David Farnor | On 02, Apr 2025

BFI Player is a gateway to global film, offering a collection of arthouse and world cinema to subscribers, alongside its pay-per-view rental releases and free archive titles and silent movie shorts.

From the exclusive streaming release of Silent Roar to a season looking back at Wojciech Jerzy Has and Bong Joon Ho, here’s what’s coming to BFI Player’s subscription service in April 2025:

MY FAVOURITE CAKE (Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, 2024) – 1st April

Life begins at 70 for Mahin, who decides to shake her life up in this charming, quietly subversive tale from Iran.

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER (Sara Colangelo, 2018) – 1st April

Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a career-best performance as a kindergarten teacher who finds herself in an ethical quagmire after discovering the poetic talents of a precocious student.

SCUM (Alan Clarke , 1970) – 1st April

Director Alan Clarke examines the grim reality of borstal life in this searing remake of his previously banned television play.

GHOST IN THE SHELL (Mamoru Oshii, 1995) – 3rd April

Mamoru Oshii’s beautifully animated and disturbingly prophetic anime classic about the hunt for a supreme hacker in a transhumanist dystopia.

I, DANIEL BLAKE (Ken Loach, 2016) – 3rd April

Ken Loach’s powerful, Palme d’Or-winning invective against welfare injustice captured the mood of modern Britain and became his biggest box office success.

JEUNE & JOLIE (François Ozon, 2013) – 3rd April

French cinema’s modern master of meta-melodrama and bourgeois subversion presents this sly and seductive account of teenage girl’s dalliance with high-class prostitution.

SILENT ROAR (Johnny Barrington, 2023) – 7th April

On the Isle of Lewis, Dondo, a passionate surfer, and his childhood sweetheart Sas have dreams of escaping the past and the present. Jonny Barrington’s charming, windswept comedy has echoes of Bill Forsyth and premiered as the Edinburgh International Film Festival opening film in August 2023.

THE DOLL (Wojciech Jerzy Has, 1968) – 10th April

Has’ first colour feature was this lavish adaptation of Bołeslaw Prus’s novel. Former brewery clerk Stanisław Wokulski returns to Warsaw in late 1870s, after a prolonged exile in Siberia.

HOW TO BE LOVED (Wojciech Jerzy Has, 1962) – 10th April

An actress struggles to reconcile the choices of her past as she travels from Warsaw to Paris in this distinct depiction of the German Occupation from a female perspective, from director Wojciech Jerzy Has.

THE HOURGLASS SANATORIUM (Wojciech Jerzy Has, 1973) – 10th April

Has’ second best-known film is this hallucinatory masterpiece, which filters Bruno Schulz’s elliptical novella through the writer-director’s own familiar obsessions.

THE NOOSE (Wojciech Jerzy Has, 1958) – 10th April

One of the most powerful Polish feature debuts of the 1950s is staged in a baroque symbol-strewn style that Has would quickly make his own.

THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (Wojciech Jerzy Has, 1964) – 10th April

During the Napoleonic wars, a soldier discovers a strange manuscript that reveals endless stories-within-stories. Wojciech Has’ opus is a major cult film of the 60s, revered by Luis Buñuel, David Lynch and Jerry Garcia.

BARKING DOGS NEVER BITE (Bong Joon Ho, 2000) – 14th April

In a bustling apartment building, out-of-work college professor Ko Yun-ju grows increasingly irritated by the incessant barking of dogs so hatches a plan to put an end to their noisy reign.

MEMORIES OF MURDER (Bong Joon Ho, 2003) – 14th April

A pair of detectives clash trying to solve the brutal murder of two women in Bong Joon-ho’s masterful blend of true crime and dark social satire.

THE BALCONETTES (Noémie Merlant and Céline Sciamma, 2024) – 17th April

Co-written with Céline Sciamma, Noémie Merlant’s bright and bold film follows three friends as they try to dispose of the body of an abuser they’ve accidentally killed.

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