Mike Leigh’s acclaimed story of a selfless woman who helps ladies with unwanted pregnancies – in 1950s Britain when abortion was illegal – is both an affecting drama and vital slice of social history.

Tony (Peter Ferdinando) cuts an odd figure. Wandering the streets of his East London neighbourhood, he quietly observes the people around him, occasionally inviting an unlucky few back to his flat for some squash. Asking a prostitute for a cuddle or reeling off his extensive VHS collection, he is...

Set in a world before Elvis, a Liverpool before the Beatles, Terence Davies' debut feature is a remarkable evocation of working-class family life in the 40s and 50s and a visionary exploration of memory. In a powerful succession of searing vignettes, Davies paints an autobiographical picture of a...

Based on Ronald Blythe’s much-loved oral history book, Akenfield traces three generations of one Suffolk family and their lives in the farming industry, with director Peter Hall – known for his theatre direction - using to great effect a cast non-professional actors drawn from the communities of ...

Derek Jarman struggled for seven years to bring his portrait of the 17th century Italian artist Michelangelo da Caravaggio to the screen. The result was well worth the wait. It’s a freely dramatised portrait which conjures several of the controversial artist’s most famous paintings through elabor...

The Angelic Conversation sees Derek Jarman conjure an evocative and radical visualisation of Shakespeare’s love poems.

With his reign coming to an end, a dying Henry VIII looks back on his life and the six marriages that would go on to define him. The film looks back with the King, following his life from his marriage to a Spanish princess to the foundation of Protestantism, to the beheadings and divorces that wo...

Despite Harold Pinter's fear that Joseph Losey would turn his play into 'a completely homosexual picture', The Servant stands as one of the great critiques of British social and sexual mores. Power relationships between the classes fuel a sexual subtext about dominance and submission which goes b...

"We expect no mercy from Everest," said George Mallory as he began his final ascent on the treacherous mountain - and he got none. Captain John Noel's moving and visually ravishing account puts the human struggle at its heart, while bringing home his own rapture at the 'lost world' of Tibet. Simo...

Dennis Price plays Louis, a young man snubbed by his aristocratic family as a result of his mother's marriage. When she's killed, Louis becomes determined to inherit the family title, and won't let anything or anyone stop him. With an unforgettable performance by Alec Guinness as all eight remain...

Peter Ustinov stars as Agatha Christie's fastidious detective, Hercule Poirot, in this star-studded murder-mystery. Poirot is tying up some loose ends on a shimmeringly beautiful Adriatic island when he's dragged into a new case. In typical Christie style, everyone on the beach has a motive for t...

When she meets a hip television director, a young woman is swept into the world of London's lavish sixties nightlife. However, her lust to belong to the scene doesn't even begin to quench her thirst for fun, as she drifts from clique to clique looking for an unattainable sense of belonging.

It is 1912, the shadow of war looms over a wealthy family. As they celebrate their eldest daughter's engagement in their lavish Yorkshire manor, they're interrupted by an ominous police detective who is investigating a young woman's suicide, and what role each of them played in her death.

Hailed as Britain's first black feature film, Pressure is a hard-hitting, honest document of the plight of disenchanted British-born black youths. Set in 1970s London, it tells the story of Tony, a bright school-leaver, son of West Indian immigrants, who finds himself torn between his parents' ch...

Bombay, 1962: Sera Kotwal (Souad Faress) gives birth to Brit (Firdaus Kanga), a boy whose bones are so brittle that he can just hiccup and break a rib. Based on Kanga's acclaimed autobiographical novel, Trying to Grow, Sixth Happiness is the funny, acerbic and moving story of a young man's sexual...

In this London-set drama, the Baptiste family are caught in intergenerational debates about identity, belonging and life in Britain. Shifting between real and mystic landscapes, co-directors Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien create a visual mosaic that explores the complexity of the Black Britis...

After receiving an anonymous tip, a policeman ( Edward Woodward ) travels to the Scottish island of Summerisle to search for a missing girl. When he arrives, the Islanders, most of whom seem to be practising pagans, claim to have never seen or heard of the young girl. The mystery leads to our pro...

One of the greatest British films, Carol Reed's classic very consciously emphasises its time and place - post-war Vienna - yet its resonant themes around loss of innocence and a fall from grace render it timeless. Joseph Cotten plays the writer searching the Austrian capital for his missing frien...

Menelik Shabazz’s pioneering first feature, shot around the communities of Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, marked a coming of age for black British cinema.

In the middle of World War II Cavalcanti provocatively imagined a postwar England in which the failure of the threatened German invasion could be safely seen in flashback, thanks to the resourceful villagers of Bramley End. Once the ostensibly British troops in their village are revealed as Nazis...

Christmas 1183. An elderly King Henry the Second (Peter O'Toole) is torn over naming his successor. He wants the young Prince John (Nigel Terry), one of his three sons, to take over, however, his wife Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katherine Hepburn) wants another of his sons, Prince Richard the Lio...

"The longest unsponsored advertisement ever to reach cinema screens", reckoned producer Monja Danischewski. Maybe so, but Alexander Mackendrick's debut feature is much more than that. This comic account of a real-life event pitches a priggish English army captain against the remorseless guile of ...

After securing a job at his uncle's arms factory Stanley Windrush gets caught up in a dispute between the factory bosses and its trade union official. The Boulting Brothers' classic comedy brims with brilliant performances, including Ian Carmichael as the lovable Stanley and Dennis Price and Rich...

Captain Anson (John Mills), a fledgeling alcoholic, and Tom Pugh (Harry Andrews) are ordered to escort two nurses across the North African desert. Encountering German troops, treacherous terrain, as well as an enigmatic man, Ice Cold in Alex is a British war film packed with adventure.