Film4 TV Guide: Listings, Schedule & What’s On Film4 Tonight

Film4 is the UK’s free-to-air film channel, on Freeview 14. It dropped its subscription fee on 23 July 2006 and has run on advertising ever since. Tonight, Wednesday 19 August 2026, Moonfall opens the evening at 6:25pm, Fury takes the 9pm slot and The Beast closes the night from 11:40pm.

Film4 Schedule: Wednesday 19 August 2026 (Full Listings)

Here is the complete Film4 schedule for Wednesday 19 August 2026, on Freeview 14.

Overnight

Morning

Afternoon

Early evening

Primetime

Late night

What’s on Film4 today

Ravenous, Antonia Bird’s darkly comic 1999 horror-western with Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle, closes out the overnight run at 1:30am. Teleshopping fills the gap that follows, running right through to 11am.

Dora and the Lost City of Gold opens the daytime schedule at 11am, Isabela Moner’s young explorer setting off to track down her missing parents in Peru. Journey to the Center of the Earth follows at 1:05pm, the 1959 Jules Verne adaptation with James Mason and Pat Boone descending into a lost prehistoric world. A short American Gangster Special at 3:45pm looks back at the making of the 2007 crime epic before Von Ryan’s Express airs at 3:55pm, Frank Sinatra leading a breakout of Allied prisoners from an Italian camp. The same Gangster featurette repeats at 6:15pm ahead of Moonfall opening the evening at 6:25pm.

Film4 tonight — primetime and the evening schedule

Here’s the Film4 primetime line-up for tonight, Wednesday 19 August 2026.

American Gangster Special — Film4, 6:15pm

A ten-minute making-of piece rather than a film in its own right. Director Ridley Scott, with stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, revisits 2007’s American Gangster ahead of the evening’s two features.

Moonfall — Film4, 6:25pm

Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson lead Roland Emmerich’s 2022 disaster picture. A sacked astronaut, a NASA executive and a conspiracy theorist end up working together when the Moon starts falling out of its orbit for reasons that turn out to be less than natural.

Fury — Film4, 9pm

David Ayer’s 2014 tank drama is tonight’s strongest pick. Brad Pitt commands a Sherman crew pushing into Germany during the last weeks of the Second World War, with a green recruit thrown among battle-hardened men who don’t trust him yet. It’s a bruising, unglamorous war film, closer to Film4’s better recent acquisitions than most of what surrounds it tonight.

The Beast — Film4, 11:40pm

Léa Seydoux and George MacKay star in Bertrand Bonello’s 2023 drama, loosely built on Henry James’s novella “The Beast in the Jungle” and told across three timelines, ending in a future where artificial intelligence purges people of the emotions that make them unpredictable. In French with subtitles.

What kind of films are on Film4?

Hollywood and recent theatrical releases

A good chunk of the schedule is mainstream Hollywood: films that played UK multiplexes and reached television a couple of years later. The bigger, more recent titles go in the 9pm and 6.30pm slots, where the audience is widest.

British cinema and Film4 Productions

Film4 Productions, the channel’s film-funding arm, has backed British cinema since 1982, originally trading as Channel Four Films. Four Weddings and a Funeral, Trainspotting, This Is England, 12 Years a Slave, Poor Things. Four decades of co-productions, and the reason the channel gets more benefit of the doubt than its commercial rivals.

World cinema, independent and cult film

Film4 shows more subtitled film than any other British free-to-air channel, mostly after 11pm, alongside cult American independents and things that never got a proper UK release. That late shift is the best thing about it.

How to watch Film4

Channel numbers

Where to find Film4 on the main UK platforms:

Film4 is free on all of the above, with no subscription required. Virgin Media and Freesat numbers can vary by box and region, so check your on-screen guide if these don’t match.

Streaming online

Film4 streams live and free at channel4.com/now/f4 and via the Channel 4 app on smart TVs, iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire TV. You’ll need a free Channel 4 account, which takes a couple of minutes to set up. Films that have aired often turn up on demand in the Film4 collection afterwards, but licensing means plenty of them never do, and the ones that make it don’t stay long.

Film4 +1 and catching a film you missed

Film4 +1 runs the same schedule an hour behind, on Freeview 47 and Sky 314. Sit down at 10:15pm with the 9pm premiere already 75 minutes gone and +1 lets you start it near the beginning instead of writing the evening off.

If you miss a film outright and it never appears on demand, wait. Film4 reruns titles fairly regularly, usually in themed seasons or when a director or actor is back in the news, so searching a week or two ahead in your on-screen guide often turns one up.

Frequently asked questions

What’s on Film4 tonight?

Moonfall (2022) opens the evening at 6:25pm, with Halle Berry and Patrick Wilson trying to stop the Moon falling out of orbit. Fury (2014), Brad Pitt’s Second World War tank drama, takes the 9pm slot. The Beast (2023) closes the night from 11:40pm, in French with subtitles: Bertrand Bonello’s time-hopping drama pairs Léa Seydoux with George MacKay. Full times for the rest of the evening are in the schedule table above.

What time do films start on Film4?

Typically around 11am, 2pm, 4pm, 6.30pm, 9pm, and 11pm to midnight. Running lengths shift the exact times day to day, so your on-screen guide has the most accurate information.

Is Film4 free to watch?

Yes, and it has been since it left subscription in July 2006. Expect ad breaks during films, but no fee on any platform.

Can I watch Film4 online for free?

Yes, live at channel4.com or through the Channel 4 app, with a free account.

Verdict

I rate Film4, with reservations. The 9pm slot and the run after 11pm are what keep me coming back: recent releases, the odd Productions title, and foreign-language cinema you’d rarely stumble across on any other free channel. Daytime is mostly the same forty-odd Hollywood titles on rotation, and the ad breaks mid-film wear thin some nights.

Tonight’s schedule doesn’t chase a single prestige title, but Fury at 9pm is the pick: a well-drilled war film that plays as solid, unshowy drama rather than event cinema. Moonfall earlier in the evening is disaster spectacle with little else on its mind, easy enough to half-watch. The Beast, running past 11:40pm and in French, is the one worth staying up for if arthouse sci-fi appeals — stranger and more ambitious than anything else in tonight’s line-up.

Watch

Related: What’s On TV Tonight | BBC One TV Guide | Freeview Channel Guide | Films on TV This Week