Cousins interviewed famous filmmakers such as
David Lynch,
Martin Scorsese and
Roman Polanski in the TV series
Scene by Scene. He presented the BBC cult film series
Moviedrome from June 1997 to July 2000. He introduced 66 films for the show, including the little-seen
Nicolas Roeg film
Eureka. In the 1990s and 2000s, Cousins interviewed directors, producers, and actors including
Steven Spielberg,
Woody Allen,
Tom Hanks,
Sean Connery,
Brian De Palma,
Steve Martin,
Lauren Bacall,
Jane Russell,
Paul Schrader,
Bernardo Bertolucci,
Kirk Douglas,
Jeanne Moreau,
Terence Stamp,
Jack Lemmon,
Janet Leigh and
Rod Steiger. In 2009, Cousins and
Tilda Swinton co-founded the "8/2 Foundation". Together they also created a project where they mounted a 33.5-tonne portable cinema on a large truck which was physically pulled through the
Scottish Highlands. The travelling independent film festival was featured prominently in a documentary called
Cinema is Everywhere. The festival was repeated in 2011. , Cousins and
TCM senior vice president Charles Tabesh in 2014, with the
Peabody Award that TCM received for its presentation of
The Story of Film: An Odyssey Cousins's 2011 film
The Story of Film: An Odyssey was broadcast on Channel 4 as 15 one-hour television episodes on
More4, In September 2013, it began to be shown on
Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Drawing on its exhaustive film library, TCM complemented each episode with relevant short films and feature films ranging from the familiar to the rarely seen. TCM received a
2013 Peabody Award "for its inclusive, uniquely annotated survey of world cinema history".
What Is This Film Called Love?, an experimental self-shot travel diary in which Cousins spends three days exploring
Mexico City, was a spontaneous project that grew out of exhaustion after completing
The Story of Film. while Jessica Kiang in
The Playlist described watching it as a deeply personal experience that she found unexpectedly affecting, though acknowledging it is "undoubtedly not for everyone" and could strike others as "pretentious" or "amateurish." A similar production approach was made in
Here Be Dragons, which begins as a short trip to
Albania to attend the 13th
Tirana International Film Festival but pivots to focus on the deteriorating state of the
Albanian film archive and the urgency of its preservation. In it Cousins repurposes footage from the archive and intercuts it with that of his own wanderings to highlight the
country's cinematic heritage. Produced on a microbudget of £10,000, it was shot and edited over the course of nine days. while
Time Out called it "another thoughtful meditation on our emotional and political relationship to the screen". Charel Muller of
Cineuropa noted that whether viewers enjoy it "depends very much on your personal opinion of Cousins."
6 Desires: DH Lawrence and Sardinia follows Cousins on a road trip through the island inspired by the writer's 1921 visit, continuing his series of travel-based essay films that mix personal reflection with observations on place and history. In
Life May Be Cousins turns his usual solo style into a dialogue by structuring it as a series of video letters exchanged between him and Iranian director and actor
Mania Akbari.
A Story of Children and Film received positive reviews from multiple critics, with Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian calling it "entirely distinctive, sometimes eccentric, always brilliant". Cousins subsequently wrote and directed
I Am Belfast, in which the city is personified by a 10,000-year-old woman. Portions of the film in progress, with a score by Belfast composer
David Holmes were screened at the 2014
Belfast Film Festival. Cousins took an axe to his own film
Bigger Than The Shining after screening to a live audience at the 2017
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), with the intention of never screening it again; he said private viewing links still existed but urged their holders to delete them. Cousins is the co-artistic director of
Cinema China,
The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams, and
A Pilgrimage, with
Tilda Swinton. Together with
Antonia Bird,
Robert Carlyle, and
Irvine Welsh, Cousins is a director of the production company 4Way Pictures. Between 2001 and 2011, he wrote for
Prospect, and now writes for
Sight & Sound and
Filmkrant. Cousins was appointed honorary professor of the
University of Glasgow in 2013, as well as being awarded honorary doctorates at both the
University of Edinburgh in 2007 and
University of Stirling in 2014. Cousins is a patron of the
Edinburgh International Film Festival, and previously acted as both a programmer and director (1996–1997) of the festival. Cousins chairs the Belfast Film Festival, and is a board member of
Michael Moore's
Traverse City Film Festival. He was a member of the Audentia Award jury at the 42nd
Göteborg International Film Festival (GIFF) in 2019, as well as member of the Official Competition jury at the 53rd
Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2018. In 2019, Cousins was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2021, he was on the jury for that year's
BFI London Film Festival. His film
The Story of Film: A New Generation was first screened at the
Cannes Film Festival in 2021. ==Personal life==