The Forbidden Room

The Forbidden Room (2015) is currently streaming in the UK on MUBI. Last updated 20 January 2026.

Streaming availability last checked 20 January 2026

Guy Maddin’s ultimate epic phantasmagoria. Honouring classic cinema while electrocuting it with energy, this Russian nesting doll of a film begins (after a prologue on how to take a bath) with the crew of a doomed submarine chewing flapjacks in a desperate attempt to breathe the oxygen within. Suddenly, impossibly, a lost woodsman wanders into their company and tells his tale of escaping from a fearsome clan of cave dwellers. From here, Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson take us high into the air, around the world, and into dreamscapes, spinning tales of amnesia, captivity, deception and murder, skeleton women and vampire bananas. Playing like some glorious meeting between Italo Calvino, Sergei Eisenstein and a perverted six year-old child, The Forbidden Room is Maddin's grand ode to lost cinema. Created with the help of master poet John Ashbery, the film features Charlotte Rampling, Geraldine Chaplin, Roy Dupius, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Mathieu Amalric, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adèle Haenel, Amira Casar, Elina Löwensohn and Udo Kier (and more!) as a cavalcade of misfits, thieves and lovers, all joined in the joyful delirium of the kaleidoscopic viewing experience.