Howards End

Join us for a 4K restoration screening of Merchant Ivory’s landmark literary adaptation.

In Edwardian England, the lives of the independent-minded Schlegel sisters (Emma Thompson & Helena Bonham Carter) become entwined with those of the affluent Wilcox family and the struggling clerk Leonard Bast. As friendships, romances and rivalries cross entrenched social boundaries, Margaret and Helen find themselves confronting the inequalities and hypocrisies that underpin the world around them.
Set against a society in transition, Howards End explores the tensions between wealth and conscience, privilege and responsibility, while tracing two women's determination to maintain their autonomy in a world still governed by class and patriarchal power. Elegant, incisive and deeply humane, it remains one of cinema's finest literary adaptations.
Curator’s Note
Emma Thompson won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Margaret Schlegel, delivering one of the defining performances of her career. Balancing warmth, intelligence and quiet authority, Thompson transforms Margaret into the emotional and intellectual centre of the film, navigating questions of class, gender and morality with both idealism and hard-won pragmatism.
Widely regarded as one of the crowning achievements of the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala collaboration, Howards End exemplifies the trio's unique approach to literary adaptation. Screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala remains the only person to have won both the Booker Prize (Heat and Dust) and an Academy Award, receiving two Oscars for Best Adapted Screenplay for A Room with a View and Howards End, crafting a screenplay that foregrounds changing social structures and women's place within them. More than simply prestige heritage cinema, Howards End uses its period setting to explore class, power, desire and social change, creating a work whose themes remain strikingly relevant today.