‘I don't touch my phone. At home, I'd be scrolling': why young people are flocking to independent cinemas

The Guardian

3 days ago

A new generation of film lovers is helping to drive an increase in cinema attendance across the UK. As the industry slowly recovers from the decline of audiences during the pandemic – there were 126.5m admissions in 2024 compared with 176.1m in 2019, the rise in younger people returning to cinema may be due to a newfound love for film developed during the lockdown years. Although figures are yet to be restored to pre-pandemic levels, admission rates are continuing to increase, and it is younger audiences in particular who are showing significant enthusiasm, with figures from the Cinema Advertising Association suggesting that under-35s make up 50% of cinemagoers across the board.
This is a proportion, which includes all cinemas including mainstream multiplexes, has held steady over the last few years but the effect appears particularly marked on the independent cinema circuit. Curzon, which operates 16 venues across the UK, reports there has been a clear shift over the past six years in young people overtaking older audiences. In 2019, the biggest age demographic of Curzon attendees was 65+, followed by 55-64. In 2025, however, the dominant age group is 25-34 – rising from 16% in 2019 to 31% in 2025 – followed by 18-25 (growing from 17% to 24% over the same period).
The same goes for Bristol independent venue the Watershed, where the percentage of tickets sold to under 25s went from 19% (at reopening after lockdown in 2021) to 27% in 2024. (For comparison, the share of tickets sold to over 60s also increased, but by only by a single percentage point.)
Steph Read, programmer at Watershed, says: 'We find young people are quite adventurous with their taste, especially when it comes to older films and rereleases.' This year, Chungking Express from 1994 and 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did well with younger audiences. 'Over 50% of the audiences for both of those films were 24 and under,' Read says.
Paul Gallagher, programme manager at Glasgow Film Theatre, attributes this new generation of filmgoers to 'a growing appetite for cinema in general' that took off during lockdown. 'Streaming became such a lifeline for lots of people, and there was definitely a younger audience who discovered the depth of the history of cinema at that moment.'
'Gradually, in the years since then, this younger audience is now starting to join the dots and see that there are cinemas around that play stuff from the history of cinema. It's not just new films, but that whole rich history of cinema.'
Social media has clearly played its part. Gallagher says that screenings of films such as 1995 French social message thriller La Haine, as well as the works of directors such as Céline Sciamma and Wong Kar-Wai, have garnered much interest for their visual style and Instagram-friendly aesthetic. 'We showed a couple of screenings of La Haine, and it was hugely popular, it sold out both of our biggest screens, which have just under 400 seats, and there was a visibly younger audiences.'
Film-dedicated apps such as Letterboxd have opened up access to a rich history of cinema, once the preserve of older film buffs, to a younger generation. 'We're Letterboxd fiends. That's the first thing I do after a movie, I go to Letterboxd,' says Isiah Robinson, 22.
Micha, 20, prefers to watch reruns of older films. 'I don't really go to the cinema to watch blockbusters, I want to watch films that already interest me,' she says. 'The independent cinemas are usually cheaper anyways.'
The cost of going to the cinema is another thing that young people factor in when deciding whether to see a film on the big screen. 'We're balancing the cost of living as well, so it's a bit of a luxury,' says Isaiah Robinson, 22.
According to the UK Cinema Association, the average price of a cinema ticket in the UK is £7.73, only a slight increase on 2018, when the average price was £7.22. Adjusted for inflation, the price is actually cheaper today than it was seven years ago.
Adele Agwu-kalu, 20, isn't dissuaded by the cost as she says it is similar to what she would spend going out for a drink. 'A ticket is basically the same price as a drink,' she says. 'So the price is not really a factor.'
For other younger people, the cost is worth it as the big screen provides a 'no-distractions zone', as opposed to the experience watching a film at home. 'It's nice to switch off,' says Sophia Crothall, 23. 'I don't touch my phone the whole time I'm in the cinema. At home I'm probably scrolling.'
Greg Walker, cinema manager and programmer at Manchester's Cultplex suggests that 'cinema etiquette' is one of the reasons that smaller venues in particular benefiting from the rise in younger people going to see films. 'More often than not, independent cinema audiences are the ones who are more respectful. They're not on the phones constantly, they're not talking.'
'A lot of young people get pigeonholed into being those kind of people at cinemas, but I think a lot of them are actually the ones who want to go and watch the film. It's not just a social area.'
However, Ben Luxford, director of UK audiences at the British Film Institute, says that this new wave of film fanaticism is 'still quite a small pocket of people ultimately'.
'It might be fuelling a change in the audience at places like the BFI Southbank or in cinemas in university towns across the country, but it's not happening everywhere,' he says.
Cinemas are also benefiting from the rising popularity of music films by big-name artists whose fanbase is typically younger.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which was released in 2023, has become the highest-grossing concert film of all time.
'Taylor Swift was a gamechanger,' says Eduardo Leal, group director of screen content at Vue. 'The Eras Tour completely reset the ceiling for what a music film can do theatrically. Since then, we've had a bunch of successful K-pop titles such as J-Hope: In the Box and Seventeen: Power of Love.'
'Social media has played a really big role in driving younger audiences to the cinema,' says Susie Bould, director of marketing at Curzon. 'Films just spark and go viral. Saltburn, a few years ago, had a huge social virality, which gave it a life that it might not otherwise have had. I think people want to be part of the conversation.'