Mifune : The Last Samurai

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

Immerse yourself in the work of Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti - icons of the Mexican Renaissance.

Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen's essay film commemorating pilot Amy Johnson's pioneering solo flight to Australia in 1930.

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

Neglected since its release in 1971, Bushman follows a Nigerian student in San Francisco but is interrupted by the arrest of its leading man.

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

Farmers hire a band of samurai to defend them against marauding bandits in Kurosawa’s influential epic, a touchstone for action movies ever since.

Takashi Miike burst to prominence with this disturbing tale of a deadly young woman who turns the tables on her middle-aged suitor.

This stunningly beautiful anthology of Japanese ghost stories is one of the most meticulously crafted supernatural films ever made.

Koreeda's lyrical fantasy challenges the viewer to reflect on the experiences that most make life worth living.

Koreeda’s first fiction feature is an exquisite meditation on loss, loneliness, uncertainty, and coming to terms with the past.

Takeshi Kitano's masterful and meditative gangster film, about a yakuza sent to the beautiful beaches of Okinawa where he has time to ruminate on his fate.

Sumptuous historical drama starring Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil; a thunderous yarn full of dastardly plots, familial hatred and perverse desire

1980s borstal drama – billed as the female Scum – featuring Amanda York and Kathy Burke as inmates in a ruthless women’s prison.

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.