Retrospective 2025: Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema 1945 - 1960

After the end of the Second World War – and as its overseas empire began to crumble – Britain embarked on the rocky road to national reconstruction and revival. The Locarno Film Festival’s wide-ranging survey of British cinema of that period, organized in partnership with the BFI and the Cinémathèque suisse, and with the support of STUDIOCANAL, shows the cultural response by the nation's filmmakers, writers, producers, performers, and studios as they collectively tried to make sense of the transformations of this turbulent new era.

Featuring everything from beloved classics by legendary filmmakers like David Lean, Carol Reed, and Powell and Pressburger (themselves the subject of a major Locarno retrospective in 1982 and BFI retrospective in 2023) to unheralded genre gems by lesser-known craftsmen like Seth Holt or Lance Comfort, the program celebrates British studio filmmakers from 1945 to 1960, when a new wave washed up on Britain’s shores. The significant role women played in that earlier period – in films directed by Muriel Box, Wendy Toye, Margaret Tait, and Jill Craigie – as well as the role of American filmmakers exiled by the anti-Communist blacklist – like Joseph Losey, Cy Endfield, and Edward Dmytryk – will also play a major part in the Festival’s survey.

The program will bring together digital restorations and archival prints from the collection of the BFI National Archive – which celebrates its 90th anniversary this year – helping to put British cinema produced between 1945 to 1960 back into conversation with the present. The retrospective will be accompanied by an English-language book, published by Les Éditions de l’Œil, edited by Ehsan Khoshbakht and featuring contributions from international writers. The program will travel internationally once the 78th edition of the Locarno Film Festival is over, including at the Cinémathèque suisse in August and September.

Ehsan Khoshbakht, Retrospective Curator: “It’s hard to believe that one of the most refined and remarkable European national cinemas – one that also gifted some of the finest artists and technicians to Hollywood – remains so underexplored beyond its borders. British cinema made in the studio system managed to blend popular entertainment with some of the most stylistically innovative forms, elevating it to the status of art. By focusing exclusively on contemporary films (and omitting period, fantasy, and war films), we aimed to tell the story of a nation in search of its identity – sometimes dark and brooding, and at other times, as in the finest tradition of British comedies, hilarious and biting. This is a national portrait in more than 40 films.”

Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival: “Beloved and championed by Martin Scorsese, the postwar years of British cinema will now be systematically explored in a major retrospective in Locarno. From the end of World War II to the advent of Free Cinema, this is a fertile era of filmmaking that would profoundly influence the subsequent evolution of cinema on the British Isles and elsewhere.”

James Bell, BFI National Archive Senior Curator: “The years between the end of the war and the cultural explosions of the 1960s were turbulent ones for Britain. There were challenges at home and a changing status abroad, but they fed a rich – if too often misunderstood – period in British cinema. The BFI National Archive is delighted to be partnering with the Locarno Film Festival to present this program, which showcases many rare archival film prints preserved by the BFI. We’re excited for the films to reach new international audiences, and to be shining a spotlight on fascinating films and key figures from behind and in front of the camera. Some will be familiar, while others will be exciting discoveries.”

The 78th Locarno Film Festival will take place from 6-16 August, 2025.