With film and television offering a direct window into the staggering impact of youthful creativity on our society, Rip It Up invites UK audiences of all ages to reflect on their own lived experiences, identities, and distinct cultural interests as young people growing up against an evolving social fabric.
From mod rebellion and the birth of the teenager, to hedonistic self-expression in music and fashion scenes, to climate activism and the issues facing the next generation, Rip It Up also charts the emotional rollercoaster that simply is being a teenager – all of which have been portrayed on screen in a multitude of ways.
Over the past 75 years, the narrative has shifted from one of class-conscious post-war subcultures to a more fluid, digitally connected, and globally aware contemporary expression, but that generational desire for change and belonging has endured; and youth rebellion continues to play an important regenerative role in society; perhaps more important than ever.
Included in the season is the UK & Ireland cinema release of Ish (31 July 2026): BFI Distribution brings Imran Perretta’s feature film debut to UK & Irish cinemas. Ish follows 12-year-old best friends, Ish and Maram, who wrestle to hold on to their friendship in the wake of a police stop and search. As the ripples take hold, the boys try to make sense of the men they are becoming – and how ‘letting go’ can be the hardest part of growing up.
Other Rip it Up season film titles screening at cinemas across the UK:
● COMING OF AGE: Growing up in Britain and telling your own unique story: from self-expression to teenage angst and the joy of finding your people, including East Is East (1999), Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Rocks (2021) and the upcoming release from BFI, Ish (2026), out in cinemas on 31 July.
● PRIDE, PREJUDICE AND PROTEST: Rage against the machine with stories of protest, fighting injustice and standing up for your rights, from Quadrophenia (1979) and Babylon (1980), Pride (2014) and This is England (2006), which is 20 years old in 2026.
● CLUBS, DRUGS, PUBS AND PARTIES: Raves, drugs and the hedonistic lifestyle of being young: Young Soul Rebels (1991), and Human Traffic (1999).
Alongside these major film titles, a strong emphasis is placed on youth-led programming and event curation, incorporating discussions, short films by young filmmakers, and interactive workshops, empowering young voices and creative talent at the intersections of film and music, fashion, spoken word, craft and more.
Find a screening near you!
Scotland
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Rip It Up: Young Programmers
Rip It Up: Young Programmers is a youth-led season celebrating UK youth culture and identity. A cohort of 12 young people aged 16-18 will work together to curate a special programme of films that speak to them, and design wraparound creative and engaging activity. Led entirely by the young people’s creative and curatorial interests, the programme seeks to develop young audiences and embed youth voice into Filmhouse’s programming. Through learning about professional programming and curation the activity will deepen their engagement with film, widen access to cinema, and nurture the sector’s future workforce.
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Sea Change Young Programmers
As part of the Rip it Up season, Screen Argyll will develop a young programmer’s group for the Sea Change Film Festival. The group will meet for six weekly sessions on Tiree, developing their skills to select two titles for the festival, which will tour to neighbouring islands. While focussing on the films of Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice, Blinded by the Light), the project will also introduce the group to British independent cinema through Rocks, Scrapper and other coming of age films. The Sea Change Young Film Programmers project is designed to empower young people in remote island communities through active participation in screen culture.
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Visit the website to find out what titles are screening as part of Rip It Up.
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Music & Resistance: Then, Now, Forever.
A film season exploring music as a force of resistance and healing across 50+ years of British youth culture. The programme draws a line from sound systems of Thatcher-era Brixton to the rave and electronic music scenes that defined subsequent generations, towards contemporary voices exploring queerness, Afro-diasporic identity and radical futures. Screenings will include Babylon (1980), The Life Cycle of Rainbows (2021) and Everybody in Place (2018) and will be supported by a DJ workshop and sound workshops.
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The Isle of Mod Skye Festival: A Quadrophenia 40th Anniversary Experience
“Isle of Mod Skye Festival” is an immersive, day-long event-cinema celebration of the 40th anniversary of Quadrophenia. Moving beyond a standard screening, this project transforms Portree into a vibrant hub of Mod culture with a Mod Scooter Run, live music and themed food provided by local businesses.
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Northern Ireland
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Rip It Up
From Beatlemania and Mods vs Rockers in the ’60s, to the birth of punk and rise of Northern Soul in the ’70s, through to ’90s rave culture, this season will offer new and old audiences a reminder of why music has been the dominant youth culture in the UK for the last 75 years. The season will include selections from our LUMI programmers, a punk zine workshop, intros and Q&As, plus collaborative events with Belfast Record Fair, the Naughton Gallery and UsFolk illustration agency, and Belfast Pride.
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Rip It Up Belfast: Youth Culture on Screen
Rip It Up Belfast: Youth Culture on Screen is a youth-led film programme at Pigment Space exploring identity, rebellion and creative expression through cinema. Across five events, the project will screen key youth-focused films including Attack the Block, Cherrybomb and This Is England, each paired with live activity such as graffiti workshops, zine-making and music. Developed in collaboration with a local Ormeau Road youth group, the programme places young people at the centre of curation and delivery. The project aims to engage audiences aged 16–25, creating an accessible and socially driven cinema experience rooted in Belfast’s contemporary youth culture.
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Loud and Young and Free
Nerve Cinema’s Rip It Up season pulls together four screenings and a new piece of archive work rooted in four decades of Derry’s own youth culture history. From the ABC Cinema packed out for A Hard Day’s Night in 1964, to punk rock at The Casbah, to rave nights at Earth as the peace process took hold — there’s a vibrant living youth cultural history here worth putting on screen.
Derry’s youth culture has never lacked for energy, attitude, or stories worth telling. From punk to dance halls, to rock bands forming during the bleakest years of the Troubles — the city’s young people have consistently found ways to express, rebel, and belong.
Loud and Young and Free: Four Decades of Derry Youth Culture sets out to anchor the BFI FAN season in the specific cultural memory of this city, putting young people at the heart of the programme as researchers, curators, audience and filmmakers.
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Visit the website to find out what titles are screening as part of Rip It Up.
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Northern England
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Visit the website to find out what titles are screening as part of Rip It Up.
Find out more
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Visit the website to find out what titles are screening as part of Rip It Up.
Find out more
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Rip It Up Young Programmers Group
Storyhouse will recruit a group of Young Programmers aged 16–25 to develop a season of films and events inspired by Rip It Up. Through a series of guided workshops in June, participants will curate a programme reflecting contemporary youth culture, which will be presented at the venue from August to early September.
Alongside the film screenings, the group will shape a programme of complementary events, such as live music performances, panel discussions or other audience activities.
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Rip It Up
Friends of Stretford Hall are planning three screenings at the community venue, each with a distinct youth-focused wraparound element. Audiences can take part in creative activities including a zine‑making station, discussions, a post‑film DJ set, and a filmmaking workshop. With affordable tickets for under‑25s, the programme is designed to be welcoming, low‑cost and accessible.
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Rip It Up
HOME’s Rip It Up season celebrates youth expression by bringing together a cross-generational team of curators to share their perspectives on cinematic youth culture – developed with HOME’s Young Film Collective, Filmmaker-in-Residence, and partners from across Manchester’s cultural communities.
Two programming workshops will support HOME’s Young Film Collective – a group of 15 cinema enthusiasts aged 18–25 – to curate two public screenings, with opportunities to develop accompanying events and activities. HOME will also host Summer Young Creatives, a week-long project for young people aged 14–18, where participants will explore films from the Rip It Up season and, with support from documentary filmmakers, create a short film reflecting their own experiences of youth culture.
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Pride at The Dukes – Visions in Vogue and Vinyl
Curated by emerging film programmers and an LGBTQIA+ youth group, The Dukes’ programme explores youth culture through a queer lens. Screenings and wrap-around events will foster intergenerational dialogue, while workshops led by Out in the Bay and collaborations with Queer by Gum aim to broaden participation and deepen engagement with LGBTQIA+ themes from the films.
The programme culminates in a club night with Queer Boots, featuring a curated soundtrack and projections of queer short films exploring music and club culture within LGBTQIA+ communities.
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Wales
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Rip It Up at Chapter (The Spirit of ’51, Power to the People!, Hei Mr Urdd!)
Rip It Up at Chapter covers three major areas – The Spirit of ’51, charting the 75 year history of youth culture in the UK with films to activate people’s memories and reflections; Power to the People! – a programme of films chosen and championed by young people with film notes and discussions from their perspectives; and Hei, Mr Urdd! – a selection of films from the Welsh broadcast archive celebrating Welsh youth culture, with Welsh language discussion.
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Video Hud
Video Hud: Welsh Youth Culture is a programme that started at CellB exploring Welsh subcultures from the 1990s Cool Cymru movement to today’s emerging DIY creative scenes. Building on a BFI Southbank pilot curated by young programmers Gwenno and Cian, the project combines archive film (Video Hud) with new youth-made work including Glasbren. Through screenings, discussions, live music and participatory activity, the programme (led by the Video Hud team: Yannick, Jake, Gwenno & Cian) platforms authentic Welsh youth voices often underrepresented on screen, connecting past and present expressions of rebellion, identity and creativity while engaging new audiences across North Wales. CellB are TURNING UP THE VOLUME!
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The Riverfront will celebrate what it means to be young in Newport with screenings of Ish (2026), Human Traffic (1999), Pride (2014) and Rocks (2021) that will appeal to Newport’s youth culture and music scene. Alongside the films will be music videos from local bands amplifying the voices of Newport creatives from a diverse range of backgrounds.
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Chwala fo!
Chwala fo! is a youth led project working with three different youth organisations in Pwllheli to programme and host three bespoke screenings that explore youth culture throughout Wales and the UK. Curated by young people, with bespoke artwork and merchandise created with professional artists and a unique playlist and DJ set to accompany each film – all the activity will be document through moving image and still photography!
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Midlands
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We Are The Rebellion
We Are The Rebellion is a celebration and showcase of the West Midlands strong tradition of local activism reflecting on film and archive sharing midlands and global majority lived experiences, identities, and cultural interests within the UK with curated films that capture that journey with enhanced screenings.
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Pop Life
Pop Life is a season of films and events exploring the unique triangle that links Youth Culture, Film and Music throughout the decades. The season of films will highlight some of the varying cultural musical movements and the films that came out of it or inspired by it, all punctuated by regular event presentations of films with introductions, plus eventised screenings throughout. These events will include Bandaoke, Film and Music Quizzes, DJ Nights and album playbacks.
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South West England
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Visit the website to find out what titles are screening as part of Rip It Up.
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Rebel Moves: Youth, Sport and Self-Expression
Find out moreBath Film Festival presents Rebel Moves, a new event exploring youth culture, identity and self-expression through film, movement and community.
Featuring Bend It Like Beckham, Polite Society and Whip It, the day takes in football pitches, martial arts mayhem and roller derby rebellion through three bold, funny and fiercely independent stories about finding your people and forging your own path.
Alongside the films, the programme includes demonstrations, discussion and opportunities to connect with the communities and subcultures represented on screen.
Part of BFI FAN’s Rip It Up programme, a UK-wide season exploring youth culture on screen, celebrating the stories, movements and communities that have shaped young lives across generations.
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World Premiere: Billy Liar (26 July)
One of the cornerstones of the 1960 British new wave, Billy Lair, like Whistle Down the Wind (which screens on Sun 26 July 10:30) put Northern working life on screen capturing its dramas and dialects. The original book by Keith Waterhouse had a successful stage adaptation starring Albert Finney.
Schlesinger cast Finney’s understudy Tom Courtney in what would become a defining performance as the day-dreaming disillusioned Yorkshire undertaker’s clerk Billy Fisher. To escape the mundanities of working life, Billy creates the fictionalised world Ambrosia where he is the hero and can escape the emotional complications of his two fiancés!
Whilst the British New Wave films of the late 50s and early 60s celebrated Northern life, Billy Liar – made in 1963 – is very much aware of the imminent arrival of the swinging sixties embodied here by a luminous Julie Christie who plays Billy’s former girlfriend Liz. Her entrance in the film is one of the many high points of this heartbreakingly hilarious classic shown here newly restored to mark John Schlesinger’s centenary.
A 4K restoration c/o STUDIOCANAL and presented as part of Rip it Up, a BFI FAN UK-wide season.
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South East England
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A youth‑led film programme from Fabrica, co‑created with its Fresh Perspectives group (ages 18–25), presenting a series of screenings celebrating contemporary British teenage voices and multicultural identity. The project brings together film, live music and partnerships with local creatives to explore coming‑of‑age stories shaped by migration, culture and sound. Designed to be accessible and affordable, it targets young people and underrepresented audiences while supporting emerging programmers to curate, promote and deliver events.
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Letchworth Festival Rip It Up Season screening of Rocks
A community-focused screening of Rocks as part of Letchworth Festival, led by ReelN, alongside a showcase of short films by emerging young filmmakers. The event includes a Q&A with industry talent, offering audiences insight into filmmaking and career pathways. Developed with young curators and supported by grassroots partnerships, the project prioritises access for diverse and underrepresented audiences, combining affordable ticketing with a free youth film event to engage new and local communities in independent cinema.
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A curated season of four seminal British films—Babylon, Quadrophenia, This Is England and Pride, exploring youth culture, identity and social change. The programme will be enhanced by a guest speaker event, alongside targeted marketing and PR activity to broaden reach.
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London
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City Lights presents Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham + pre-recorded introduction by actress Pooja Shah. Bend It Like Beckham is a timeless coming-of-age comedy about following your dreams, defying stereotypes and rebelling against your parents, that kicked off the careers of Parminder Nagra and Keira Knightley. Jess Bhamra (Parminder Nagra), a British Indian teen, has one dream: to be a professional footballer. But her strict, traditional parents are pushing her towards a life of study and marriage. When she meets Jules (Keira Knightley), the two form a powerful bond over their shared love of the game. As Jess steps into a new world of possibilities, she must find a way to honor both her heritage and her passion.
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Rip It Up: Rock the Boat
Set aboard London’s floating arts venue, Theatreship, Rip It Up: Rock the Boat is a 14-night BFI-supported season celebrating 75 years of UK youth culture. As both an independent cinema and an established music venue, Theatreship is uniquely positioned for a programme pairing iconic, soundtrack-driven films with live performances from emerging grassroots musicians.
The venue has hosted some of the brightest contemporary musical voices, including King Krule, black midi, Slauson Malone, Okay Kaya, Broadside Hacks, and Stegonaute. Young artists will co-curate and perform to ensure authentic voices drive the Rip It Up programme, exploring music-led rebellion through screenings, ranging from classics like Quadrophenia to recent seminal films like Beats and Kneecap.
The season will also highlight fearless female and queer coming-of-age stories, including Rocks and Blue Jean, alongside a FLINTA-led Sapphic Cinema strand. Building on the founders’ vision of opening up the historic docks with truly independent, welcoming arts spaces, the season is designed to engage an intergenerational audience and break down financial barriers with a series of Free Mystery Rip It Up screenings.
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East of Punk
East of Punk is a three-event season exploring the enduring relationship between British punk and Japanese youth culture. The programme comprises two cult works alongside a short film showcase featuring new work by young (16-25) British East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) filmmakers. Taken together, these events trace how a distinctly British youth subculture travelled to Japan, was transformed, and continues to resonate today. Alongside the screenings, audiences can expect music, fashion, and cultural programming that celebrates the creative exchange between youth cultures, past and present.
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Flatpack Festival, Birmingham (16 May)
Rip It Up launched in style at Flatpack Festival!
The Midlands-based festival celebrated the underground dance scene with a screening at The Mockingbird Cinema of Modulations: Cinema For The Ear, Iara Lee’s kinetic documentary exploring the evolution of electronic music, and a screening at The Edge of Blinded By The Lights, a celebration of 90s rave culture, followed by a closing party at Pan-Pan.
Photos: Katja Ogrin and Lewis Malin
