A continuing series spotlighting new films that expand the possibilities of the medium and provide a vision for its future.

An ongoing series presenting rare films from the ICA Archive, screening on original 35mm and 16mm prints.

A continuing series of in-depth retrospectives exploring the work of cinema's great artists, both past and present.

The endlessly blurred and tangled lines of reality and fiction, cinema and theatre, and art and life form the heart of Jacques Rivette’s cinema. Throughout his extensive body of work the French filmmaker continually eschews and reformulates the traditional patterns of narrative cinema and instead embraces mystery, conspiracy, and the inexplicable.

The ICA partners with the Garden Cinema to present a 12-film retrospective curated by Instituto Rouanet, commemorating 60 years of L.C. Barreto Film Productions, Brazil’s legendary production company, helmed by the renowned family of filmmakers.

A police chief is sent to a diamond mine to stop a tyrannical inspector. While travelling through the forest, he becomes involved in a tragic love affair with a beautiful indigenous girl.

A cross-disciplinary festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities.

Khim-Hok is an elderly man who has come to depend on his wife Siu-Tuan over the years. Absent from their life, however, is their estranged son, whose existence remains largely unspoken. Shot on 16mm film, this feature debut by co-directors Tzu-Hui Peng and Ping-Wen Wang paints a raw and sensitive portrait of domestic life.

Luiz Carlos Barreto’s directorial debut—assembled from hundreds of hours of footage with Cinema Novo editor Eduardo Escorel (Entranced Earth, Macunaíma, among many others)—tells the story of the Brazilian team’s first three World Cup wins with the record-breaking footballer as its protagonist.

Arguably one of the greatest films about soccer, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade’s debut feature is a form-shifting documentary portrait of his country’s beloved bow-legged dribbler Mané Garrincha.

A burglar and the owner of a house he attempts to rob journey across Vietnam to the homeowner’s wife’s grave where he wishes to join her. 

For the first instalment of his ambitious yet restrained two-part study of Jeanne d'Arc, Jacques Rivette surveys the revelatory period where Jeanne met with royalty, joined the army, and led the French into battle against the English.

A programme of recent artists’ moving image, exploring processes of self-discovery, curated by Abirami Logendran and Morgan Quaintance. From sexual liberation to states of heightened awareness reached through physical practice, the programme is punctuated by recordings of James Baldwin reading from his classic novel Giovanni’s Room.  

Based on Graciliano Ramos’s posthumously published memoirs, this extraordinarily ambitious film from Nelson Pereira dos Santos centres on Ramos (Carlos Vereza) sinking ever deeper into a bizarre nightmare after he is locked up with other political prisoners in Rio de Janeiro and then, eventually, with all stripes of inmates on a remote island.

Rooted in the poetics and quotidian details of daily life, the second part of Rivette's diptych on the life of Jeanne d'Arc, traces every step on the road to Jeanne’s saintly fate, from her waning influence in the courts to her imprisonment and death.

A Tokyo factory worker’s online side business descends into paranoia and dread, in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's (Pulse and Cure) moody thriller exploring technology’s dark grip on human behaviour and morality.

January 2020. A film crew reunites near Wuhan to resume the shooting of a film halted ten years earlier, only to share the unexpected challenges as cities are placed under lockdown.

Huw Wahl’s compelling analogue exploration of engineless sailing.

In Déa Kulumbegashvili’s second feature, an obstetrician’s secret abortion work in rural Georgia is exposed after a tragedy, threatening her purpose and freedom.

Leonardo van Dijl's debut feature is a taut study of a young athlete in crisis.

A celebration of the extraordinary life of Irish writer Edna O'Brien.

Assembled from footage shot over a span of more than twenty years, Jia Zhangke crafts a boundless story of enduring but fragile love, anchored by the eternally captivating presence of Zhao Tao. The screening on 11 April is followed by a conversation between Tony Rayns and Simon Field.

18 year-old Totone spends his time drinking and partying in the Jura region of France, until reality catches up to him, and he must find a way to make a living to care for his 7 year-old sister.

Set in 1950s–60s Rio amid Brazil’s brewing military coup, the turbulent relationship between American poet Elizabeth Bishop (Miranda Otto) and architect Lota de Macedo Soares (Glória Pires) offers a unique perspective on this period in Brazil’s history.

The open space for non-fiction cinema returns for its 15th edition.

On the occasion of the launch of How to Do Things with VALIE EXPORT, a new book on her filmic work published by the Austrian Film Museum (Vienna) and Spector Books (Leipzig), we present a selection of canonical and lesser-known films by VALIE EXPORT, followed by a conversation about the artist's work.

Sanrizuka – Peasants of the Second Fortress is the fourth in a series of seven films shot between 1968 and 1977 by Ogawa Productions in the fields of Sanrizuka. Four years into the conflict, the authorities started the coercive expropriation of the farmlands, and the violence escalated. 

Arguably the most reputed yet enigmatic film from Qin Dao, this work transcends celluloid, screen, and the social milieu of post-socialist China, while interrogating the nature of cinema. Followed by a conversation with Qin Dao and Bo Wang.

A selection of shorts tracing the Cantrills’ early filmmaking practice and their travels.

In 1977, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill took their first trip into central Australia to film Uluru. Second Journey (to Uluru) documents the filmmakers’ next visit to Uluru some years later, on a trip taken with the filmmaker Michael Lee.

In response to his latest, autobiographical film Being John Smith, this programme brings together four works that explore, in different ways, what it is to “be” John Smith.

An insight into the private estate of Leni Riefenstahl, who became world-famous with her Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, but continually denied any closer ties to the regime.

Artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan has a sonic research practice that acts to investigate human rights abuses. In this essay film he focuses his “Private Ear” into analysing sonic data generated by the UN to chart the incessant noise pollution emanating from unauthorised Israeli plane and drone flights into Lebanese airspace. Preceded by Elisabeth Subrin's Manal Issa, 2024.

Corinne Cantrill’s sole-authored, autobiographical feature, in which she traces her life story through a series of photographs and probes the relationships between body and image, cinema and photography, the moving and the static.

Desire leaves traces – on bodies, in memories, in the flickering frames of old VHS tapes. Les fantômes du hard is a journey through these remnants, an attempt to reconstruct a lost history of hardcore sexuality in Marseille.

This programme brings together three new works by UK-based artists Alex Nevill, Hope Strickland and Rhea Storr who will all be present for a post-screening discussion.

In collaboration with the Ian White Estate, Open City is pleased to present the fourth Ian White Lecture, given by writer Esther Kinsky.

The debut feature-length work by Maxime Jean-Baptiste follows Melrick, a young teenage boy, as he spends a summer in French Guiana with his grandmother Nicole. Followed by a Q&A with Maxime Jean-Baptiste.

In a sleepy town in China, a middle-aged man is unwilling to endure a stagnant existence, and experiencing true love, decides to come out of the closet.

Inspired by MGM’s low budget musicals of the 1950s, Rivette crafts an all-singing all-dancing sojourn through a sweltering Parisian summer in this captivating story of love, friendship and liberation.

A special programme of eight films celebrating the work of award-winning Iranian film and theatre actress Fatemeh Motamed-Arya.

The ill-prepared crew of an American documentary production stumble into a rural town in Argentina in pursuit of their next viral story, and things spiral into from bathos into trendy mayhem.

A 17-year-old girl joins her father and his friend on a forest hike, where quiet tensions mount. An assured portrayal of restraint and rupture, featuring a standout lead performance.

A poetic exploration of Eileen Gray’s life and visionary design, unveiling the story behind her iconic modernist house, a record of art and resilience by the sea.

A satirical look at the frenzied professional and romantic lives of the staff of a daytime TV show. Screening on a 16mm print from the ICA archive.

Yeong-gyeong and Su-hwan meet at a wedding party. He carries her home after she passes out drunk. Kang Mi-ja's Spring Night is a stark and graceful depiction of a doomed kinship. 

Through an intimate reconstruction of an important phone call, Iva Radivojević’s evocative film investigates dislocation and the nature of remembering. Followed by an in-person Q&A with filmmaker Iva Radivojević.

Celina Escher’s documentary follows Teodora and The Seventeen – a group of women accused of murder because of having a miscarriage in El Salvador - in their struggle to regain their freedom from prison.

Commissioned to create a documentary about Argentine art collective Mondongo, filmmaker
Mariano Llinás crafts an experimental portrait of friendship, failure and self-destruction.

An essayistic exploration into the lasting ecological consequences of Belgium’s colonial rule in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.