The opening and closing films had already been announced, in the shape of Mark Romanek’s “Never Let Me Go” and Danny Boyle’s “127 Hours,” but the 54th BFI London Film Festival announced their full program today, and it looks like there’ll be plenty to give film fans in the Big Smoke busy for the second half of October.
As tends to be the case, there’s not a great deal of big money premieres, but instead the festival’s serving as a kind of compilation of the best from festivals across the year, from Cannes to Toronto. The likes of Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan,” Tom Hooper’s “The King’s Speech,” Richard Ayoade’s Ben Stiller-produced debut “Submarine” and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Biutiful” are all showing as galas, along with Palme D’Or winner “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” and premieres of “East Is East” sequel “West Is West,” Britflick “Africa United,” tipped by some as the next “Slumdog Millionaire,” and “The First Grader,” from “The Other Boleyn Girl” director Justin Chadwick, about an 84 year-old Kenyan who decide to return to primary school.
Other festival favorites making appearances include “Let Me In,” Kelly Reichardt’s “Meek’s Cutoff, Oliver Assayas’ “Carlos,” the Will Ferrell indie “Everything Must Go,” “Blue Valentine” and Bertrand Tavernier’s “The Princess of Montpensier.” There’s a typically strong selection of world cinema films, with efforts from Takashi Miike, Diego Luna, John Sayles, Christi Puiu, Frederick Wiseman, Jean-Luc Godard, and, perhaps most excitingly, Guilliame Canet’s “Little White Lies,” the actor/director’s follow up to his international hit “Tell No One,” which stars Canet’s partner Marion Cotilliard.
The festival has a good reputation for music documentaries (indeed, this year there’s a special panel focusing on the form), and the line-up this year includes “Lemmy,” focusing on the colorful Motorhead frontman, as well as the Stephin Merrit documentary and “Upside Down: The Creation Records Story,” which follows the seminal Britpop label. There are also new prints of “The Bridge Over The River Kwai” and the great silent film “Pandora’s Box.”
We’re particularly excited about the return of two British directors who made excellent debuts, both of whom are reuniting with the stars of their first films — Joanne Hogg, who’s again cast Tom Hiddleston (soon to be seen as Loki in “Thor”), after he starred in her film “Unrelated,” in the follow-up “Archipelago,” and Radiohead collaborator Jamie Thraves, who returns nearly ten years after his terminally underrated debut “The Low Down,” again working with “The Wire” star Aidan Gillen on “Treacle Jr.”
Darren Aronofsky, Mark Romanek, Hilary Swank, Oliver Assayas and Peter Mullan (whose third film as director, “Neds,” gets a gala screening) will all receive the masterclass treatment, and there’s a panel focusing on the work of music supervisor extraordinaire Randall Poster, best known for his work with Wes Anderson, that’s probably the one event that we refuse to miss.
We’ll get a little deeper into the line-up closer to the festival, but in the meantime, you can check out the full line-up over at the official site. Tickets go on sale September 20th for BFI members, and September 27th for everyone else. Now, the only thing to do is speculate on the identity of the surprise film: our money’s on Rowan Joffe’s “Brighton Rock” or Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” both surprising absences from the general program.
