essay film festival london

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Essay film festival.

location: ICA and Birkbeck Cinema
Date & time: Sat 25 – Fri 31 Mar 2023

The Essay Film Festival returns to the ICA with a selection of ambitious and politically engaged films of past and present. Experimental and political, the essay film calls into question the language of representation and operates at the forefront of cinema’s critical engagement with the world. Highlights of the festival include Med Hondo’s essay on the lives of immigrant workers in France and Assia Djebar’s poetic reworking of archive images shot in the Maghreb.

Venues & Dates

All tickets that do not require ID (full price, disabled, income support) can be printed at home or stored in email
For aged-based concession tickets (under 25, student and pensioner) please bring relevant ID to collect at the front desk before the event.
Both our Cinemas have step free access from The Mall and are accessible by ramp
We have 1 wheelchair allocated space with a seat for a companion
All seats are hard back, have a crushed velvet feel and they do not recline
These are our seat size dimensions: W 42 x D 45 x H 52
Arm rest either side of the seat dimensions: L 27 x W 7 x H 20
We have unassigned seating. If you require a specific seat, please reserve this in advance
Free for visitors where ticket prices are a barrier, please email

All films are ad-free and 18+ unless otherwise stated, and start with a 10 min. curated selection of trailers.

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Essay Film Festival

Starts: 22 March 2019, 18:00 Finishes: 19 April 2019, 19:00 Venue: Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square

No booking required

The annual Essay Film Festival, now in its fifth edition, is a collaboration between Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, celebrating the diversity and creativity of those artists and visionaries who work in that unique zone between documentary and experimental modes of filmmaking.

This year’s programme features a range of bold and innovative works that cross terrain from Argentina to Hong Kong, Iran to Mexico, USA to Lebanon, Nigeria to UK, embracing themes as varied as cancer, childbirth, the Faust legend, urban decay, workers’ strikes, psychoanalysis, colonialism, natural history, and Finnegans Wake!

These films will challenge your perception of the world, your understanding of reality and your place within it; they will move you, surprise you, and inspire you.

How does film connect intimate personal choices to political commitment; the archived or forgotten past to the socially active present; the beauty of cinema to terror, injustice and despair? How does film engage with the real while questioning the established forms of film language? And how can film touch us, emotionally and viscerally, and yet maintain that vital reflective edge?

Directors Mania Akbari & Douglas White, Andrea Bussmann, Dora García, Christopher Harris, Mary Jirmanus Saba, Bo Wang & Pan Lu, Onyeka Igwe and Jessica Sarah Rinland, all utilise the essay film in different ways to explore these searching questions in this year’s Essay Film Festival.

Contact name: Michael Temple