The Lion Sleeps Tonight, dir. Nobuhiro Suwa, France/Japan 2017, French with English subtitles, 103 min.
Book tickets
Legendary French New Wave actor Jean-Pierre Léaud plays Jean, an ageing film star struggling to perform his character’s death. When the production is unexpectedly suspended, he retreats to an abandoned house where Juliette (Pauline Etienne), the great love of his life, once lived. There, he encounters a group of local children searching for a lead actor for their homemade horror film. Born out of a filmmaking workshop led by Nobuhiro Suwa (Voices in the Wind), reality and fantasy mingle freely, sidestepping simple naturalism. The film places the children’s cinematic encounter and their playful, curious interaction with Léaud at its heart. It captures with rare purity the relationship between those in front of the camera and those behind it, and what emerges as performance from that exchange. Suwa’s collective filmmaking approach invites us to rethink the possibilities of a shared act of creation.
The screening will be followed by an online Q&A with Nobuhiro Suwa, hosted by Yuriko Hamaguchi
The screening will be followed by an online Q&A with Nobuhiro Suwa, hosted by Yuriko Hamaguchi
Born in Hiroshima in 1960, Nobuhiro Suwa began filmmaking as a student and later worked as an assistant director for radical filmmakers including Gakuryu Ishii. He went on to make television documentaries before directing his first feature, 2/Duo (1997). His follow-up, M/Other (1999), won the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Suwa’s subsequent films include H Story (2001), a reimagining of Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour, and Voices in the Wind (2020), made on his return to Japan after years working in France. A hallmark of Suwa’s cinema is its improvisational method and collaborative approach, reflecting his belief in filmmaking as a space of dialogue rather than singular authorship. Suwa currently teaches at the Graduate School of Tokyo University of the Arts, while leading Le cinéma, cent ans de jeunesse (Cinema, One Hundred Years of Youth), an internationally acclaimed film education programme for young people.
Book tickets
12:15 pm
Sun, 23 Nov 2025
Cinema 2
There will be no trailer, and the screening starts promptly at the advertised time
Ticket information
- All tickets that do not require ID (full price, disabled, income support) can be printed at home or stored in email
- For aged-based concession tickets (under 25, student) please bring relevant ID to collect at the front desk before the event.
Access information
Cinema 2
- Both our Cinemas have step free access from The Mall and are accessible by ramp
- All seats are hard back, have a crushed velvet feel and they do not recline
- These are our seat size dimensions: W 42 x D 45 x H 52
- Arm rest either side of the seat dimensions: L 27 x W 7 x H 20
for the following requirements:
- We have a removable seat to create a wheelchair allocated space, please contact to organise this prior to the date and time of the screening
- We have unassigned seating. If you require a specific seat, please reserve this in advance
- Free for visitors where ticket prices are a barrier, please email
All films are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with a 10 min. curated selection of trailers.
Members+ and all Patrons gain free entry to all cinema screenings, exhibitions, talks, and more.
Join today as a Member+ for £25/month.
no. 236848.