Collections

Highlighting some of the astonishing and engaging work that has been supported by the UK public, including the National Lottery funding through the BFI, over the last 60 years.

The home of LGBTQIA+ rentals on BFI Player, showcasing favourites from the BFI Flare festival and the best in contemporary LGBTQIA+ cinema.

Meet the elite: hand-picked highlights from the 2022 Sight and Sound 250 Greatest Films of All Time Poll.

Take a trip around the blazing worlds of sci-fi as we undock a blockbuster celebration of this most spectacular of movie genres.

France, the country where cinema was born, has given us some of the masters of cinema.

Uncommon terror – and a few laughs – links them, and they show vintage names such as George A. Romero and Hammer Films, alongside perverse visions minted much more recently. Served chilled.

A selection of nominees and winners, past and present, honouring the world’s most inventive storytellers.

Celebrate the Cannes Film Festival with our collection of major prize-winners and contenders from previous festivals.

Who Can You Trust?

Trust few and fear all in a collection of films packed with suspense, paranoia and conspiracy.

Celebrating side-splitting cinema, from slapstick legends to today's anarchic voices.

A place to meet the world's top films and their creators, the BFI London Film Festival represents global cinema at its deep, diverse best.

Unmissable films from an essential source: the world’s wisest film magazine, whose annual list sets the standard.

Want to escape our troubled times? Immerse yourself in the emotional, life-enhancing pleasures of the musical.

Celebrating the diversity of Indian filmmaking and films about India.

A country once divided produces filmmakers of uncommon talent, storyteller reflecting the human story through national identity.

From the 1930s Golden Age to the urgent, socially conscious cinema of Jia Zhangke, Chinese cinema contains many riches to discover.

US independent films made away from the pressures and glitz of Hollywood have offered directors a greater creative freedom.

Reclaiming the history and identity of British South Asians - through film.

How has cinema approached sex? Leave your inhibitions at the door and find out.

Let’s hear it for the badass buddies, inseparable gal-pals and the wisecracking girl gangs of cinema.

Fascinating, diverse and frequently controversial, the biopic crosses genres to dramatise real lives in engrossing ways.

Legends are minted and careers defined by the Academy Award, a tiny golden statue of incomparable significance.

Great films incite, others vex, a few elate. From pre-war to the present day, these remarkable works by international women directors do all that and more.

Camp controversies and obscure outsiders: Cult Cinema champions the underground unloved and the fervently rediscovered.

Striking, ambitious and delicious: the best indie films from the UK & around the world are showcased in this eye-popping collection of nominees & winners from the British Independent Film Awards.

Exploring the northern talent and creativity that drive such distinctive storytelling.

Filmmakers love it, audiences live it. The rites-of-passage film enables us the chance to relive the past with wisdom, but not angst.

Cinema’s perpetual provocateur has been inciting audiences for over half a century.

Trailblazer, groundbreaker, godfather, pioneer... we chart the trajectory of Earl Cameron’s unique film career.

Celebrating the master of contemporary Japanese cinema and his diverse, beautiful and human stories.

Dreams, memories and reveries - the collected works of one of Britain's most distinctive filmmakers.

Britain’s most garlanded working filmmaker has been an unyielding presence for half a century, rattling authorities and raging against injustice from the campaigning Cathy to Come to his two Palmes d’Or.

Tapping into a sense of early 20th-century Europe that is a place of dusty nightmares, folkloric paraphernalia and crumbling institutes filled with the dispossessed.

Enter the spooky, surreal and sepia-tinted world of the Brothers Quay.

Behind the canvas with a movie camera: you can almost smell the turpentine in these fascinating portraits of artists at work.

Personal, powerful and lyrical, this is where music and film collide, a meeting place for rock biopics, probing documentaries, groundbreakers and old stagers.

Celebrating the extraordinary, convention-defying career of the chameleonic performer.

Literature has inspired some of the greatest films ever made.

From a rare portrait of the first spokesperson of the UK disability rights movement to a reimagining of becoming blind, this selection of mainly fictional films covers a range of representations of being disabled. Crucially, some of the films are authored by disabled people themselves, while others feature non-disabled actors taking on the role of a disabled character.

Feel the warmth of the sun and dip into our selection of summer rentals.

The director selects the titles that helped inspire his latest film. 

This collection showcases a selection of hard-to-see features that are unavailable to watch anywhere else (legally) in the UK.

Documentaries can be as expressive, surreal and experimental as any work of fiction. This collection explores a world made up of people and places, with films from Asif Kapadia, Kim Longinotto, Raoul Peck, Werner Herzog and more.

 A collection of films lit up by the charisma  of working-class stars; a celebration of fine actors and remarkable leading roles.

To mark this year's Refugee Week, BFI and Counterpoints Arts have compiled a collection of films that explore refugee experiences in the past and present and across different parts of the world.

Exploring the films and filmmakers that broke the rules of cinema in the 1990s.

Celebrating half a century of absurdity, songs, jokes and genius, from Britain’s best-loved comedic sextet.

From Victorian voyeurism to Soho striptease: how a hidden film industry emerged to satisfy the sexual appetites of (male) viewers.

The camera flips inward to film the creative process. Watch rarities, exclusives, documentaries and special features from the artists and obsessives who make the films.

Discover a rich history reaching back over a century as we celebrate South Asian communities and culture across Britain.

This colourful and challenging collection explores screen representations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lives over the past century.

To mark 20 years as a director, Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) selects films from emerging directors whose work he believes will be pivotal to the next 20 years

Punk’s mad parade burnt bright and quick, feeding on the public’s limitless love of disgust.

Long linked to flesh and pleasure, London’s infamous district merits a closer look. Here you’ll find jazz clubs, garrets, lewdness and lidos.

An eccentric excursion to the furthest fringes of youth culture and alternative lifestyles, as captured in archive film and TV.

Comedy gold from the UK’s only international comedy film festival.

Showcasing the best of Black culture in film and TV history. 

All the world's a cinema! How a century and more of filmmakers have raided, remade and refashioned the bard.

A young film industry just settling into its own home - the cinema - found itself enlisted to record, report and dramatise a war unlike any other.

Europe’s largest South Asian film festival is now online. Discover the best independent Indian cinema, from features and documentaries to on-stage highlights from the festival itself.

Gothic horror and romance tales feed on our darkest fears and desires, and conjure the creatures of the night into being.

Mischievous mermaids, murderous minors and military mayhem are among the highlights of this collection of long hard-to-see titles.

Films for kids have changed dramatically over the last 100 years, as seen in this family-friendly collection.

These are our most resonant adventures of 2023. They move and thrill, proving that cinema is sharpest at its edges...

These are our most resonant adventures of 2022. They move and thrill, proving that cinema is sharpest at its edges...

These are our most resonant adventures of 2021. They move and thrill, proving that cinema is sharpest at its edges...

These are our most resonant adventures. They move and thrill, proving that cinema is sharpest at its edges...

These are our most-chosen stories - resonant adventures that move and thrill; proof that cinema can be sharpest at its edge.

Stories with hunger, lust and courage, adventures from the community to rouse and inspire…

Stories with hunger, lust and courage, adventures from the community to rouse and inspire…

Cinema can be sharpest at its edge. This year’s chart has small stories told well, and grand adventures that magnetise…

Stories with hunger, lust and courage, adventures from the community to rouse and inspire…

Cinema can be sharpest at its edge. This year’s chart has small stories told well, and grand adventures that magnetise…

Cinema's big beasts assemble in our most popular rentals of the last 12 months.

If you seek lazy reboots and prequels, go elsewhere. These films dabble in the distinctive, be it real-life stories, potent dramas or history with a twist. They show the wild diversity of films and their creators, and they indicate a medium in rude health.