Billy Wilder season opens in London on 19 October

More than 30 films will screen at BFI Southbank when Almost Perfect: The Films of Billy Wilder opens on 19 October. The London season runs until 31 December 2026, bringing together Wilder’s major Hollywood films, earlier writing collaborations and a series of talks and workshops.

Tickets are available through BFI Southbank. The BFI has also confirmed a £4 ticket offer for audiences aged 16 to 25 attending An Introduction to Billy Wilder on 9 November; that price should not be read as applying to the full season.

The programme is aimed at film enthusiasts, casual Wilder fans and aspiring screenwriters. According to the BFI announcement, screenings and events will examine both Wilder’s sharp dialogue and the recurring social tensions behind his comedies and dramas.

More than the familiar Hollywood classics

Some Like It Hot, Sunset Boulevard and The Apartment provide three of the season’s most recognisable titles. The wider programme reaches beyond films directed by Wilder to work he helped write, including Ernst Lubitsch’s Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Howard Hawks’s Ball of Fire and People on Sunday, directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer.

That broader selection traces Wilder’s route from Europe to Hollywood. Raised in Vienna and absorbed by American popular culture, he entered the US studio system through the community of Jewish creatives escaping Nazism. He wrote in English as a second language but became known for tightly constructed screenplays, caustic humour and characters caught between ambition, deception and the possibility of redemption.

BFI curator Ruby McGuigan has arranged the season around four themes. Billy Liar focuses on false identities and deception, while Class Warfare follows characters moving across social boundaries. A Crisis of Masculinity examines Wilder’s anti-heroes, and In Pursuit of Fame and Fortune turns to Hollywood, media manipulation and ambition.

Four dated events extend the programme beyond screenings

Billy in Berlin pairs a screening of the rarely seen Wilder-scripted noir The Man in Search of His Murderer with a talk by Dr Jon Hughes of Royal Holloway University. The discussion will consider the generation of émigrés who later helped transform Hollywood.

Billy Wilder: America’s Witness brings McGuigan together with film writer Christina Newland and novelist Jonathan Coe, author of Mr Wilder & Me. Their discussion will explore Wilder’s attachment to Hollywood and the critical perspective he brought to its stories and institutions.

The 9 November introduction is intended for audiences aged 25 and under. It will chart Wilder’s life from Vienna to Hollywood and highlight the stylistic signatures and characters associated with his work. Attendees aged 16 to 25 can access the BFI Southbank £4 ticket offer for this event.

Aspiring writers can test Wilder’s methods

The most participatory date is 25 November. Thou Shalt Not Bore: How to Write Like Billy Wilder draws on the filmmaker’s view that most of a picture’s strength was already determined on the page.

Casual fans and aspiring screenwriters will be invited to work through playful exercises involving character backstories, narrative arcs and comedic dialogue. The social event will include cocktails and a jazz soundtrack, giving visitors a different point of entry from the cinema screenings and panel discussions.

Planning a visit to BFI Southbank

Almost Perfect: The Films of Billy Wilder runs at BFI Southbank, South Bank, London, from 19 October through 31 December 2026. Tickets are available via BFI Southbank, but the supplied announcement does not give individual start times, general season prices, transport guidance or accessibility arrangements. Visitors choosing a screening or contextual event will therefore need to check its current listing when booking.

Source: British Film Institute News