A major UK-wide season celebrating cinema’s biggest emotions and heightened dramatics from around the world!
The season will be presented by BFI Southbank and at venues across the UK in partnership with the BFI Film Audience Network from October – December 2025. Highlights include:
❉ Park Circus rerelease of Douglas Sirk’s ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955), in cinemas UK-wide on 24 October
❉ UK-wide screenings and events presented in partnership with the BFI Film Audience Network
❉ Major season at BFI Southbank of screenings and contextual events including a keynote introduction with Laura Mulvey
❉ The biggest emotions on the UK’s biggest screen. Melodrama’s most expressionistic, sumptuous films at BFI IMAX.
❉ A curated collection of films to stream on demand on BFI Player
“I’m so excited to share and discuss with audiences how these films make us feel today, and how these bold stories of melodrama’s heroines have driven some of world cinema’s timeless masterpieces. Don’t forget to pack your tissues.” – Ruby McGuigan, BFI Programme Development Manager and TOO MUCH BFI Southbank season curator
BFI will play host to a major season from October – December 2025, ‘TOO MUCH – MELODRAMA ON FILM’ celebrating the vivid visual language, heightened dramatics and emotional pathos at the heart of film melodrama, inviting film audiences to follow their emotions. United by their emotion driven plots, vivid visual language and self-conscious audience manipulation, these films are designed to make you break down in tears, cause a scene, fall in love, feel something. Presented by the BFI at BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX and by the BFI Film Audience Network (BFI FAN) using funds from the National Lottery at cinemas and venues across the UK, TOO MUCH will take place from October-December 2025 via programmes of special events, talks and screenings. TOO MUCH will also be available UK-wide online via a curated collection of films available to stream on demand on BFI Player.
The season will explore the world of melodrama through the ages, with films ranging from cult classics to lesser-known international gems. Melodrama is steeped in contradiction. Swooningly romantic, people fall in love at first sight, sacrifice their lives in acts of devotion, find one another across space and time. Simultaneously they are grounded in the trappings of reality: rigid class boundaries, threat of punishment, and fear of scandal loom at every corner. The characters in these films are culturally diverse, from different generations and social backgrounds, but endlessly human and relatable. Their stories shed light on injustice and oppression.
Whilst expansive in its reach and impact across all genres of cinema, melodrama has long been associated with its rare embrace of women’s inner lives and concerns. This expansive drama is employed to express longing, rage and desire in characters facing motherhood, infidelity, exploitation and scandal. The legacy of early ‘women’s pictures’, created for female audiences with their favourite female stars, echoes across generations and around the world. As in life, these women do not always triumph. Imperfectly feminist yet endlessly empathetic, their sensationalist struggles carry searing social commentary beneath the glossy veneer of attention-grabbing colours, lurid plotlines and sentiment.
Accessible but ripe for dissection and reappraisal, while melodrama may lack the recognition of a genre like horror or action, TOO MUCH aims to illuminate melodrama as a key cinematic form, banish the stigma attached to the term, and spotlight how it has created masterpieces of world cinema.
From the early days of cinema and the evolution of the ‘women’s pictures’ of the 1930s and female film stars such as Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and Claudette Colbert, cult classics and underseen gems, through to work from some of contemporary cinema’s biggest names such as Todd Haynes FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002), Pedro Almodóvar VOLVER (2006), Lars von Trier BREAKING THE WAVES (1996) as well as masterpieces of world cinema. The season will feature screenings of 7TH HEAVEN (1927, Frank Borzage), IMITATION OF LIFE (1934, John M. Stahl), STELLA DALLAS (1937, King Vidor), NOW VOYAGER (1942, Irving Rapper) BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945, David Lean), THE LIFE OF OHARU (1952, Kenji Mizoguchi) ÉL (1953, Luis Buñuel), JOHNNY GUITAR (1954, Nicholas Ray), LOLA MONTES (1955, Max Ophüls), STELLA (1955, Michael Cacoyannis) THE CLOUD-CAPPED STAR (1960, Ritwik Ghatak) THE ARCH (1968, T’ang Tsu Shuen), THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (1972, Rainer Werner Fassbinder), THE SILENCES OF THE PALACE (1994, Moufida Tatli) and many more.
A centrepiece of TOO MUCH will be Douglas Sirk’s colourful, high-octane love story ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955) which will return to cinemas UK-wide on 24 October, courtesy of Park Circus. Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson entrance as the star-crossed lovers at the centre of Sirk’s transgressive, saturated portrait of 1950s Eisenhower-era Americana, class friction and moral values.
Ruby McGuigan, BFI Programme Development Manager and TOO MUCH BFI Southbank season curator, said:
“A story’s emotional heart is what brings us back to it time and time again and allows it to translate across generations and cultures. Melodrama – an embrace of emotion above all – is the lifeblood of great cinema, across decades and geographic borders.
Melodrama has always revelled in the squashing of emotions too volatile for everyday life, and the inevitable explosion under pressure. As a young woman discovering these films, I felt understood. Perhaps I wasn’t insane, or ‘too much’. Perhaps life is just overwhelming sometimes. In recent years we’ve finally seeing women’s emotional worlds take centre stage in literature, music and television – there’s a legacy of this in cinema which I believe is often overlooked.
I’m so excited to share and discuss with audiences how these films make us feel today, and how these bold stories of melodrama’s heroines have driven some of world cinema’s timeless masterpieces. Don’t forget to pack your tissues.”
“A story’s emotional heart is what brings us back to it time and time again and allows it to translate across generations and cultures. Melodrama – an embrace of emotion above all – is the lifeblood of great cinema, across decades and geographic borders.
Melodrama has always revelled in the squashing of emotions too volatile for everyday life, and the inevitable explosion under pressure. As a young woman discovering these films, I felt understood. Perhaps I wasn’t insane, or ‘too much’. Perhaps life is just overwhelming sometimes. In recent years we’ve finally seeing women’s emotional worlds take centre stage in literature, music and television – there’s a legacy of this in cinema which I believe is often overlooked.
I’m so excited to share and discuss with audiences how these films make us feel today, and how these bold stories of melodrama’s heroines have driven some of world cinema’s timeless masterpieces. Don’t forget to pack your tissues.”
The season will be programmed around key themes, Love featuring star-crossed lovers, sacrificial acts of devotion, connections across space and time and melodrama as romance incarnate, Obsession brimming with tales of unrequited love, impossible desires and toxic jealousy, Duty stories of maternal sacrifice, marital constraints and dreams denied simmering beneath the serene surface of family life. Defiance showcasing rebellion in all its forms, both righteous and frivolous, regardless of the consequences, Scandal featuring tales of melodrama’s tragic heroines, who fall victim to its judgmental gaze. Melodrama’s most expressionistic, sumptuous films will also screen at BFI IMAX.
More than 60 venues UK-wide will host events and screenings supported by the BFI Film Audience Network, with the full UK-wide line-up of screenings, events and touring programmes will be announced soon via bfi.org.uk/too-much
BFI Southbank will play host to a major season from 20 October – 30 December, focusing on the strong cross cultural appeal of melodrama, including titles from Greece, Egypt, China, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Tunisia, Italy, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Mexico, Argentina, Russia curated under the five thematic pillars of Love, Obsession, Duty, Defiance and Scandal. BFI IMAX, the UK’s biggest screen, will play host to some of melodrama’s most expressive films, FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE (1993 Chen Kaige), DEVDAS (2002, Sanjay Leela Bhansali) and WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956, Douglas Sirk). Special events celebrating the expansive melodrama genre will include a keynote introduction with leading academic and author Laura Mulvey and a special day of playful panels and presentations – Melo-dramarama, an immersive day delving into the labyrinth of themes, tropes and quirks of melodrama beyond women on screen, from its embrace by queer audiences to male weepies and soap operas.
Audiences will also be able to stream films from the season at home on BFI Player, with a selection of 20+ curated titles set to include, BODY AND SOUL (1925, Oscar Micheaux), CRAIG’S WIFE (1936, Dorothy Arzner), THE RECKLESS MOMENT (1949, Max Ophüls), VICTIMS OF SIN (1951, Emilio Fernández), CAIRO STATION (1958, Youssef Chahine), RED ANGEL (1966, Yasuzo Masumura), MORGIANA (1972, Juraj Herz), BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005, Ang Lee), PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (2019, Céline Sciamma) and THE DAMNED DON’T CRY (2022, Fyzal Boulifa).
❉ Too Much – Melodrama On Film: At BFI Southbank, in cinemas UK wide and on BFI Player, October to December 2025. The full UK-wide line-up of screenings, events and touring programmes will be announced soon via bfi.org.uk/too-much
❉ News source: Sarah Bemand – PR Manager, BFI Cultural Programme .
❉ We Are Cult is not responsible for the content of this news release.
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