Coastal Stories

Take yourself to that liminal place where the land meets the sea.

Coming soon

Rhianna Dhillon's Coastal Stories

Rhianna Dhillon heads to the coast and picks her favourite films featuring stories set where the land meets the sea.

Short interview
2026
8 mins

Beast

The hunt for a Jersey serial killer sparks a dangerous awakening in a young woman in this astonishing psycho-sexual thriller starring Jessie Buckley.

Drama
Thriller
2017
106 mins
Michael Pearce

Love and Death on Long Island

John Hurt stars in Richard Kwietniowski’s comedy of fame and obsession about an older man (Hurt) who becomes infatuated with a young Hollywood actor (Jason Priestley), and proceeds to track him down.

Comedy
1997
89 mins
Richard Kwietniowski

Islands

A mysterious disappearance sets off this noirish thriller with echoes of Hitchcock and Highsmith, starring Sam Riley and Stacey Martin.

Drama
Thriller
2025
121 mins
Jan-Ole Gerster

Lola and the Sea

A young trans woman embarks on a journey with her estranged father to scatter her mother’s ashes in this tender depiction of identity and family ties.

Drama
2019
91 mins
Laurent Micheli

Coming soon

Rose of Nevada

Mark Jenkin’s time-travelling odyssey about a long-lost fishing boat that mysteriously returns to harbour, starring George Mackay and Callum Turner.

Drama
Science Fiction
2025
114 mins
Mark Jenkin

Eclipse

Unsettling, little-seen 1970s psychological thriller – a story of sibling rivalry set on the lonely Scottish coast, with Tom Conti and Gay Hamilton.

Drama
1976
85 mins
Simon Perry

BFI Restoration

The Edge of the World

Michael Powell's windswept story of the inhabitants of a remote island who find their way of life threatened by a industrialising world.

Drama
1937
75 mins
Michael Powell

Bait

Simmering tensions between locals and newcomers in a modern-day Cornish fishing village reach boiling point in this hugely acclaimed British independent film.

Drama
2019
89 mins
Mark Jenkin

Beach Rats

Gripping account of repressed sexual desire in a masculine environment, with British newcomer Harris Dickinson as a virulently macho Brooklyn teen.

Drama
2017
98 mins
Eliza Hittman

Summer with Monika

Ingmar Bergman’s scandalous tale of two lovers enjoying the freedom of youth.

Drama
Romance
1953
97 mins
Ingmar Bergman

The Summer with Carmen

A seductive and smart gay comedy set on a cruisy Greek island.

Comedy
2023
106 mins
Zacharias Mavroeidis

Enys Men

Mark Jenkin follows Bait with this chilling, endlessly mysterious folk horror tale, beautifully shot on grainy 16mm.

Horror
2022
91 mins
Mark Jenkin

BFI Restoration

South: Sir Ernest Shackleton's Glorious Epic of the Antarctic

An extraordinary story of Shackleton's survival in the wastes of Antarctica, now considered the world's first documentary feature.

Documentary
1919
81 mins
Frank Hurley

Battleship Potemkin

A fixture in the critical canon almost since its premiere, Eisenstein’s film about a 1905 naval mutiny was revolutionary in both form and content.

Historical drama
1925
69 mins
Sergei M. Eisenstein

Daughters of the Dust

Dash’s groundbreaking Daughters of the Dust remains urgent and poetic and continues to resonate, inspiring Beyoncé’s iconic visual album Lemonade.

Drama
1991
112 mins
Julie Dash

The Kingdom

A teenager is taken to a Corsican villa where her fugitive mob boss father is hiding, before an assassination attempt forces them to go on the run.

Crime
Thriller
2024
111 mins
Julien Colonna

Godland

Breathtakingly inventive and ambitious historical epic about a young Danish priest travelling to a remote Icelandic outpost to establish a church.

Drama
2022
143 mins
Hlynur Pálmason

Lord of the Flies

Peter Brook’s Palme d’Or-nominated adaption of the classic novel by William Golding.

Drama
Science Fiction
1963
91 mins
Peter Brook

Through a Glass Darkly

The first part of Ingmar Bergman's 'Faith Trilogy', about a writer (Björnstrand) who joins his daughter, son and son-in-law on holiday, where tensions soon arise.

Drama
1961
89 mins
Ingmar Bergman

Àma Gloria

Six-year-old Cléo spends a final summer with her beloved nanny Gloria, in this profoundly moving story of chosen family, duty and innocence lost.

Drama
2023
84 mins
Marie Amachoukeli

Stromboli, Land of God

In her first collaboration with Roberto Rossellini, Ingrid Bergman stars as a refugee who marries a fisherman and moves to a barren island.

Drama
1950
100 mins
Roberto Rossellini