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 

BLEAK WEEK - TWO BOXES: LA CABINA and EL TELEVISOR Double Feature w/ Reece Shearsmith intro

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). 

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Animus Magazine presents “Bad Timing” w/ Jeremy Thomas intro (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.

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.

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.

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.