Lizzie Francke

Year 1936. As villages across Palestine rise against British colonial rule, Yusuf drifts between his rural home and the restless energy of Jerusalem, longing for a future beyond the growing unrest. But history is relentless. With rising numbers of Jewish immigrants escaping antisemitism in Europe and some arriving with nefarious Zionist-colonial ambitions, and the Palestinian population uniting in the largest and longest uprising against Britain’s 30-year dominion, all sides spiral towards inevitable collision in a decisive moment for the British Empire and the future of the entire region.

Teenage best friends Doe and Muna are heading off on what seems like the trip of a lifetime. Quiet, observant Doe hasn’t travelled since arriving in the UK as a Somali refugee aged three. Muna, sharp and fearless with Pakistani roots, leads them through airport security and into the unknown. But this isn’t a holiday. The girls are bound for Istanbul, planning to cross into Syria to begin a new life they believe holds purpose and meaning. When their fixer fails to appear, panic sets in, but turning back isn’t an option. Alone in a foreign city, they must improvise fast, pushing the limits of their courage, their faith, and their friendship.

Max is a 25-year-old freelance writer and aspiring novelist who seems well on his way to success in London’s cultural spheres. Yet by night, he finds a different kind of exhilaration as a sex worker with the pseudonym Sebastian, meeting men via an escorting platform. Max uses his experiences as Sebastian to fuel his stories and the worthy debut novel that he has been longing to write, finally seems within reach.

As London is submerged below floodwaters, a woman gives birth to her first child. Days later, she and her baby are forced to leave their home in search of safety. They head north through a newly dangerous country seeking refuge from place to place.

A short animated documentary about love, death, and knitting.

Mourning her mother’s death and struggling to adjust to her new life in Israel, a young girl bonds with the lonely spirit of a Palestinian child.

Talented and cutthroat hairstylists at a competition find one of their own murdered before judging can begin. Winding through neon-lit halls, competitors unspool long-simmering resentments and lies as they search for the killer among them.

Even as bombs fall on Damascus, Mutaz refuses to flee to the uncertain life of a refugee. His wife, Hala, and daughter, Zeina, must make the choice whether to stay or leave.

Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories fill the gaps between camcorder footages as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the troubled man she didn't.

A celebrity model couple are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged, alcoholic captain. What first appears Instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island in a struggle of hierarchy.

Leah, 10, has terrible nightmares. Her mother seems distant somehow, lost in her thoughts. A small, nightly visitor brings Leah comfort, but soon Leah will realize that her little visitor offers knowledge that might be very, very dangerous.

A young woman living on the fringes of society becomes intoxicated by a stranger who overwhelms her quiet life.

Sparks fly after Ali and Ava meet through their shared affection for Sofia, the child of Ali’s tenants whom Ava teaches. Ali finds comfort in Ava’s warmth and kindness while Ava finds Ali’s complexity and humour irresistible. As the pair begin to form a deep connection they have to find a way to keep their newfound passion from being overshadowed by the stresses and struggles of their separate lives and histories.​

Poet Siegfried Sassoon survived the horrors of fighting in the First World War and was decorated for his bravery, but became a vocal critic of the government's continuation of the war when he returned from service. Adored by members of the aristocracy as well as stars of London's literary and stage world, he embarked on affairs with several men as he attempted to come to terms with his homosexuality.

A look at the life and work of Charlie Chaplin in his own words featuring an in-depth interview he gave to Life magazine in 1966.

In the aftermath of her tumultuous relationship with a charismatic and manipulative older man, Julie begins to untangle her fraught love for him in making her graduation film, sorting fact from his elaborately constructed fiction.

Neuro-diverse artist Eden Kötting’s remarkable drawings, paintings and collages create an illusory, animated world where the rules change and everything is possible.

The story of two sisters who grew up on the fractious Irish border. When one of them, who has been missing, finally returns home, the intense bond with her sister is re-ignited. Together they unearth their mother's past but uncovered secrets and resentments which have been buried deep, threaten to overwhelm them.

London, 1974. As Britain prepares for electrical blackouts to sweep across the country, trainee nurse Val arrives for her first day at the crumbling East London Royal Infirmary. With most of the patients and staff evacuated to another hospital, Val is forced to work the night shift, finding herself in a dark, near empty building. Within these walls lies a deadly secret, forcing Val to face both her own traumatic past and deepest fears.

An offbeat observation of refugees waiting to be granted asylum on a fictional remote Scottish island. It focuses on Omar, a young Syrian musician who is burdened by the weight of his grandfather’s oud, which he has carried all the way from his homeland.

Kit can’t remember much of his native Vietnam. When he returns to the Land of the Golden Star for the first time in over thirty years, he takes in his local surroundings as any Western tourist would, and the environment is as exotic as the language is incomprehensible. The aim of Kit’s travels – to find a place to scatter his parents’ ashes – thus becomes part of a journey back to his roots and to the discovery of his identity, which external circumstances have rendered ambiguous and complex.

A man goes on a bold and reckless journey of self-liberation through London. After he robs a bank he releases a wilder version of himself, ultimately experiencing what it feels like to be alive.

The film follows 24 hours in the life of father and daughter Leo and Molly, as they weave their way around New York City, until their ordinary but stressful day takes on a hallucinatory and epic quality.

A former boyracer, who married his first love and took a job in one of the fish factories, now has a 17 year-old-son of his own following in his footsteps and can no longer ignore the fact he’s going nowhere. Unable to be physically or emotionally present with his family, he takes his son’s car out for one final joy ride and risks losing the love that surrounds him

In 90s London, British Asian teenager Jas, deals with a daily barrage of racism by hoping he’ll disappear. When he meets a group of older 'Rudeboys', they tell him to respond to racism with violence. But will Jas heed their advice, even if it means destroying his closest friendship?

On an isolated English farm in 1657, Fanny lives a quiet life with her oppressive husband John and their young son. One day their life is rocked with the arrival of young couple Thomas and Rebecca who claim to have been robbed and need a place to stay. But are these strangers really who they say they are?

Femi is a British boy of Nigerian heritage who, after being fostered in rural Lincolnshire, moves to inner-city London to live with his birth mother. Struggling with the unfamiliar culture and values of his new environment, teenage Femi has to figure out which path to adulthood he wants to take.

A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.

Dr. Jean Markham returns to the town she left as a teenager to take over her late father's medical practice. When a school-yard scuffle lands Charlie in her surgery, she invites him to visit the hives in her garden and tell his secrets to the bees, as she once did. The new friendship between the boy and the bee keeper brings his mother Lydia into Jean's world.

London-raised Ronnie returns to his home in India to discover his mother Suleka has died in mysterious circumstances. As he uncovers a series of similar past murders, Ronnie's own inner-darkness come to light.

A haunting ghost story set against the backdrop of a busy winter sales period in a department store, following the life of a cursed dress as it passes from person to person, with devastating consequences.

An epic portrayal of the events surrounding the infamous 1819 Peterloo Massacre, where a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter’s Field in Manchester turned into one of the bloodiest and most notorious episodes in British history. The massacre saw British government forces charge into a crowd of over 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reforms and protest against rising levels of poverty.

A disgraced children's puppeteer returns to his childhood home and is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured him his entire life.

A single mother in London's Camden Town hears music when she meets a handsome stranger with a past. But she's not sure she's ready to open her heart.

Super close mother Lyn and daughter Iona (Dafty One and Dafty Two) are excited for their new life in a new town. Determined to make a success of things after a tricky start, Iona becomes 'best friends' with Keely, Stacey and Chelsea. Used to being Iona's bestie herself, Lyn feels left out. So Lyn also makes friends with Belinda, her neighbour.

A mysterious — and suspicious — run of ill fortune plagues a teenage girl and her mother and sister on their hillside farm in this folk story set in the dark hills of Wales during the industrial revolution.

A man and a woman meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatally mismatched and yet drawn to each other.

Charley Thompson, a teenager living with his single father, gets a summer job working for horse trainer Del Montgomery. Bonding with an aging racehorse named Lean on Pete, Charley is horrified to learn he is bound for slaughter, and so he steals the horse, and the duo embark on an odyssey across the new American frontier.

A traumatized veteran, unafraid of violence, tracks down missing girls for a living. When a job spins out of control, Joe's nightmares overtake him as a conspiracy is uncovered—leading to what may be his death trip or his awakening.

After her father dies, a young woman returns to her Yorkshire village for the first time in 15 years to claim the family farm she believes is hers.

Daphne is a young woman negotiating the tricky business of modern life. Caught in the daily rush of her restaurant job and a nightlife kaleidoscope of new faces, she is witty, funny, the life of the party. Too busy to realise that deep down she is not happy. When she saves the life of a shopkeeper stabbed in a failed robbery, the impenetrable armour she wears to protect herself begins to crack, and Daphne is forced to confront the inevitability of a much-needed change in her life.

Rural England, 1865. Katherine, suffocated by her loveless marriage to a bitter man and restrained by his father's tyranny, unleashes an irresistible force within her, so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

Hong Kong, 1978. South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee is kidnapped by North Korean operatives following orders from dictator Kim Jong-il.

After losing sight in 1983, John Hull began keeping an audio diary, a unique testimony of loss, rebirth and renewal, excavating the interior world of blindness. Following on from the Emmy Award-winning short film of the same name, Notes on Blindness is an ambitious and groundbreaking work, both affecting and innovative.

A surprisingly candid behind-the-scenes account of the career of Ken Loach, one of Britain’s most celebrated and controversial filmmakers, as he prepares to release his final major film I, Daniel Blake.

Saar is an HIV positive gay man living in London, where he found refuge from the religious kibbutz where he grew up in Israel. Ever since he was diagnosed with HIV, Saar has craved his family's love, while they struggle with fears and prejudices.

Iona returns to the island where she was born with her teenage son to seek refuge from a violent crime in Glasgow. Iona's return exposes her tormented son, Bull, to a way of life she rejected when she left the island and sends a shockwave through the family she left behind.

There is just one week until Kate Mercer's 45th wedding anniversary and the planning for the party is going well. But then a letter arrives for her husband. The body of his first love has been discovered, frozen and preserved in the icy glaciers of the Swiss Alps. By the time the party is upon them, five days later, there may not be a marriage left to celebrate.

England, 1969. The fascinating Abbie and the troubled Lydia are great friends. After an unexpected tragedy occurs in the strict girls' school they attend, a mysterious epidemic of fainting breaks out that threatens the mental sanity and beliefs of the tormented people involved, both teachers and students.

The larger than life true story of how a barmaid in a poor Welsh mining village convinces some of her fellow residents to pool their resources to compete in the "sport of kings" with a racehorse they would breed and raise.

Day in and day out, lovers Cynthia and Evelyn enact an elaborate sadomasochistic fantasy as mistress and maid. But as their ritual of domination and submission begins to turn stale, Cynthia yearns for something more conventional, while Evelyn tries to push their taboos even further.

In 1971, a group of friends sail into a nuclear test zone, and their protest captures the world's imagination. Using never before seen archive that brings their extraordinary world to life, How To Change The World is the story of the pioneers who founded Greenpeace and defined the modern green movement.

A young British soldier must find his way back to safety after his unit accidentally abandons him during a riot in the streets of Belfast.

Two first-year students at Oxford University join a secret society and learn that their reputations can be made or destroyed over the course of one evening.

A hyperactive boy and his best friend, a slow-witted youth with an affinity for horses, start collecting scrap metal for a shady dealer.

Jess and Jason meet at the bus station in a seaside town, seeing each other in daylight for the first time. What at first seemed exciting, forbidden, and divinely careless, soon threatens to be a regretful experience for both. This is not how things were meant to be...

Axl wants to find his long-lost father and rediscover his past. Vera just wants to forget hers as she tries to move on from heartbreak. Their stories come together in the melting-pot of 21st century London.

Three hot girls, four guys, and one mega-swanky yacht collide for a serious night of drugs and sexual deviancy. One debaucherous act goes too far though, turning this teen joy ride into a weekend of bloody bedlam.

The egocentric documentary-maker Chris Waitt traces his romantic ineptitude and sexual impotence through awkward interviews with irate ex-girlfriends and stunts involving S&M parlours, Harley Street doctors and Viagra overdoses. The results are often hilarious, sometimes moving and speak directly to the hapless paramour in all of us.

The story of a son's conflicting memories of his dying father.

The story of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis, from his schoolboy days in 1973 to his suicide on the eve of the band's first American tour in 1980.

A pair of rivaling stage magicians are forced to confront their falling out over a guillotine mishap when they compete in a magic competition.

A story about a troubled boy growing up in England, set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends, even like family. Based on experiences of director Shane Meadows.