Cinema Year Zero

Ben Flanagan braves Ken Russell's Uri Geller biopic to find just how bad things can get for a great filmmaker.

Shelby Cooke worships at the Altar of Marilyn Monroe and the Church of the Pinball Wizard

Blaise Radley on Therese Henningsen's film. Driven by a recurring urge to encounter strangers with her camera, the filmmaker begins to film her solitary Greek Cypriot neighbour Pete in the tower block in North London where they both live. 

Caught the personal documentary fever but don’t know where to go next? Luckily for you, Cinema Year Zero has assembled a list of ten further films from throughout the short but vibrant history of the genre.

Kirsty Asher looks at Chloe Abrahams' cinematic love letter spanning time and generations, which probes at raw questions her mother and grandmother have long brushed aside, untangling painful knots in her family’s unspoken past.

Tom de Lancy Green on Shared Resources, which depicts Jordan Lord’s family after their father was fired from his job as a debt collector and their parents declared bankruptcy, largely due to the filmmaker’s student debt.

Ben Flanagan on Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued, The first feature-length film by Julian Castronovo. It follows a young filmmaker named Julian Castronovo who discovers a trail of clues related to the disappearance of a skilled art forger known as Fawn Ma.

Arta Barzanji on Azza El-Hassan's documentary about the films in the PLO Media Unit. These were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality – and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. In a road movie from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, director El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive.

Emily Jisoo Bowles discusses Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Audrey project, an ongoing series of films made in collaboration with actor Deragh Campbell. Together, Bohdanowicz and Campbell have created the character of Audrey as an amalgamation of themselves, exploring different facets of Bohdanowicz’s personal life and research through her conduit persona.

Four programmers on their online video that showcases the stories Britain tells about itself through the internet. From vlogs to memes to uncategorisable curiosities, these videos might not have initially been intended as ‘cinema’, but what is cinema if not images and narratives that are so iconic that they stick in our heads?

Orla Smith speaks with Joe Bini about his attempt to cross the experience of reading a book with the experience of watching a film.

Kimia Ipakchi on the Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend 2025 programme

Orla Smith finds kinship between Ken Russell and the films of Caveh Zahedi. On 23rd July, join us at The Cinema Museum for a rare screening of Crimes of Passion on 16mm, where print copies of the issue will be exclusively available. Tickets are now on sale via our website.

Carmen Paddock on the composer as superhero – and supervillain. On 23rd July, join us at The Cinema Museum for a rare screening of Crimes of Passion on 16mm, where print copies of the issue will be exclusively available. Tickets are now on sale via our website.

Cinema Year Zero is excited to announce Volume 20: Ken Russell’s History of the World, a 7-essay retrospective of the untamable British director. On 23rd July, join us at The Cinema Museum for a rare screening of Crimes of Passion on 16mm, where print copies of the issue will be exclusively available. Tickets are now on sale here . The event is presented in collaboration with film club and contrib...

Christmas, again.

Earlier this autumn, long before the pitch call for this Christmas edition of CYZ landed in my inbox, while absentmindedly scrolling through TikTok I came across a video by user @livgrace_x with the caption “If you live in liverpool.. wait for the end …”.

Woke Hallmark Movies DESTROYING Christmas

Kelsey Grammer has stolen valour.

In 2004, a movie was released about the joyous reclamation of youthful romance through time travel, and the rejection of hard-bitten corporate life in favour of downhome suburban bliss.

It’s a cold winter’s night in the UK, and the dazzling floodlights of AFC Newbourne’s home ground are visible for miles in every direction across the London skyline, each dappled beam only matched in reach by the echoing caterwauls of the staunchly loyal blues fans.

Something unspoken lies underneath the whole of cinephilia. Well, not exactly unspoken.

I grew up in a pulseless nothing-ville outside a certain Canadian metropolis.

For the estimable cineastes confused by last year’s dispatch, may I state for the record: I love the Locarno Film Festival.

Swashbuckling action, scoundrelly antics, and even tattered iconography are all mere ornaments of what the act of piracy actually entails.