Our British Film Festival 2026 favourites (part one)

Posted on 13 November, 2026

The British Film Festival – always varied, always stylish, and always hugely entertaining – is back with a line-up of more than 30 films.

Here are some of our favourites so far. Some of these are screening only three times, so book your tickets now!

Flavia

Flavia is an immensely charming story set a few years after World War II, in the shadow of which a brilliant eleven-year-old’s family remains.

Flavia (Molly Belle Wright) has inherited her genius and a love of science and experimentation from her mother.  When not otherwise engaged in managing the mean tricks her sisters play on her or meeting her father’s (Martin Freeman) rules about timeliness, she spends her days in uncovering the mysteries of chemistry.  Leaving aside the unanswered question of where Flavia’s mother has gone and why, life is all that a young girl with an enquiring mind could hope for — until a mysterious visitor arrives in the dead of night and his murdered body turns up soon afterward, tearing Flavia’s family apart.

It falls to Flavia, with the help of the family’s faithful retainer Dogger (Karan Gill) and an unwilling Inspector Hewitt (Toby Jones), to find the truth.

Molly Belle Wright is outstanding as the loyal, immensely brave, polite Flavia, who, despite fears and moments of downheartedness, wields her enviable faculties to save those she loves.

Suitable for all ages — and especially for the young who aspire to use their gifts — Flavia is delightful: beautifully shot and directed, with Toby Jones, Martin Freeman, and Annette Badland in roles suiting their prodigious talents and Molly Belle Wright playing the part of the title character with beguiling charm.

The Three Urns

The Three Urns is a gentle exploration of enduring love and the extent to which we might go to honour the wishes of those whose lives have ended.  In it, Ciarán Hinds plays The Man, who travels to Ireland to fulfil his wife’s wishes.  It’s a journey that should be straightforward.  Of course, it’s anything but!

Unbeknownst to him, a Woman in Black (Olga Kurylenko) is hard on The Man’s heels,  desperate to find him.

A calmly delightful film crammed with extraordinary characters, kindness, and quirkiness, The Three Urns is a reflective and unusual tale about the power of the little things in life to soften and make bearable the bigger ones.

Ciarán Hinds, who also played the title role in The Man in the Hat (a French film with many similarities to The Three Urns-2014616914 ), is compelling as The Man. Though Hinds reveals how The Man dwells in the world through his actions on behalf of others, he also manages to portray his inner journey with little dialogue, relying on acting, even just on looks.

The Three Urns offers many unexpected moments and a quietly satisfying resolution of the mystery underlying the chase.

Mother’s Pride

When you hear that Martin Clunes is starring in a film, you know it’s going to be worth seeing – and  Mother’s Pride doesn’t disappoint.

Taciturn Mick Harley (Clunes) owns a failing pub.  With the aid of his son Jake (James Buckley), he struggles to keep it afloat in the face of competition from corporate mogul Edward Pritchard (Luke Treadaway).

When Mick’s other son, Cal (Jonno Davies), unexpectedly returns home after years away, his return arouses his father’s bitter feelings at Cal’s abandonment of the business. And for having left the family in its time of need, Jake too offers his brother little welcome.  Caught in the middle of the family acrimony is Jake’s young daughter, Romy (Lana Moorcroft).

To top his difficulties off, Cal’s former flame, Abi (Gabriella Wilde), disappoints his hopes for rekindling his relationship with her, as she has taken up with Pritchard.  It’s a love triangle with explosive potential.

Mother’s Pride is a bittersweet journey exploring loss, misunderstanding, unkind assumptions, regret, and grief as well as the power of finding courage, forgiveness, abiding love, healing, and community.  Elements of the film are predictable, but that doesn’t detract from the fun that it offers.

Sunny Dancer

Though Ivy (Bella Ramsey) has been in remission from cancer for ten months, she has spent most of her teenage years in treatment.  It has left her emotionally isolated from her friends.  Their lives have been so different from hers that she can no longer dwell in their worlds; they can’t even imagine hers.

Understanding her better than she knows, her genial dad, Bob (James Norton), and mortifying mum, Karen (Jessica Gunning), sign Ivy up to a camp for teenagers who have had cancer or are in remission.

Initially furious and refusing to go, Ivy eventually agrees, given her parents’ assurances that she can leave at any time she wishes to.

What transpires at the camp transforms Ivy and the small group she becomes part of.  All of them are dealing both with the potential for losing their lives to cancer and with the complex personal and moral challenges of adolescence.  But Sunny Dancer isn’t morbid.  Whilst it doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable truths, the film shows teens turning their existential challenges into sources of wisdom, uses humour to good effect, and ultimately affirms the transcendent power of connection.

Ramsey is an absolute standout as Ivy, although it’s fair to say that every actor in this film is excellent.

Sunny Dancer is not just for teenagers living with cancer, but for all teenagers.  It’s also for any adults whose lives could come to include a teenager with cancer.

Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day

In 1910 Britain, amateur astronomer Katherine Hilbery (Haley Bennett) tries to unlock the secrets of celestial bodies and space, developing a theorem that she hopes will gain her admission to Cambridge University.

To that ambition, Katherine meets hearty opposition by her father, Mr Hilbery (Timothy Spall), who, along with his wife, Bess (Jennifer Saunders), wishes to see Katherine safely married to Katherine’s lifelong friend, William Rodney (Jack Whitehall).  Katherine’s ambition also faces the unyielding university rules forbidding women’s admission to degree studies.

As well, despite her proclaimed aversion to love and marriage, when Katherine meets Ralph Denham (Elyas M’Barek), he seems to set emotional cats amongst Katherine’s pigeons.  The scene is set for a tussle or two.

Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day explores one woman’s fight for sexual equality of educational opportunity against the backdrop of the growing suffragette movement of the early 20th century and the staid British middle class, soon to be shaken to its roots by World War I.

There is much to admire about the film: excellent performances by every member of the cast; lavish costumes; magnificent Victorian settings.  It is let down to an extent, though, by the protagonist’s supposed passion, which smacks rather of self-absorption and a sense of entitlement that results in selfishness and inconsiderateness.  It would have been more compelling and believable had the character of Katherine been understated, calm, and determined rather than petulant and feverish.

Nevertheless, the film does offer an intimate look at the world of middle-class Britain in the 1910s, and at women’s changing place within it in the lead-up to the unimaginable events of World War I.

Everybody to Kenmure Street

Everybody to Kenmure Street, directed by Felipe Bustos Sierra, is a 2026 documentary telling the story of what happened following an unlawful (British) Home Office dawn raid in Scotland, in 2021, on a home in Glasgow’s Pollokshields neighbourhood.

Home Office immigration officials entered the home of two men and forcibly bundled them into a van to be taken away, but their efforts were impeded when a man (whose role Emma Thompson stepped into in a dramatic reconstruction of scenes featuring him) risked life and limb to delay the van’s departure by lying beneath it, his head against one of the wheels.

Before long, the people of Kenmure Street –where the men lived– and nearby streets began arriving to protest at the immigration officials’ provocative targeting of the men. Hundreds encircled the van, but as more and more people joined the non-violent protest calling for the release of the two men, the police presence increased and tensions escalated.

Though incorporating dramatised scenes to present a couple of points of view, the film otherwise used archival reportage, a few interviews, and surprisingly high-quality footage from a couple of dozen participants’ mobile-phone cameras.

A well-constructed documentary of peaceful social protest, Everybody to Kenmure Street highlights the transformative potential of community action.

Feature image: Flavia.