A new trailer has been unveiled as Stanley Kubrick’s classic A Clockwork Orange is set to return to cinemas. Check it out below.

Presented by the BFI, the 1971 film starring Malcolm McDowell and based on the seminal Anthony Burgess novel of the same name will be back in UK cinemas from April 5.

Hailed by NME as “an ultraviolent turning point in the history of cinema, music and culture”, the controversial blast of dystopian sci-fi was set around the actions of a violent gang, before McDowell’s protagonist Alex is apprehended by authorities and subjected to an experimental form of rehabilitation which makes him incapable of violence.


'An ultraviolent turning point in the history of cinema, music and culture' – @NME Watch the new trailer for @StanleyKubrick's A Clockwork Orange – back in cinemas this April. pic.twitter.com/u09cnouMKo — BFI (@BFI) February 20, 2019

After it inspired a series of copycat crimes, the film was banned from 1973 until after Kubrick’s death in 1999. Now, it’s the latest in a series of Kubrick classics being brought back to theatres by the BFI.

Stuart Brown, BFI Head of Programme and Acquisitions said: “Stanley Kubrick occupies a singular position in the history of cinema, being arguably not just the greatest filmmaker but one of the greatest and most enigmatic artists of the 20th century in any medium. Kubrick’s ability to convey bold and complex ideas to a mass audience, coupled with his now-infamously meticulous approach to his craft, produced films that were rich in meaning and have had unparalleled influence.

“As one of the only UK cinemas still showing films on film, it is important that audiences, especially young people who may only have seen Kubrick’s films on the small screen, get to see them in the cinema, on celluloid, as he intended.”

As well as a UK-wide re-release of A Clockwork Orange in April, there will be a definitive two month season at BFI Southbank (1 April – 31 May 2019) as well as the opening of Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibition at London’s Design Museum (April – September 2019).


With its dramatic plot, experimental techniques and messages and morality in the modern world, the film would prove highly influential. Not only that, but the score would inspire countless artists throughout the rise of synth music in the late ’70s and early ’80s, as well as being pivotal in guiding David Bowie when he created ‘Low’ and the Berlin Trilogy.

Last year, the word ‘Kubrickian’ was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The term was described as “meticulous perfectionism, mastery of the technical aspects of film-making, and atmospheric visual style in films across a range of genres.”