Billy Fisher is a lazy, wildly inventive and irresponsible clerk in a small northern town. Unable to accept an uneasy domestic situation with his parents and frustrated by his drab everyday life, Billy escapes into a world of fantasy, imagining he is a successful man of the world.
But Billy’s fabrications become more complex when he engages two girls at the same time and invents a demand for his non-existent writing talents. That is, until he meets Liz – the one woman who might understand him and offer his one real chance for escape.
John Schlesinger reunites with the screenwriting partnership of Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall following the success of A Kind of Loving, creating in Billy Liar a comedic counterpart to that earlier film.
Plus/ This screening will be preceded by True Colours, a short film by Milda Baginskaitė and Suman Hanif.