Two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished.

When an American air raid kills their mother in the final days of World War II, 14 year-old Seita and his 4 year-old sister Setsuko are left to fend for themselves in the devastated Japanese countryside. After falling out with their only living relative, Seita does his best to provide for himself and his sister by stealing food and making a home in an abandoned bomb shelter. But with food running short, the siblings can only cling to fleeting moments of happiness in their harsh reality. 

“One of the most startling and moving animated films ever”– The New York Times 

“A grim story of love, sacrifice and survival” – The Observer 

“A movie everyone should see” – Screen Rant 

“An emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation” – Roger Ebert 

Spain in the early 1970s was a country in transition, with increasing economic prosperity and the expectations of a growing middle class put in direct conflict with the dying dictatorship regime of Franco, where state surveillance, media censorship and social control was still the norm. Inspired by mystery-horror anthology series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, this unique period in history is depicted with terrifying clarity and dark humour in these two infamous television films: La cabina and El televisor.

In Antonio Mercero’s La cabina, a group of officials install a telephone box outside a block of flats. After a man enters to make a phone call, he finds himself unable to leave, attracting the attention of fascinated locals as he grows increasingly desperate to escape. A sensation upon release and a cultural touchstone in Spain to this day, La cabina also developed a huge cult following in the UK after regular screenings on late-night TV.

In El televisor, a man living a dreary suburban life has a simple dream: to possess his own television. When he finally gets his wish, the dream soon becomes a dangerous, all-consuming obsession. Originally a special episode of the hugely popular series Tales to Keep You Awake, written and directed by Narcisco Ibanez Serrandor (Who Can Kill A Child), El televisor’s escalating dread and shocking conclusion still retains its power to shock over 50 years later.

Released on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK by Transmission on 22nd July, this double bill will be released into UK cinemas on June 19th to coincide with Bleak Week, and will receive its premiere screening at the Prince Charles Cinema with an intro from Reece Shearsmith (Inside No 9, The League of Gentlemen). 

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami’s _Taste of Cherry_ is an emotionally complex meditation on life and death. Middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives through the hilly outskirts of Tehran—searching for someone to rescue or bury him.

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

UK Theatrical Premiere of new 4K Restoration, courtesy of Arrow Films

This disturbing Japanese thriller follows Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a widower who decides to start dating again. Aided by a film-producer friend (Miyuki Matsuda), Aoyama uses auditions for a fake production to function as a dating service. When Aoyama becomes intrigued by the withdrawn, gorgeous Asami (Eihi Shiina), they begin a relationship. However, he begins to realise that Asami isn't as reserved as she appears to be, leading to gradually increased tension and a harrowing climax.

After the daughter of Wang Wei is kidnapped by a criminal network and he receives no help from the corrupt police, Wei sets out on a rampage to find her himself. His only ally is Navin – a relentless journalist whose wife has mysteriously disappeared. Fueled by a furious vengeance, the unlikely duo ruthlessly fights against the kidnappers in this explosive martial arts showdown.

ALL NIGHTER : FAQs, HOUSE RULES & TIPS

Bela Tarr's seven-hour episodic film. Yes, seven hour.

Presented over three parts with 20-minute breaks between, during Bleak Week, in partnership with American Cinematheque.

The bar will close, and alcohol sales will end at midnight on 20th June 2026. 

Inhabitants of a small village in Hungary deal with the effects of the fall of Communism. The town's source of revenue, a factory, has closed, and the locals await a cash payment offered in the wake of the shuttering. A villager thought to be dead, returns and, unbeknownst to the locals, is a police informant. In a scheme, he persuades the villagers to form a commune with him.

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NO ADMISSIONS TO THE CINEMA AFTER MIDNIGHT

NO ALCOHOL PURCHASED FROM OUTSIDE IS PERMITTED IN THE BUILDING!

AGE RESTRICTIONS : For the All Night Marathon, due to the event running through the night, all attendees must be 16+.

ALL NIGHTER : FAQs, HOUSE RULES & TIPS

The bar will close, and alcohol sales will end at midnight on 20th June 2026.

Our Mystery Movie Marathon is getting the Bleak Week treatment!

Despair is the name of the game with this one, so if you're not prepared for a melancholic night at the movies then we suggest picking something else in our programme. 

We'll be giving you 5 Mystery Films back-to-back, with No Clues or Hints! There are no links between these films, just 5 totally random picks.

Tickets are only £22 Non-Members / £20 Members! That's an incredible deal for 5 films; so why not take a chance and let a little mystery into your life!?!

MYSTERY MOVIE line-up

• MYSTERY MOVIE 1
• MYSTERY MOVIE 2
• MYSTERY MOVIE 3
• MYSTERY MOVIE 4
• MYSTERY MOVIE 5

We aim to have the marathons over by 9am. 

BLEAK WEEK : CINEMA OF DESPAIR is co-presented by the American Cinematheque.

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NO ADMISSIONS TO THE CINEMA AFTER MIDNIGHT!

NO ALCOHOL PURCHASED FROM OUTSIDE IS PERMITTED IN THE BUILDING!

AGE RESTRICTIONS: This event is strictly 18+

Twenty years after their last holiday at a fading vacation resort, Sophie reflects on the rare time spent with her loving and idealistic father Calum. At 11-years-old, as the world of adolescence creeps into Sophie's view, Calum struggles under the weight of life outside of fatherhood. Sophie's recollections become a powerful and heartrending portrait of their relationship, as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn't.

"Gotta light?"

Part 8 of Twin Peaks' third season, "The Return," focuses on the origins of evil and the Black Lodge, exploring the concept of cyclical evil through a surreal sequence set in 1945 after the first atomic bomb test.

BLEAK WEEK : CINEMA OF DESPAIR is co-presented by the American Cinematheque.

Dorothy discovers she is back in the land of Oz, and finds the yellow brick road is now a pile of rubble, and the Emerald City is in ruins. Discovering that the magical land is now under the control of an evil empire, she sets off to rescue the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion with the help of her new friends.

In Vietnam in 1970, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) takes a perilous and increasingly hallucinatory journey upriver to find and terminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-promising officer who has reportedly gone completely mad. In the company of a Navy patrol boat filled with street-smart kids, a surfing-obsessed Air Cavalry officer (Robert Duvall), and a crazed freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), Willard travels further and further into the heart of darkness.

A woman's lover and her ex-boyfriend take justice into their own hands after she becomes the victim of a rapist. Because some acts can't be undone. Because man is an animal. Because the desire for vengeance is a natural impulse. Because most crimes remain unpunished.

The activities of rampaging, indiscriminate serial killer Ben are recorded by a willingly complicit documentary team, who eventually become his accomplices and active participants. Ben provides casual commentary on the nature of his work and arbitrary musings on topics of interest to him, such as music or the conditions of low-income housing, and even goes so far as to introduce the documentary crew to his family. But their reckless indulgences soon get the better of them.

PAPER TRAIL (2026) (14mins) - London Premiere
A life, seen through paper.

The new animated film from Don Hertzfeld, Paper Trail, has won the Special Jury Award for Creative Vision from the Sundance Film Festival. It has also won Best Animated Short Film and the Audience Award from SXSW. The film will celebrate its London Premiere as part of this special shorts programme curated by Director Don Hertzfeld. Presented as part of Bleak Week 2026. 

THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (2015) (17mins)
A little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future.

Don Hertzfeldt is a two-time Academy Award nominee whose animated films include It's Such a Beautiful Day, the World of Tomorrow series, and Rejected. His work has played around the world, receiving hundreds of awards, and in 2014 made a special guest appearance on The Simpsons. Eight of his films have screened in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, where he is the only filmmaker to have won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Film twice.

After animating for over twenty years using traditional tools (pencil, paper, and 35mm cameras), World of Tomorrow was Hertzfeldt's first digital production.

Indiewire called the first episode of World of Tomorrow "one of the best films of 2015," while The Dissolve named it "one of the finest achievements in sci-fi in recent memory." The A.V. Club described the film as "visionary" and "possibly the best film of 2015." Rolling Stone ranked World of Tomorrow #10 on its list of the "Greatest Animated Movies Ever."

IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY (2012) (62mins)
Bill struggles to put together his shattered psyche.

Originally released as three short films over the course of six years, the picture was captured entirely in-camera on a 35mm rostrum animation stand. Built in the 1940s and used by Hertzfeldt on all of his animated films since 1999, it was one of the last surviving cameras of its kind still operating in the world, indispensable in creating the story's unique images and visual effects. IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY painstakingly blended traditional hand-drawn animation and experimental optical effects with new digital hybrids, printed out one frame at a time, and placed under the camera. The film's signature "split screen" effects were achieved by photographing the animation through small holes that were positioned just beneath the camera lens. One area of the film frame would be individually photographed, the film was then rewound, another section of the frame would be exposed through a different hole, and the process repeated until all elements of a scene were composited together. Towards the end of production, the old camera's motor began to fail and could no longer advance the film properly, riddling the final reels with unintentional light leaks.

In 2012, the three completed short films about a man named Bill were seamlessly combined to create a new feature film. Upon its original release, IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY was named by many critics as one of the best films of the year. The L.A. Film Critics Association named it runner-up for “Best Animated Film.”In 2014, Time Out New York ranked IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY #16 on its list of the “100 Best Animated Movies Ever Made.”In 2016, The Film Stage's critics ranked the film #1 on their list of “The 50 Best Animated Films of the 21st Century Thus Far.”In 2019, The Wrap named IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY the #1 “Best Animated Film of the 2010s.”The same year, Vulture's film critics ranked it #12 on their overall list of the “Best Movies of the Decade.”In 2021, IGN's Cinefix placed it #1 on their “Top 10 Animated Films of All Time” list.

IT'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY is currently ranked #101 on Letterboxd’s official list of the Top 500 highest-rated narrative feature films of all time.

This remarkable television production, imagining how a nuclear war might unfold, remains one of the most shocking and devastating films ever to air in the UK. Combining documentary-style realism and kitchen-sink drama, Threads observes the looming threat of nuclear war from the perspective of an average working-class family in Sheffield, before shifting to the detailed depiction of a society in the aftermath of a nuclear attack. It’s 40 years since the film was originally broadcast and it has lost none of its power to shock.

BLEAK WEEK : CINEMA OF DESPAIR is co-presented by the American Cinematheque.

After the French New Wave, the sexual revolution, and May '68 came The Mother and the Whore, the legendary, autobiographical magnum opus by Jean Eustache that captured a disillusioned generation navigating the post-idealism 1970s within the microcosm of a ménage à trois. The aimless, clueless, Parisian pseudo-intellectual Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) lives with his tempestuous older girlfriend, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), and begins a dalliance with the younger, sexually liberated Veronika (Françoise Lebrun, Eustache's own former lover), leading to a volatile open relationship marked by everyday emotional violence and subtle but catastrophic shifts in power dynamics. Transmitting his own sex life to the screen with a startling immediacy, Eustache achieves an intimacy so deep it cuts.

For kids around the world, music is often the only salvation when the pain and anxiety of teenage life becomes too much to bear. Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara) is in the 8th grade and he worships Lily Chou-Chou, a Bjork-like chanteuse whose epic music is lush and transcendent. Yuichi only lives for Lily Chou-Chou's big Tokyo concert, where the lies and violence can be washed away by the presence of his goddess and her powerful music. But fate has yet another obstacle in store for Lily's devoted fan.

The first entry of writer-director Mark Jenkin's Cornish Trilogy follows Martin, a fisherman struggling to survive amid tourism, gentrification and family conflict. When his brother turns their fishing boat into a tourist attraction, tensions with locals and visitors escalate. Shot on striking 16mm monochrome, the film critiques displacement and precarity in a changing coastal community.

A stark portrayal of life among a group of heroin addicts who hang out in Needle Park in New York City. Played against this setting is a low-key love story between Bobby, a young addict and small-time hustler, and Helen, a homeless girl who finds in her relationship with Bobby the stability she craves.

Presented with a special Post-Film Q&A with Director Matthew Holness, as part of BLEAK WEEK 2026.

Starring Sean Harris (Mission: Impossible, Southcliffe) and Alun Armstrong (Frontier, Get Carter), ‘Possum’ is a distinctive psychological thriller which pays homage to the British horror films of the 70s. The film’s abstract exploration of a man’s isolation and abandonment is accompanied by a compelling soundtrack from the legendary electronic BBC music studio The Radiophonic Workshop.

The story follows disgraced children’s puppeteer Philip (Sean Harris), returning to his childhood home of Fallmarsh, Norfolk, intent on destroying Possum, a hideous puppet he keeps hidden inside a brown leather bag. When his attempts fail, Philip is forced to confront his sinister stepfather Maurice (Alun Armstrong) in an effort to escape the dark horrors of his past.

Elaine May crafted a gangster film like no other in the nocturnal odyssey Mikey and Nicky, capitalising on the chemistry between frequent collaborators John Cassavetes and Peter Falk by casting them together as small-time mobsters whose lifelong relationship has turned sour. Set over the course of one night, this restless drama finds Nicky (Cassavetes) holed up in a hotel after the boss he stole money from puts a hit out on him. Terrified, he calls on Mikey (Falk), the one person he thinks can save him. Scripted to match the live-wire energy of its stars—alongside supporting players Ned Beatty, Joyce Van Patten, and Carol Grace—and inspired by real-life characters from May's own childhood, this unbridled portrait of male friendship turned tragic is an unsung masterpiece of American cinema.

Presented with Post-Film Online Q&A with Director Steve De Jarnatt, as part of BLEAK WEEK 2026.

After 30 years of searching, Harry has finally met the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, before they even have a chance to go on their first date, Harry intercepts some chilling news: WWIII has begun and nuclear missiles will destroy Los Angeles in less than an hour!

Presented with intro from producer Jeremy Thomas (schedule permitting).

When a young American woman (Theresa Russell) ends up in a Vienna hospital after a suicide attempt, a local police inspector (Harvey Keitel) seeks answers from her lover, an American psychoanalyst (Art Garfunkel), and begins to piece together the story of their stormy affair.

“A sick film made by sick people for sick people". Thus was Nicolas Roeg’s Bad Timing described upon its original release in 1980 by UK distributor the Rank Organisation, whose executives were so shocked that they removed the company’s logo from the film’s opening credits. Nearly a decade after appearing in Mike Nichols’ Carnal Knowledge (1971) – screened by Animus Magazine at the PCC in 2024 – singer-songwriter Art Garfunkel returned in front of the camera for another nightmarish deconstruction of toxic relationship dynamics. Nicolas Roeg’s jagged, non-linear storytelling captures the dizzying highs and crushing lows of an obsessive romance already blown to pieces at the start of the film. As we gather the shards through heartbreaking flashbacks, it is impossible not to cut ourselves on the sharp edges of a love that may have been doomed from the start. 

Legendary film producer Jeremy Thomas (Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast among others) will introduce this 35mm screening of Bad Timing, his first of three collaborations with Nicolas Roeg.

Set in 1973 on a remote Cornish island, Enys Men follows a solitary wildlife volunteer recording daily observations of a rare flower. As unsettling changes emerge, isolation and repetition give way to hallucinatory visions, blurring reality and nightmare. Mark Jenkin's near-silent folk horror evokes 1970s British cinema through the abstract, unsettling descent of its lone protagonist.

A couple travels to Northern Europe to visit a rural hometown's fabled Swedish mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.

Oilman is a happily married man whose life changes when he gets paralysed. He observes that his wife is lonely and tells her to have an affair. Will she agree to this strange demand?

Curated by filmmaker Luna Carmoon, as part of BLEAK WEEK : CINEMA OF DESPAIR is co-presented by the American Cinematheque.

Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) arrives on the small Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the report of a missing child. A conservative Christian, the policeman observes the residents' frivolous sexual displays and strange pagan rituals, particularly the temptations of Willow (Britt Ekland), daughter of the island magistrate, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). The more Sergeant Howie learns about the islanders' strange practices, the closer he gets to tracking down the missing child.

Curated by filmmaker Luna Carmoon as part of Bleak Week 2026. We aim to have Luna introduce the film (subject to schedule permitting).

Directed by Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider) this story of a blue-collar family coming apart features an astonishing performance from Linda Manz (Days of Heaven).

Cebe (Linda Manz, Days of Heaven) is a teenage rebel obsessed with Elvis and the Sex Pistols. Her trucker father, Don (Dennis Hopper, Easy Rider) is in prison after drunkenly smashing his rig into a school bus, and her mother, Kathy (Sharon Farrell, It’s Alive) is a junkie waitress who takes refuge in the arms of other men, including Don’s best friend, Charlie (Don Gordon, Bullitt). With Don’s release, the family struggles to reconnect and the trauma of the past looms large as dark secrets slowly begin to emerge.

Despite only taking over directing duties eight days into the shoot Out of the Blue arguably represents Dennis Hopper’s strongest film as a director and features an astonishing performance by Manz.

Stanley Kubrick's daring last film is many things. It is a compelling psychosexual journey. A haunting dreamscape. A riveting tale of suspense. A major milestone in the careers of stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. And "a worthy final chapter to a great director's career" (Roger Ebert).

Cruise plays Dr William Hartford, who plunges into an erotic foray that threatens his marriage - and may even ensnare him in a lurid murder mystery - after his wife's (Kidman) admission of sexual longings. As the story sweeps from doubt and fear to self-discovery and reconciliation, Kubrick orchestrates it with masterful flourishes. Graceful tracking shots, controlled pacing, rich colours, startling images: bravura traits that make Kubrick a filmmaker for the ages are here to keep everyone's eyes wide shut.

For Bleak Weak, Funeral Parade is proud to present In a Year of 13 Moons, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s devastating portrait of a heartbroken trans woman’s inner turmoil.

Elvira Weishaupt (Volker Spengler) is a trans woman and former slaughterhouse worker living unhappily in Frankfurt. According to her best friend Rote (Ingrid Caven), Elvira only decided to undergo gender-affirming surgery in Casablanca in order to appease a man, Anton (Gottfried John), who just abandoned her anyway. Now Elvira is trying to trace the events of her life in order mend her fractured psyche – but is it too late for her? 

Bleak even for Fassbinder, In a Year of 13 Moons is not for the faint of heart. However, if you can stomach its visceral imagery and extreme pessimism, you will be rewarded with one of the most powerful and emotionally raw films of the 1970s.

With intro from film curator Sarah Cleary.

This widely acclaimed film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a stunning, senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko, in one of the screen’s most searing depictions of anguish since Renée Falconetti’s Joan of Arc) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camerawork and expressionistic sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

Shot on 16mm, Cornish auteur Mark Jenkin's film sees him return with a political folktale of two fishermen trapped in a time-loop. Thirty years after the Rose of Nevada fishing boat and its crew vanished without a trace, the vessel inexplicably returns to its old harbour in a small Cornish village, unchanged by time. Drawn by the promise of steady work and escape from hardship, two young men join its new crew: Nick, a devoted father struggling to provide for his family, and Liam, a drifting outsider living on the margins. When the Rose docks once more, the men realise they have slipped back in time. Trapped in the past, they are mistaken for the original crew and burdened with the expectations, fears and unresolved grief of a community desperate for answers, forcing them to confront their identity and fate, and the cost of survival.

He doesn't know it, but everything in Truman Burbank's (Jim Carrey) life is part of a massive TV set. Executive producer Christof (Ed Harris) orchestrates "The Truman Show," a live broadcast of Truman's every move captured by hidden cameras. As Truman gradually discovers the truth, he must decide whether to act on it.

ON SALE 8th JUNE

Crude, grotesque, pint-sized aliens known as the Garbage Pail Kids® help a young boy (Mackenzie Astin)  exact revenge on his bullies and win the girl of his dreams, a fashion designer (Katie Barberi).

Presented with a special 15th Anniversary Post-Film Q&A with Director Ben Wheatley, as part of BLEAK WEEK 2026.

Nearly a year after a botched job, a British soldier turn hitman takes a new assignment with the promise of a big payoff for three killings. What starts off as an easy task soon unravels, sending the killer into the heart of darkness.

Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?

This movie portrays the drug scene in Berlin in the 70s, following tape recordings of Christiane F. 14 years old Christiane lives with her mother and little sister in a typical multi-storey apartment building in Berlin. She's fascinated by the 'Sound', a new disco with most modern equipment. Although she's legally too young, she asks a friend to take her. There she meets Detlef, who's in a clique where everybody's on drugs. Step by step she gets drawn deeper into the scene.

Presented with a Post-Film Q&A with Director Peter Strickland, as part of BLEAK WEEK 2026.

In the beautiful, otherworldly Carpathian Mountains a woman is traveling with a small boy in a horse and cart, looking to punish those who once abused her. For years, Katalin has been keeping a terrible secret. Hitchhiking with two men, she was brutally raped in the woods. Although she has kept silent about what happened, she has not forgotten, and her son Órban serves as a living reminder.