There are still about two full months of summer blockbusters to come, but the fall festival and awards season are inching closer, and are starting to provide a little motivation to get through the “Shallows” and “Ice Age” and Kevin Spacey cat movies still to come, with announcements beginning to drift in for some of the big festivals.
Last week saw the revelation that Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash” follow-up “La La Land” starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone will open the Venice Film Festival in August, and now the BFI London Film Festival in October has an opener as well: namely, Amma Asante’s “A United Kingdom.”
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The new film from the “Belle” director stars the awards-friendly duo of David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, with the former playing Seretse Khama, who was the King of what is now Botswana. That is, he was until he fell in love with British woman Ruth Williams (Pike), resulting in his removal after pressure from the apartheid-era South African government and their U.K. allies. Khama would later return to the country to become its first democratically-elected leader.
It’s a remarkable story, and we can’t imagine a better director than Asante to be telling it, nor a better cast (Jack Davenport, Tom Felton, Terry Pheto, Arnold Oceng and Jack Lowden are also on board). The LLF screening will be the European premiere of the film, so expect it at TIFF or possibly Telluride first. As yet, a U.S. distributor hasn’t been announced, but that doesn’t mean that this film couldn’t be a major force in the awards race this year. It’ll open the LFF on October 5th.