24 July – 17 August 2025
Youths brings together a selection of 15 films that observe and explore ways of navigating, questioning, or disrupting reality as a young adult through the formation of groups and communities. Mixing a selection of fiction features and documentaries that span eras and places – from punk gangs in 1980s Mexico to a contemporary film club in Ibadan, Nigeria, passing through Morocco, Korea, Brazil, China, and Japan – the program aims to highlight a diversity of cinematic forms, modes of representation, and ways of organizing.
From one film to the next, the programme reflects on the value of the group as a refuge, as an autonomous structure within tense and oppressive social or political contexts, enabling the formation and affirmation of identity. In a kaleidoscopic form, Youths is structured as a fragmented testimony of young people who, across time and geographies, have continually sought ways to exist on their own terms, to make their voices heard, and to shape a world in their image.
Each in its own way, the films seek the right way to represent, echo, carry, and even support or struggle alongside their protagonists, ultimately testing the performative dimension of cinema. Some films crawl outside their frame through direct engagement with political action (Dry Ground Burning, Coconut Head Generation), while others blur registers and divert genres to engage in a collective endeavour that goes back and forth between documentary and fiction (Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie, My Crasy Life, Nadie es Inocente) or observe the ascendancy of an environment on their characters (Cent Mille Milliards, Youth). Some have seen their impact diffuse into the society or context they emerged from: The Devil, Probably was censured for fear of its influence; Regrouping provoked turmoil among its protagonists; while Chantal Akerman’s Hanging Out Yonkers, an unfinished and ill-fated documentary on life in a youth centre, has found a new echo as it is rediscovered and amplified through archival work. Overall, imbued with an internal spirit of overflow—of energy, hope, desire, struggle, or chaos—the films selected here bear witness to the correspondences and mutual influences between youth, in its raw expression and mercurial nature, and the film form.
Without claiming any kind of exhaustiveness, and by collecting these traces of youth representation while offering rare opportunities to engage with some of these films in the cinema – Wang Bing’s Youth trilogy will be shown in full for the first time in the UK; Balcon Atlantico and The Devil, Probably will be projected on 35mm and Deprisa Deprisa in a newly restored copy; Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie and Regrouping have remained largely invisible for years until recently – Youths offers a proposition through a sample: to reflect on the potential function of cinema in shaping, preserving, and reviving a memory of the world’s youths.
Youths brings together a selection of 15 films that observe and explore ways of navigating, questioning, or disrupting reality as a young adult through the formation of groups and communities. Mixing a selection of fiction features and documentaries that span eras and places – from punk gangs in 1980s Mexico to a contemporary film club in Ibadan, Nigeria, passing through Morocco, Korea, Brazil, China, and Japan – the program aims to highlight a diversity of cinematic forms, modes of representation, and ways of organizing.
From one film to the next, the programme reflects on the value of the group as a refuge, as an autonomous structure within tense and oppressive social or political contexts, enabling the formation and affirmation of identity. In a kaleidoscopic form, Youths is structured as a fragmented testimony of young people who, across time and geographies, have continually sought ways to exist on their own terms, to make their voices heard, and to shape a world in their image.
Each in its own way, the films seek the right way to represent, echo, carry, and even support or struggle alongside their protagonists, ultimately testing the performative dimension of cinema. Some films crawl outside their frame through direct engagement with political action (Dry Ground Burning, Coconut Head Generation), while others blur registers and divert genres to engage in a collective endeavour that goes back and forth between documentary and fiction (Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie, My Crasy Life, Nadie es Inocente) or observe the ascendancy of an environment on their characters (Cent Mille Milliards, Youth). Some have seen their impact diffuse into the society or context they emerged from: The Devil, Probably was censured for fear of its influence; Regrouping provoked turmoil among its protagonists; while Chantal Akerman’s Hanging Out Yonkers, an unfinished and ill-fated documentary on life in a youth centre, has found a new echo as it is rediscovered and amplified through archival work. Overall, imbued with an internal spirit of overflow—of energy, hope, desire, struggle, or chaos—the films selected here bear witness to the correspondences and mutual influences between youth, in its raw expression and mercurial nature, and the film form.
Without claiming any kind of exhaustiveness, and by collecting these traces of youth representation while offering rare opportunities to engage with some of these films in the cinema – Wang Bing’s Youth trilogy will be shown in full for the first time in the UK; Balcon Atlantico and The Devil, Probably will be projected on 35mm and Deprisa Deprisa in a newly restored copy; Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie and Regrouping have remained largely invisible for years until recently – Youths offers a proposition through a sample: to reflect on the potential function of cinema in shaping, preserving, and reviving a memory of the world’s youths.
This programme is presented in collaboration with Taddeo Reinhardt.
Programme
Thursday 24 July, 6.45pm
Opening Night
Sabado de mierda + Nadie es inocente
A landmark in Latin American video art and experimental cinema, Sarah Minter's raw hybrid of documentary and fiction captures the lives of the Mierdas Punks, a rebellious youth gang on the outskirts of Mexico City. Preceded by Sarah Minter and Gregorio Rocha's dystopian short film Sabado de mierda.
Saturday 26 July, 6pm
Shinjuku Boys + Cent mille milliards + Q&A
This double bill brings together two films that reflect on the question of identity and its formation, social and intimate relationships, projection, and the feeling of solitude conveyed through portraits of night workers. Followed by a Q&A with Kim Longinotto and Virgil Vernier.
Sunday 27 July, 6.15pm
Coconut Head Generation
From the benches of a student-led film-club in the Ibadan University to the front lines of the #EndSARS protests, Coconut Head Generation draws the portrait of a Nigerian youth fighting for justice, autonomy and freedom of thought.
Thursday 31 July, 6.15pm
Dry Ground Burning
An exploration of the turbulence of contemporary Brazil through the prism of the Gasolineiras de Kebradas: fearless Chitara, her sister Léa and their all-female gang in the Sol Nascente favela on the edge of Brasília, who hijack a pipeline in order to sell oil to their community.
Friday 1 August, 6.30pm
The Devil, Probably on 35mm
Painfully contemporary, Robert Bresson's penultimate film portrays a youth caught between a sense of aimlessness and a necessity to resist in the face of the state of the world.
Sunday 3 August, 6pm
Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie
An underground classic, Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie offers a unique and unprecedented variation on chaos, approximation, confusion and rebellion while sketching a feverish portrait of a group of runaways and young marginals as they roam the city of Seoul.
Tuesday 5 August, 6.30pm
Balcon Atlantico on 35mm + Deprisa, Deprisa
This double bill, sun-drenched and set on both sides of the Mediterranean, takes up the theme of the love encounter.
Thursday 7 August, 6.45pm
Hanging Out Yonkers + My Crasy Life
This double bill brings together two films directed respectively by Chantal Akerman and Jean-Pierre Gorin, both shot by cinematographer Babette Mangolte on opposite coasts of the United States, capturing fragments of life in peripheral and marginalised neighborhoods of New York and Los Angeles.
Saturday 9 August, 6pm
Regrouping
With Regrouping, Lizzie Borden initiates the exploration into the social dynamics of female collectivity that she would continue to pursue in her subsequent fiction films, Born in Flames (1983) and Working Girls (1986).
Sunday 10 August, 6pm
Nadie es inocente: 20 años despues
Twenty years after her experimental documentary Nadie es inocente about the Mierdas Punks gang, Sarah Minter reconnects with several of the former members. The film offers a retrospective on a youth that has passed yet persists in both images and spirit.
Friday 15 - Sunday 17 August
Closing
Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy
Wang Bing’s Youth unfolds as an epic observational trilogy, offering a profound, intimate portrait of young textile workers in Zhili, a factory town 150 km from Shanghai.
Thursday 24 July, 6.45pm
Opening Night
Sabado de mierda + Nadie es inocente
A landmark in Latin American video art and experimental cinema, Sarah Minter's raw hybrid of documentary and fiction captures the lives of the Mierdas Punks, a rebellious youth gang on the outskirts of Mexico City. Preceded by Sarah Minter and Gregorio Rocha's dystopian short film Sabado de mierda.
Saturday 26 July, 6pm
Shinjuku Boys + Cent mille milliards + Q&A
This double bill brings together two films that reflect on the question of identity and its formation, social and intimate relationships, projection, and the feeling of solitude conveyed through portraits of night workers. Followed by a Q&A with Kim Longinotto and Virgil Vernier.
Sunday 27 July, 6.15pm
Coconut Head Generation
From the benches of a student-led film-club in the Ibadan University to the front lines of the #EndSARS protests, Coconut Head Generation draws the portrait of a Nigerian youth fighting for justice, autonomy and freedom of thought.
Thursday 31 July, 6.15pm
Dry Ground Burning
An exploration of the turbulence of contemporary Brazil through the prism of the Gasolineiras de Kebradas: fearless Chitara, her sister Léa and their all-female gang in the Sol Nascente favela on the edge of Brasília, who hijack a pipeline in order to sell oil to their community.
Friday 1 August, 6.30pm
The Devil, Probably on 35mm
Painfully contemporary, Robert Bresson's penultimate film portrays a youth caught between a sense of aimlessness and a necessity to resist in the face of the state of the world.
Sunday 3 August, 6pm
Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie
An underground classic, Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie offers a unique and unprecedented variation on chaos, approximation, confusion and rebellion while sketching a feverish portrait of a group of runaways and young marginals as they roam the city of Seoul.
Tuesday 5 August, 6.30pm
Balcon Atlantico on 35mm + Deprisa, Deprisa
This double bill, sun-drenched and set on both sides of the Mediterranean, takes up the theme of the love encounter.
Thursday 7 August, 6.45pm
Hanging Out Yonkers + My Crasy Life
This double bill brings together two films directed respectively by Chantal Akerman and Jean-Pierre Gorin, both shot by cinematographer Babette Mangolte on opposite coasts of the United States, capturing fragments of life in peripheral and marginalised neighborhoods of New York and Los Angeles.
Saturday 9 August, 6pm
Regrouping
With Regrouping, Lizzie Borden initiates the exploration into the social dynamics of female collectivity that she would continue to pursue in her subsequent fiction films, Born in Flames (1983) and Working Girls (1986).
Sunday 10 August, 6pm
Nadie es inocente: 20 años despues
Twenty years after her experimental documentary Nadie es inocente about the Mierdas Punks gang, Sarah Minter reconnects with several of the former members. The film offers a retrospective on a youth that has passed yet persists in both images and spirit.
Friday 15 - Sunday 17 August
Closing
Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy
Wang Bing’s Youth unfolds as an epic observational trilogy, offering a profound, intimate portrait of young textile workers in Zhili, a factory town 150 km from Shanghai.
no. 236848.