Sophia Loren: Reshaping Femininity

Writer Nadia M Oliva tracks the development of the melodrama genre and how it plays out across film, TV and online.

Rhianna Dhillon selects her favourite Coming of Age films available now on BFI Player.

Cinema history demonstrates swimming pools are awash with symbolic possibility – artist Justin Anderson shares some tips on how to film them

In this film, podcast host Michael Muncer argues that the stereotype of Haneke as a director interested only in suffering misses the point.

This new video essay by writer and critic Jessica McGoff, traces the restless movement in the works of Chantal Akerman, where the concept of home is always slipping just out of reach.

Discover the unrealised visions and passion projects of revered British filmmaker Michael Powell, in this fascinating documentary featuring Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

Irrepressible Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves) directs this Oscar-winning film of three comic tales of love and sex in three cities.

Four of the greatest Italian directors – Fellini, Visconti, De Sica and Monicelli – join forces with show-stoppers Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg and Romy Schneider in a carousel of sex and satire mocking the mores of Italian '60s society.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are irrepressible as a long-married couple in this exquisite and timeless comedy of our all-too-human foibles.

Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni deliver the finest and most nuanced performances of their careers in this understated masterpiece from director Ettore Scola.

Sophia Loren won an Oscar® for her performance as a mother trying to protect her daughter in wartime Italy, in Vittorio De Sica's neorealist classic.

Writer Nadia M Oliva tracks the development of the melodrama genre and how it plays out across film, TV and online.

Rhianna Dhillon selects her favourite Coming of Age films available now on BFI Player.

An ungainly cockney chauffeur navigates the seedy streets of London, gradually falling for the elegant and mysterious prostitute who is his passenger.

Reviled upon its release, now reclaimed as a cult classic - one can only submit to the trash-tastic delights of Paul Verhoeven's erotic disasterpiece.

Saoirse Ronan gives a bracing performance as a young recovering alcoholic returning home to Orkney in this moving adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir.

Alan Parker’s elliptical, ethereal adaptation of the acclaimed, ‘unfilmable’ novel by William Wharton, about a boy who dreams of flying.

Anora director Sean Baker's visionary portrait of life in America’s underbelly, featuring an Oscar-nominated turn from Willem Dafoe.

A salesman becomes obsessed by an icy prostitute against the backdrop of a hellish Paris, in this arthouse erotica from Walerian Borowczyk (The Beast)