Inside this conventionally structured biopic resides an extraordinary story of an extraordinary man. William Wilberforce was the parliamentary spokesman for a group of radicalised young Evangelists (and Quakers), who despised the money politics and corruption of late 18th Century UK politics and who fought for many reformist policies, the most notable of which was the one this film annotates, the abolition of slavery, a process that took years of political skulduggery and the slow passage of find out more...

London, 1818; the young Romantic poet John Keats begins an unlikely three year romance with chic urbanite neighbour Fanny, an affair cut short by his premature illness and death. A superbly made interpretation of love and its rendition through poetry. find out more...

The film focuses on Camille's time spent in an asylum after she is sent there by her brother, the poet Paul Claudel, who questions his sister's sanity when she destroys some of her own works. She lives a reclusive life trying to prove to her doctor that she is mentally stable while waiting in hope that her brother will visit and consent to her discharge from the institution. 

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Abandoned by her father and brought up in an orphanage Gabrielle Chanel's early years were not easy ones, but her willful determination, intelligence and obvious gift would see her ultimately rise to iconic status within the world of 20th Century fashion. 'Coco Before Chanel' never glamorises her life, neither the way she looks nor the lovers she takes; a thoughtful understated observation of Chanel's life before fortune finally beckoned. Not a visually sumptuous film, as you might expect, but a find out more...

The story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of 1830s Dorset farm labourers who had the effrontery to form a Trade Union to fight against their wages being lowered and who got transported to Australia for their pains. find out more...

Scooping almost all the Oscars in 1991, this epic film views the American Indians in a sympathetic light through the story of Lt John Dunbar, who volunteers for frontier duty. He discovers the Sioux tribe, an honourable and proud people living on the Dakota plains. Exquisitely filmed - it's a must. find out more...

The BFI continues its successful strand of Archive Television releases with Ken Russell's classic documentary Elgar, which was first shown in 1962 as the 100th programme in the BBC's Monitor series. This partly dramatised account of the life of composer Sir Edward Elgar includes footage of Elgar at the Three Choirs Festival and a recording of the opening of Abbey Road Studios when 'Land Of Hope And Glory' was played. find out more...

By the time the first public performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) took place in Vienna in 1805, a privileged few had already heard the work at a private play-through at the Lobkowitz Palace. Nick Dear's award-winning period drama, starring Ian Hart as Beethoven, brings to intense life the momentous event that prompted Haydn to remark 'everything is different from today'. find out more...

When wealthy John du Pont invites Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz to move to his estate and help form a wrestling team for the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Mark sees a way to step out of the shadow of his charismatic and revered find out more...

Summer 1863; the Confederacy pushed north into Pennsylvania and Union divisions converged to face them, the two great armies would clash at Gettysburg, one of the bloodiest, some 50,000 lives were lost, battles in US history and a turning point in the Civil War. For three days, through such legendary actions as Little Round Top and Pickett's Charge, the fate of "one nation, indivisible" hung in the balance. An epic recreation, superbly shot, with a wealth of Hollywood talent, a supporting cast o find out more...