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Articles by Sam Wigley
Danny Boyle on his tabloid chronicle Ink: “The attention economy, clickbait, the dopamine economy – this is its hatching point”
When Australian newspaper tycoon Rupert Murdoch offered Daily Mail northern editor Larry Lamb the editorship of the Sun in 1969, neither foresaw the seismic impact the appointment would have on British life. Quickly, the Sun became the talk of Fleet Street, where most of Britain’s newspapers were published and printed until the 1980s.
Javier Bardem on Bunker and The Beloved: “I’ve been in some toxic environments”
With his formidable Oscar-winning turn as indefatigable hitman Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men (2007) and creepily lascivious Bond villain Raoul Silva in Skyfall (2012), Javier Bardem cemented himself as one of contemporary cinema’s most roguishly distinctive screen presences. His latest films, however, find him in more recognisably human territory.
Michael Winterbottom on The Trip to the Northern Lights: “Steve’s not worried about appearing grumpy or lonely”
For a director as restlessly exploratory as Michael Winterbottom, The Trip has become an unlikely constant. Its fifth instalment, The Trip to the Northern Lights, follows Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon through Scandinavia and up to the Arctic Circle, dining at another enviable succession of increasingly remote restaurants.
Take It or Leave It, starring Madness, coming back to cinemas in a new restoration
A world premiere of the restoration including a Q&A with band members will take place at BFI Southbank, before the film returns to cinemas nationwide on 2 October. 16 July 2026 Take It or Leave It (1981) Take It or Leave It, originally released in 1981, is the highly entertaining and brilliantly nostalgic story of how Madness, one of the most successful and enduring British bands of all time, originally got together.
10 great Greek myth adaptations
Fascinated by time and memory, Christopher Nolan’s cinema feels like a natural home for Homer’s epic The Odyssey. Following the legendary hero Odysseus on his decade-long struggle to return to his family after the fall of Troy, Nolan’s latest joins a long tradition of films inspired by the tales of Greek mythology – one of cinema’s deepest creative wells.
Claude Chabrol celebrated with BFI Southbank season, re-release of La Femme infidèle, BFI Player collection and BFI Blu-ray releases
Often considered one of the French New Wave’s most neglected filmmakers, Claude Chabrol might also be the most important, argues Catherine Wheatley, the curator of a new BFI Southbank season. Celebrating Chabrol’s cool, precise, entertaining and deliciously wicked thrillers, Claude Chabrol – Elements of Crime runs from 1 September to 6 October, including the BFI Distribution rerelease of La Femme infidèle (1969) returning to cinemas in the UK and Ireland on 11 September.
Tony Rayns (1948 to 2026)
Tony Rayns, the British film critic, programmer, translator and tireless advocate for East Asian cinema, has died. Widely regarded as one of the most influential voices in film culture, Rayns helped introduce generations of Western audiences to filmmakers from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea and Japan. Born in 1948, he built a career as a film critic, starting out at the underground film magazine Cinema Rising.
Miroirs No. 3 second look review: a glorious sun dappled noir from Christian Petzold
Petzoldian alienation blends with a strangely restorative world view in the story of Laura (Paula Beer), a woman taken in by a family who seem to be keeping a tragic secret. 17 April 2026 Barbara Auer as Betty, Paula Beer as Laura in Miroirs No. 3 (2025) in a piano suite by Maurice Ravel; but it also reflects the director’s predilection across his filmography for doubles, doppelgängers and twice-lived lives.
10 great films set in fishing towns
Since his breakthrough feature Bait (2019), Mark Jenkin has been the torchbearer for all the cinematic pleasures of the fishing village. His mesmeric new film, Rose of Nevada (2025), wrests fresh drama from those same waters. Jenkin’s filmography joins a rich history of movies set within fishing villages and towns.
“There’s a kind of wet heat in there that you can feel”: Emerald Fennell on 7 films that influenced her version of Wuthering Heights
The list of 13 ‘Love Stories’ recommended to the BFI by Emerald Fennell, director of Promising Young Woman, Saltburn, and now her explosive “Wuthering Heights”, is a carefully considered programme certainly not designed for the faint of heart. She says that she did not want to choose anything which would not provoke a reaction, be that good or bad. What matters to Fennell is that an audience feels something rather than nothing. David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996) is emblematic of these films for her.
“Friedkin saw American Animals and summoned me to lunch”: Bart Layton on his LA heist thriller Crime 101
Bart Layton’s previous feature, docu-fiction American Animals (2018), suggested the British writer-director had a smart, original eye for a heist film, and his pacy new adaptation of Don Winslow’s novella Crime 101 reinforces that with intelligence and depth.
“Time is a better curator”: Ethan Hawke on relevance, reinvention and the new rules of engagement
The irony isn’t lost on Ethan Hawke. He’s getting the highest accolades of his career for playing an artist on the cusp of obsolescence. More than 40 years after he debuted on our screens as the space-obsessed 14-year-old dreamer in Joe Dante’s Explorers (1985), he has, for the first time, found himself in the running for his profession’s gold standard – the Oscar for Best Actor. But he’s reached this plateau by finding a new path.
“Growing up as a girl, you learn to please to be accepted”: Urška Djukić on Little Trouble Girls
Slovenian director Urška Djukić still remembers the first time she heard Little Trouble Girl, the ‘90s track by Sonic Youth on which alternative rock icons Kim Gordon and Kim Deal sing about pretending to be good to win approval, but being bad inside. She had a “rare feeling of being understood” – so much so that the song has, years later, provided the title for her debut feature, Little Trouble Girls, a vivid and sensual coming-of-age vision of the conflicting emotions of awakening desire.
“Stephen King’s work comes from a very wise understanding of the experience of being alive”: Tom Hiddleston and Chiwetel Ejiofor on The Life of Chuck
A triptych which tackles one seemingly ordinary accountant’s connection to the end of the world, The Life of Chuck is writer-director Mike Flanagan’s third Stephen King feature adaptation but the first that isn’t horror. There are certainly terrifying elements of the reverse chronology story as it looks at three key parts of Charles ‘Chuck’ Krantz’s life, but the emphasis is more on the joy of living, with a light fantasy / sci-fi dimension.
“I wanted to approach the curation from a position of abundance”: Wanda and Beyond curator Elena Gorfinkel on her season around one-feature filmmaker Barbara Loden
How do you plan a retrospective around a filmmaker with a limited body of work? This question lies at the heart of Wanda and Beyond: The World of Barbara Loden, a new season screening at BFI Southbank this June. Many fans of feminist and US independent cinema will have heard of Wanda, a low budget 1970 US indie road movie, and the sole directorial feature of actor turned filmmaker Barbara Loden.
Wong Kar Wai on In the Mood for Love at 25 – a new interview: “Can an algorithm understand the weight of a glance between two people?”
Twenty-five years on from the premiere of In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar Wai looks back on the complicated genesis of his masterpiece of desire and restraint. 20 May 2025 The film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival 25 years ago, on 20 May 2000, was not the one that Wong Kar Wai had envisaged when he set out on the project sometime around 1997. Far from it. In the Mood for Love emerged from a succession of rapidly evolving projects. One was called Summer in Beijing – it was a comedy.
“I can think of nothing more boring than a live concert film”: Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard and Emiliana Torrini on The Extraordinary Miss Flower
After Zoe Flower’s mother Geraldine died, she and her partner Simon Byrt discovered a case of treasured letters, photographs and memorabilia from Geraldine’s life in the 1960s and 70s: heartfelt correspondences from a life of travel and adventure, secrets and passionate love affairs, some even suggesting liaisons with spies… Sharing these with Byrt’s longtime musical collaborator, Icelandic-Italian songwriter Emiliana Torrini, provided the inspiration for an entire new album based on...
“I don’t exist as a director in Georgia”: Dea Kulumbegashvili on her haunting abortion drama April
Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut feature, Beginning (2020) announced a new voice in Georgian filmmaking from its opening scene with the sight of a Molotov cocktail smashing through the window of a Jehovah’s Witness hall, engulfing a terrified congregation in smoke as they try to escape the flames.
10 great films featuring dual performances
To date, Michael B. Jordan has appeared in every Ryan Coogler film. As if to make up for only giving him a single scene in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), Coogler’s new project, Sinners, casts Jordan in two lead roles: twin Mississippi gangsters Smoke and Stack, whose attempts to start a juke joint with bootlegging money in the Jim-Crow-era south attracts the attention of less than friendly visitors.
“We’re recreating the devil’s music”: composer Ludwig Göransson on Sinners
If we could award cool points to composers, Ludwig Göransson would have scored plenty. Leaving aside his extensive work producing Childish Gambino – Donald Glover’s rap alter ego – and credits on tunes by Stormzy, Adele and Lykke Li, Göransson already has two Oscars. The Swedish musician bagged his first best original score statue for frequent collaborator Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018) and the other for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023).
Rod Steiger: 10 essential films
One hundred years after he was born, we salute the fury and intensity of Rod Steiger’s presence on screen, from On the Waterfront to In the Heat of the Night. 14 April 2025 Whether in a supporting role or as the lead, Rod Steiger was best known for his fevered intensity. He specialised in playing explosive men. Nevertheless, he was just as powerful when reigning in his propensity for going big, whether as villains who were eerily still, or as ordinary men fighting lonely battles within themselves.
5 things to watch this weekend - 4 to 6 April
Irish tragicomedy, a story of sex and publishing, and a Hitchcock classic on TV. What are you watching this weekend? 4 April 2025 Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide By a quirk of scheduling, two films about budding gay novelists and the publishing world open in cinemas this week.
10 great films about The Beatles
Poor old Ringo Starr. George Harrison was commemorated by Martin Scorsese, while Paul McCartney is about to be profiled by Morgan Neville, and Kevin Macdonald’s One to One: John & Yoko and Alan G. Parker’s Borrowed Time: Lennon’s Last Decade are the latest in a long line of tributes to John Lennon –in the last year alone, these included Daytime Revolution, Revival 69, and the three-part John Lennon: Murder Without a Trial.
5 things to watch this weekend - 28 to 30 March
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide Misericordia is the eccentric new comic murder drama from Alain Guiraudie, the French director best known for his humid 2013 cruising-ground thriller Stranger by the Lake. Like most of his films, it’s set in France’s rural south, where Jérémie (Félix Kysyl) returns to his hometown to attend the funeral of the baker, a former boss.
10 great British films of 1975
Between the Sex Pistols’ first live performance and Margaret Thatcher making history by defeating Edward Heath in the Conservative leadership contest to become the first female leader of a major UK political party, 1975 offered some clear indications of the contending cultural forces shaping British life.
5 things to watch this weekend - 21 to 23 March
Netflix’s harrowing incel drama, a tale of animals in a post-apocalyptic world, and a double dose of Kurosawa. What are you watching this weekend? 21 March 2025 Where’s it on? Netflix Generating huge buzz since it landed on Netflix last week, Adolescence is the harrowing new four-part drama co-created by Jack Thorne (This Is England) and actor Stephen Graham. Each episode offers a different angle on a horrific case in which a 13-year-old boy stands accused of murdering a female classmate.
10 great Slovak New Wave films
The first-ever UK release of Peter Solan’s The Barnabáš Kos Case (1964), which has just been issued on Blu-ray, throws a spotlight on a still neglected but unimpeachably vital part of what is correctly called the Czechoslovak New Wave but too often casually abbreviated to ‘Czech New Wave’.
Where to begin with François Ozon
You can never be sure what to expect from a François Ozon film. Since the turn of the millennium, the French auteur has released a film nearly every year, and his prodigious filmography defies easy categorisation, turning between gushing melodramas, heady romances, erotic thrillers, played-straight procedurals and other genres besides. However, Ozon is consistent in his fascination with the messy nuances of interpersonal connection.
10 great Baltic films
This year’s Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles sparked celebrations among Latvia’s film industry, as the small Baltic nation came away with its first Oscar, for Flow by Gints Zilbalodis, which won in the Best Animated Feature category.
Erin Brockovich, a law unto herself
Of all Steven Soderbergh’s films Erin Brockovich is his most mainstream and accessible, the kind of true-story David and Goliath tale that’s likely to be written off as a crowd-pleaser. For one thing, it’s very much a Julia Roberts vehicle.
The Lost People: how an immersive play became a 1940s British film about wartime displacement
Based on an avant-garde wartime play, The Lost People was scripted by the pioneering filmmaker Muriel Box (who also directed some sequences) and presents an unusual depiction of the turmoil of post-war displacement. 10 March 2025 When World War II ended, thousands of people were stranded far from home, having fled the fighting or been liberated from camps.
5 things to watch this weekend - 7 to 9 March
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide Six years after his globe-conquering thriller Parasite (2019), Bong Joon Ho returns with this colourful dystopian comedy – a snowbound creature feature in the more cartoonish mood of his films Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017).
Out 1: Jacques Rivette’s 13-hour labyrinth gets a rare UK screening
Jacques Rivette’s 1971 film Out 1 (co-directed by Suzanne Schiffman) has played the longest of long games. It’s not only that it lasts 13 hours – always the first thing anybody mentions about it – or that, by comparison with his prolific nouvelle vague contemporaries, Rivette took a long time to get to this fourth feature (Godard and Chabrol had each signed more than 20 by 1971).
5 things to watch this weekend - 28 February to 2 March
Where’s it on? Blu-ray Here is a 1980s romcom to rank alongside Moonstruck (1987) or When Harry Met Sally (1989). Brimming with life and humour, Crossing Delancey is Joan Micklin Silver’s tale of a thirtysomething Jewish New Yorker (Amy Irving) who falls for an attractive author (Jeroen Krabbé) at the bookstore where she works. Meanwhile, her mother – keen to marry her off – sets her up on a date with a pickle salesman on the Lower East Side (Local Hero’s Peter Riegert).
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy review
Romantic comedy is in a new era and some of the popular Noughties franchises are struggling to keep up with the changing times. Take And Just Like That… (2021-2025), the Sex and the City reboot that elevated so-called ‘woke’ rebranding to a high-camp art. It was absolutely unwatchable, yet I couldn’t look away.
10 to watch at Borderlines Film Festival 2025
Borderlines is the 16-day festival that brings an all-you-can-eat buffet of great cinema to Herefordshire, Shropshire, Malvern and the Welsh Borders each year. It’s a chance to catch up on many of the notable independent films of the past year, as well as an opportunity to preview many buzz titles that haven’t been released yet. There’s a rich seam of older films to enjoy too. Here are 10 that come with a rubber stamp of recommendation.
This City is a Battlefield review: an Indonesian epic
Director Mouly Surya’s elaborate depiction of the Indonesian resistance in post-WWII Jakarta keeps a tight focus on its characters as it grapples with broad themes of Dutch colonisation and fractured national identity. 14 February 2025 Reviewed from the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam Fresh off directing Hollywood thriller Trigger Warning (2024) starring Jessica Alba, Indonesian filmmaker Mouly Surya returns to the independent film circuit with an ambitious historical epic.
What Marielle Knows review: Tales of a teen telepath
Reviewed from the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival Conceivably the most uproarious German comedy since Toni Erdmann (2016), this second feature from Baden-born writer-director Frédéric Hambalek puts a gentrified arthouse gloss on the kind of high-concept comic scenario that Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler would have been right at home in. It’s Liar Liar (1997) scored to Beethoven string quartets.
I'm Still Here review: a timely family saga
A swimmer floats on her back off Copacabana Beach as a helicopter flies above. She is Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), whose five children are playing beach volleyball while a stray dog keeps interfering. The family’s blissful life of affection and closeness is signalled by the children’s adoption of the dog, agreed to by their easy-going, burly engineer father Rubens (Selton Mello), the figure on whom, at first, the film centres.
5 things to watch this weekend - 14 to 16 February Original
Punch-drunk romance, disobedient emotions and a dangerous scam in pursuit of a better life. What are you watching this weekend? 12 February 2025 Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide The second feature from Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel is a gripping and assured present-tense drama about two Palestinian men living in Athens but seeking fake passports to help get them to Germany.
10 great films based on short stories
Do short story adaptations make better films than novel adaptations? Ahead of the release of a new film of Stephen King’s The Monkey, we look at 10 of the best. 13 February 2025 There’s a certain neatness to the concept of Osgood Perkins’ gleefully gory The Monkey (2025), though the results are decidedly messy.
5 things to watch this weekend - 7 to 9 February
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide, including BFI Southbank This commanding drama by fugitive Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is somewhere between The Ear and Lear – that is, between Karel Kachyna’s banned 1970 Czech film about a married couple driven to distraction by the fact that their house may have been bugged by the authorities, and Shakespeare’s tragedy about a father driven mad by the competing loyalties of his daughters.
5 things to watch this weekend - 7 to 9 February
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide, including BFI Southbank This commanding drama by fugitive Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is somewhere between The Ear and Lear – that is, between Karel Kachyna’s banned 1970 Czech film about a married couple driven to distraction by the fact that their house may have been bugged by the authorities, and Shakespeare’s tragedy about a father driven mad by the competing loyalties of his daughters.
10 great early Japanese colour films
“The Japanese people from time immemorial have had a fine sense and taste regarding colours”, claimed the writers of Japan Motion Picture Almanac 1957, an industry publication aimed at promoting its cinema overseas. Indeed, Japanese cinema’s relationship with colour stretched back to the silent era.
5 things to watch this weekend - 31 January to 2 February
Where’s it on? Cinemas nationwide, including BFI Southbank Mike Leigh’s first modern-day drama since Another Year (2010), Hard Truths was rejected by Cannes, Venice and Telluride film festivals before eventually premiering at Toronto – and the injustices continue with Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s scalding lead performance being overlooked in the recent Oscar nominations. What do people want from their films?
10 great Iranian family dramas
Children’s experience and tense family drama have been at the heart of many of the greatest Iranian films. Ahead of the release of the Oscar-nominated thriller The Seed of the Sacred Fig, we recommend 10 of them. 30 January 2025 Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is the most recent film from Iran to be nominated for the Oscar for best international feature film.
From trans health to children’s palliative care: how three new short films tell untold stories of the NHS
Inspired by a treasure trove of archive healthcare films in the BFI National Archive, three filmmaking teams were tasked with making new short films tackling modern stories of the National Health Service. Xavier Pillai finds out more. 28 January 2025 To mark the 75th anniversary of the NHS in 2023, the BFI joined forces with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to create three films that used archive footage as inspiration to tell the untold stories of our National Health Service.
From trans health to children’s palliative care: how three new short films tell untold stories of the NHS
Inspired by a treasure trove of archive healthcare films in the BFI National Archive, three filmmaking teams were tasked with making new short films tackling modern stories of the National Health Service. Xavier Pillai finds out more. 28 January 2025 To mark the 75th anniversary of the NHS in 2023, the BFI joined forces with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to create three films that used archive footage as inspiration to tell the untold stories of our National Health Service.
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