educator, followed on 30 June by Sen’s work‑in‑progress documentary Ghatak Was Here (2026).
PUSH PLAY – Skateboarding on screen
Marking 50 years of the Undercroft skate space beneath the Southbank Centre, the weekend programme PUSH PLAY (19–21 June) explores the rich relationship between skateboarding and film. Curated by BFI Director of UK‑Wide Audiences Ben Luxford and film studies lecturer Siobhan Browne, PUSH PLAY opens with the UK premiere of Ollie (Antoine Besse, 2024), followed by a Q&A with the director.
The strand also features former skateboarder Stacy Peralta’s Sundance‑winning documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001) and Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle, 2018), as well as a SKATE SHORTS programme spanning cities from London to Lagos and Milano Centrale. On 21 June, the event SPIKE JONZE IN CONVERSATION LIVE FROM NEW YORK revisits key clips from the groundbreaking skate videos of Spike Jonze, followed by a live in‑conversation link from New York, while artist, skateboarder and model Blondey McCoy appears on 20 June to discuss Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949) and his relationship with film.
Refugee Week and special events From 15–21 June, BFI Southbank participates in Refugee Week, the world’s largest arts and culture festival celebrating the contributions and resilience of refugees.
Screenings include the London premiere of Allies in Exile (2026) by Syrian filmmakers Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al‑Halabi, followed by a Q&A with Kattan, and Khartoum (Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy, Anas Saeed, Timeea M Ahmed, Phil Cox, 2025), presented with the International Organization for Migration. Further June events include a screening of Fargo (Joel Coen, 1996) on 29 June with an extended introduction by Oscar‑winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, who will also sign copies of his book Reflections on Cinema.
Previews include Cactus Pears (Rohan Parashuram Kanawade, 2025) on 16 June with a Q&A, Mare’s Nest (Ben Rivers, 2025) on 4 June, and a 60th‑anniversary screening of Death of a Bureaucrat (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1966) on 13 June in collaboration with the London Latino Film Festival. Mark Kermode Live in 3D returns on 15 June with the critic’s signature mix of guests, previews and film chat. BFI IMAX and Big Screen Classics At BFI IMAX, June sees the release of Disclosure Day (2026), the latest science‑fiction feature from director Steven Spielberg, alongside the season Close Encounters with Spielberg, a curated run of classics including Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Jurassic Park 3D (1993) and Ready Player One (2018). At BFI Southbank, the Big Screen Classics strand honours the bicycle’s role in cinema to mark World Bicycle Day on 3 June, with daily £9.50 screenings of films such as Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948), Jour de fête (Jacques Tati, 1949), Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949), Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959), Une femme est une femme (Jean‑Luc Godard, 1961), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill, 1969), Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Kid with a Bike (Jean‑Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2011), Barbara (Christian Petzold, 2012), Wadjda (Haifaa al‑Mansour, 2012) and Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017).
Audiences aged 25 and under can access BFI Southbank screenings and selected events for just £4 via the BFI’s ongoing young‑audience ticket scheme.
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