One of the cornerstones of the 1960 British new wave, Billy Liar put Northern working life on screen capturing its dramas and dialects. Billy Fisher is a lazy, wildly inventive and irresponsible clerk in a north country town, who defrauds his employers of the petty cash. Unable to accept the drab reality of life, Billy escapes into a world of fantasy, imagining he is a successful man of the world in various situations.
Intro: Introduction by University of Sheffield PHD researcher Molly R Leeming, whose work focuses on women, class and regional identity in northern social-realist film and television.
Sheffield Film Festival 2026
Sheffield Film Festival is Showroom Cinema’s annual celebration of the city’s and the surrounding region’s film heritage, and wider film culture.
Explore Sheffield Film Festival
Showroom Classics
At Showroom Cinema, we pride ourselves on giving audiences the chance to watch a wide variety of films from cinema history. Our Showroom Classics strand brings every classic film currently on our programme, together in one place.
Director John Schlesinger
Year 1963
Duration
1h 38m
Language English
Cast Tom Courtenay, Julie Christie, Mona Washbourne