Yesterday, we reported on the shortlist of films that have been chosen to compete in the Official Competition at the BFI London Film Festival. However, outside of those select films, which featured some of the year’s best, we had no clue what else the LFF was going to feature. Well, now we know, and it looks to be pretty great.
For 2018, the LFF will host 21 World Premieres, 9 International Premieres and 29 European Premieres. And in addition to the competition, special presentations, and galas, this year’s festival will also show a thrilling range of new world cinema in sections Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Experimenta, Family and Create – which provide pathways for audiences to navigate the extensive program.
Amanda Nevill, Chief Executive, BFI said, “Opening doors for everyone is at the heart of the BFI’s purpose and the BFI London Film Festival is the ultimate platform for filmmakers, established and new, to showcase their latest work to audiences in a city renowned for welcoming cosmopolitan creativity. The Festival’s great programme always challenges our global perspective with fresh ideas and viewpoints, something so valuable at this extraordinary moment when we, as a nation are so engaged in a passionate debate about the UK’s future.”
“We have the great pleasure and privilege at the LFF to be both a public Festival, bringing the best global cinema to the UK’s diverse and adventurous audiences, but also playing a key role in supporting producers, sales agents and distributors to launch their films. It’s our goal that LFF offers films to satisfy any cinema goer. We want to offer 12 days of pleasure – whether it’s being challenged to think about the world, or indeed the movies in a different way, or just strapping yourself in for the ride,” said Tricia Tuttle, Festival Artistic Director.
The BFI London Film Festival begins October 10.
Here’s the full list of films selected:
OFFICIAL COMPETITION
As previously announced, the Official Competition recognises inspiring, inventive and distinctive filmmaking, and includes the following shortlisted titles:
BIRDS OF PASSAGE, Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra’s sprawling exploration of family conflict and tribal warfare;
DESTROYER, Karyn Kusama’s brooding thriller about a jaded police detective haunted by her past;
HAPPY NEW YEAR, COLIN BURSTEAD., Ben Wheatley’s poignantly funny and razor-sharp observation of English family dysfunction;
HAPPY AS LAZZARO, Alice Rohrwacher’s delightful genre-bending rumination on the fate of innocence;
IN FABRIC, Peter Strickland’s haunting ghost story starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Gwendoline Christie, following the life of a cursed dress as it passes from person to person, with devastating consequences;
JOY, Sudabeh Mortezai’s affecting drama that tackles the vicious cycle of sex trafficking in modern Europe;
THE OLD MAN &THE GUN, a brilliantly entertaining crime caper directed by David Lowery, starring Robert Redford, Sissy Spacek and Casey Affleck;
SHADOW, Zhang Yimou’s stylish martial arts thriller set during China’s Three Kingdom’s era (AD 220-280);
SUNSET, Academy Award®-winner László Nemes’ fugue-like meditation on the end of an empire;
TOO LATE TO DIE YOUNG, Dominga Sotomayor’s woozily gorgeous evocation of life on the fringe of society in Chile, after Pinochet’s fall
FIRST FEATURE COMPETITION – SUTHERLAND AWARD
Titles in consideration for the Sutherland Award in the First Feature Competition recognising an original and imaginative directorial debut are:
THE CHAMBERMAID, (dir. Lila Avilés). This hopeful drama sees Eve, a young chambermaid at a luxurious Mexico City hotel, confront the monotony of long workdays with quiet examinations of forgotten belongings and budding friendships that nourish her newfound and determined dream for a better life.
THE DAY I LOST MY SHADOW is the moving debut feature of Syrian director Soudade Kaadan. Sana is living with her eight year old son whilst her husband works in Saudi Arabia. A trip to Damascus sees Sana brutally confronted to the devastating effects of war, and the fate of her countrypeople.
DEAD PIGS, Cathy Yan’s freewheeling, multicultural comedy was a Special Jury Prize-winner at Sundance Film 2018 and sees a bumbling pig farmer, a feisty salon owner, a sensitive busboy, an expat architect and a disenchanted rich girl converge and collide as thousands of dead pigs float down the river towards a rapidly-modernizing Shanghai.
GIRL is Lukas Dhont’s award-winning feature debut, and bestowed with the coveted Queer Palm and Golden Camera Awards at the Cannes Film Festival this year. A richly empathetic and beautifully realised coming-of-age story about a transgender aspiring ballet dancer.
HOLIDAY, Isabella Eklöf’s arresting debut is a disturbing tale of power, exploitation and complicity in this modern, dark gangster tale set in the beautiful port city of Bodrum on the Turkish Riviera.
JOURNEY TO A MOTHER’S ROOM is Celia Rico Clavellino’s debut feature. An intimate and tender drama, exploring the sense of loss experienced by a mother and daughter when the daughter prepares to leave home for the first time.
ONLY YOU is the debut feature from British filmmaker Harry Wootliff. Josh O’Connor and Laia Costa play a couple who, after a one-night stand, fall madly in love only to then find daily life putting up barriers to their happiness.
RAY & LIZ is Turner-prize nominated and Deutsche Börse Prize-winning artist Richard Billingham’s first feature film. Recreating visceral family memories and desperate living in Thatcher’s Britain, this is a universal story of everyday conflicts, loneliness, love and loss.
SONI, Ivan Ayr’s class-conscious debut, depicts a fresh slice of feminist policing, Indian style in this drama exploring the solidarity between a fiery female officer and her superior.
WILDLIFE, the absorbing directorial debut from Paul Dano based on Richard Ford’s titular novel, sees Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal play a couple on the rocks following a move to suburban Montana, in this elegant 1950s-set, emotionally powerful melodrama;
DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION – GRIERSON AWARD
The Grierson Award in the Documentary Competition category recognises cinematic documentaries with integrity, originality, and social or cultural significance. This year the Festival is screening:
BISBEE ‘17, the arresting documentary from Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, LFF 2016), blends fiction and reality with startling effect. An old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border finally reckons with its darkest day: the deportation of 1200 immigrant miners exactly 100 years ago. Locals collaborate to stage recreations of their controversial past.
DREAM AWAY, sees co-directors Marouan Omara and Johanna Domke document the surreal world of Sharm El Sheikh, three years after the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 as a group of hotel staff reflect on their life, hopes and dreams in a deserted Egyptian holiday resort.
EVELYN, Academy Award®-nominated director Orlando von Einsiedel (Virunga) turns the camera on his own family as they attempt to cope with a devastating loss. On a walking odyssey across the United Kingdom, three siblings must confront a past they’ve been unable to talk about, whilst simultaneously repairing the fractures in their own relationships.
JOHN MCENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION , narrated by Mathieu Amalric and directed by Julien Farau (Un Regard Neuf sur Olympia 52), this entertaining and innovative archive documentary captures volatile tennis star John McEnroe at the height of his success, during the final of the 1984 French Open with Ivan Lendl.
THE PLAN THAT CAME FROM THE BOTTOM UP, from director Steve Sprung tells the inspiring story of the Lucas Plan, a plan to avoid job losses concocted by the ambitiously pioneering factory workers, that became the starting point for an incisive account of our current and future economic climate – including the wind turbine, hybrid car, heat pump and energy efficient housing.
PUTIN’S WITNESSES, from award-winning exiled Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky (Let Us Have Power) uses first-hand footage he shot of Boris Yeltsin, Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin to deliver a damning indictment of the early stages of Putin’s presidency.
THE RAFT, (dir. Marcus Lindeen) tells the hidden story behind what has been described as ‘one of the strangest group experiments of all time’ on the salaciously dubbed ‘Sex Raft’ through extraordinary archive material and a reunion of the surviving members of the expedition
THEATRE OF WAR is Lola Arias’ innovative documentary revealing the personal stories of both British and Argentinean veterans whose lives were deeply affected by Falklands War, timed to mark the 35th anniversary
WHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD’S ON FIRE? is award-winning filmmaker Robert Minervini’s thought-provoking and all-too-relevant documentary, following a Louisiana community during the summer of 2017 during the aftermath of a police shooting that sent shockwaves throughout the country.
YOUNG AND ALIVE by Matthieu Bareyre, documents a young community in Paris whose lives were changed irrevocably by the terror attacks of 2015.. Led by new faces and unheard groups with pioneering values and ideals they open a new dialogue, challenge the state and get ready for a new kind of revolution.
SHORT FILM AWARD
The Short Film Award recognises short form works with a unique cinematic voice and a confident handling of chosen theme and content. This year the festival is screening:
ANOTHER DECADE, dir. Morgan Quaintaince
DE NATURA, dir. Lucile Hadžihalilovic
THE FIELD (LE CHAMP DE MAIS) dir. Sandhya Suri
HELLO, RAIN, dir. C J ‘Fiery’ Obassi
LASTING MARKS, DIR Charlie Lyne
LEASH, dir. Harry Lighton
MONELLE, dir. Diego Marcon
SALAM, DIR. Claire Fowler
SOLAR WALK, dir Réka Bucsi
VESLEMØY’S SONG, DIR. Sofia Bohdanowicz
STRANDS
The Festival programme is organised in sections to encourage discovery and to open up the Festival to new audiences. The strands are: Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Family, Treasures and Experimenta.
Here are some of the highlights to be found in these strands.
LOVE
Sweet, passionate, tough – Love is a complex and many-splendoured thing and this selection charts the highs and lows of many kinds of love from around the globe. The Love Gala, in association with Time Out, is the European Premiere of Barry Jenkins’ distinctive drama, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK.
For anyone who has ever loved a boyband, Jessica Leski’s funny, engaging documentary, I USED TO BE NORMAL: A BOYBAND FANGIRL STORY, is a glitter-covered, cross-generational love letter to boybands and the girls who love them, that will have you bopping along. Starring Golden Globe-winner Matt Bomer, John Butler’s PAPI CHULO is a tender yet sharp cross-cultural comedy drama about love and loneliness, in which a heartbroken Los Angeles weatherman tries to fill the void left by his Latino ex-boyfriend by ‘hiring’ a middle-aged migrant worker to be his friend. Ali Jaberansari’s TEHRAN: CITY OF LOVE follows three lonely characters looking for romance and connection in the city of Tehran; the film’s pitch-perfect deadpan humour helps paint a picture of the city as you’ve never seen it before. A critical and commercial success in the US, Morgan Neville’s WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? is a heartfelt and entrancing documentary focusing on Fred Rogers, the beloved children’s TV presenter who redefined entertainment for the young. Toni Erdmann star Sandra Hüller returns to the screen for Thomas Stuber’s poetic workplace romance IN THE AISLES, set in the seemingly banal universe of a wholesale supermarket; sometimes you just have to look differently at the everyday to discover something magical in its routine. Nijla Mumin’s JINN, telling the story of a black LA teenager torn between traditional Islam and notoriety for becoming the popular #HalalHottie, gives a powerful take on identity and sexuality, exploring a seldom-shown sector of youth. Writer-director Shin Dong-seok delivers a devastating debut with LAST CHILD, an emotionally wrenching family drama that heralds a serious new voice in Korean cinema.
DEBATE
Representing films that amplify, scrutinize, argue and surprise, Debate thrives on conversation, which is never more engaging than when the world outside the cinema is reflected back at us. This year’s Debate Gala is Nadine Labaki’s politically-charged fable, CAPERNAUM.
AN IMPOSSIBLE LOVE, Catherine Corsini’s powerful moving drama, explores the unconditional love between a mother and daughter in 1950’s France and how the torments of love are carried on from generation to generation. Radu Jude, celebrated director of Aferim!, Scarred Hearts and The Dead Nation, returns with I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS BARBARIANS, another controversial and illuminating foray into the darker side of Romania’s history, exploring ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front. Juliette Binoche and Guillaume Canet lead the cast in Olivier Assayas’ NON-FICTION, a wryly comic look at the quandaries of the publishing world. In Sara Colangelo’s THE
KINDERGARTEN TEACHER, Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a career-best performance as a kindergarten teacher who finds herself in an ethical quagmire after discovering the poetic talents of a precocious student. THE VICE OF HOPE is Edoardo De Angelis’ gritty, gripping and ultimately uplifting depiction of a woman desperately striving to escape a life of vice and criminality. FREEDOM FIELDS, Naziha Arebi’s social documentary set in post-revolution Libya, charts the six-year journey of Libya’s nascent women’s football team – a path never short of obstacles – as the country descends into civil war. Paddy Breathnach’s ROSIE, with screenplay by Roddy Doyle, is a moving and fiercely gripping response to Ireland’s current housing crisis, telling the story of a Dublin family searching for a roof for the night. TOUCH ME NOT, Romanian director Adina Pintilie’s Berlin Golden Bear winner, is a bold, provocative film about one woman struggling with her fear of intimacy.
LAUGH
From laugh-out-loud comedy, to dry and understated, Laugh celebrates humour in all its forms. This year’s Laugh
Gala, in association with Empire magazine, sees Terry Gilliam return to the Festival with the UK Premiere of THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE.
The Festival will present the World Premiere of comedian Simon Amstell’s BENJAMIN, an affecting, bittersweet comedy about being weird and struggling for a connection, in which a rising young filmmaker is thrown into emotional turmoil by a burgeoning romance and the upcoming premiere of his second feature. In the funny, life-affirming documentary BILL MURRAY STORIES: LIFE LESSONS LEARNED FROM A MYTHICAL MAN, director Tommy Avalone gleefully explores various urban legends around Hollywood’s most elusive star: world-weary Ghostbuster, cynical Groundhog Day-tripper or enlightened life guru? From the makers of Hunt for the Wilderpeople comes the hilarious and unashamedly feminist comedy, THE BREAKER UPPERERS; packed full of awkward, dry Kiwi humour, the film stars writer/directors Madeline Sami and Jackie van Beek as two women who set up an agency to break couples up as a way to avoid moving on with their own lives. Bill Nighy, Sam Riley and Alice Lowe star in SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER, Carl Hunter’s stylish and heartfelt comedy-drama about a Scrabble-obsessed tailor searching for a lost son. Mahmoud Sabbagh’s delightful romcom Barakah Meets Barakah played in LFF 2016 to great success; his tougher follow-up, the radical black comedy AMRA AND THE SECOND MARRIAGE, exposes Saudi cultural hypocrisy with irony and wit, with a middle-aged housewife forced to take drastic measures when she learns her husband will take a second, younger spouse. Perfect for lovers of the absurd, Whitney Horn and Lev Kalman’s TWO PLAINS AND A FANCY is the world’s first psychedelic ‘Spa Western’, a witty, trippy and discursively delightful jaunt across Colorado, featuring a fabulous cast that includes Jeune Femme’s Laetitia Dosch; silly and sincerely mindexpanding, this is one journey where digressions are more important than the destination.
DARE
In your face, up-front and arresting films in Dare take you out of, and beyond, your comfort zone. The Dare Gala is Ali Abbasi’s audacious Scandinavian fantasy, BORDER.
Amander Kramer’s LADYWORLD, starring Annalise Basso and Maya Hawke, is a psychological portrait of eight teenage girls trapped in a shadowy dwelling where tensions run high and nothing is ever quite what it seems.
Aaron Schimberg’s CHAINED FOR LIFE, a pulpy comedy challenging preconceptions of physical beauty, sees a Hollywood actress struggle to connect with her disfigured co-star on the set of a European auteur’s trashy B-movie.
Stand by Me meets Kafka in SUBURBAN BIRDS, Qiu Shen’s dreamy debut, telling the parallel and intertwining stories of an engineer investigating subsidence, and a group of children on an impossible quest.
THE FLOWER is Mariano Llinás’ bold and beguiling cinematic adventure on a truly epic scale, (808 minutes + intervals), about the nature of film itself, structured across three parts and six very different narrative episodes.
In Darko Štante’s CONSEQUENCES, a provocative Slovenian coming-of-age tale, a teenage tearaway is forced to face up to his actions, and confront his burgeoning sexuality.
In DOGMAN, Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone presents a masterful tale of twisted friendship, not-so-petty crime, and revenge, set in a seedy coastal town on the outskirts of Rome.
THE IMAGE BOOK, legendary director Jean-Luc Godard’s latest offering, pushes his exploration of words, sounds and images to vivid new extremes in a complex, dizzying mix of film, essay and collage.
Craig William MacNeil’s captivating drama LIZZIE sees Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart retell the strange and fascinating case of Lizzie Borden.
THRILL
Thrill features nerve-shredders that’ll get your adrenalin pumping and will keep you on the edge of your seat. This year’s Thrill Gala in association with Sight & Sound is Lee Chang-dong’s spellbinding, critically acclaimed thriller BURNING. The Festival will present the European Premiere of Kim Nguyen’s THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT; Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård are sensational as scheming cousins on a lucrative but ethically dubious mission in this fast, funny and topical technological caper. Award-winning Norwegian cinematographer John Andreas Andersen makes his directorial debut with THE QUAKE; could reports of subterranean tremors beneath the city of Oslo predict that catastrophe is imminent? With truly spectacular effects and exceptional performances, Andersen’s sequel to The Wave (LFF 2015) is another tension-filled, high-stakes geo-thriller. Gustav Möller’s Sundance Audience Award-winner THE GUILTY is a superb single-location nerve-shredder about a flawed cop that expertly ramps up the tension. Oldboy meets The Usual Suspects in Lee Hae-Yeong’s hall-of-mirrors thriller BELIEVER, as a dogged South Korean narcotics officer tries to smoke out a shadowy drug baron. Alonso Ruizpalacios’ MUSEUM, starring Gael García Bernal and Simon Russell Beale, is a dazzlingly enjoyable heist thriller about an ambitious plan to loot one of the World’s most famous museums. Confirming the promise he showed with his powerful Of Good Report (LFF 2013), in SEW THE WINTER TO MY SKIN, Jahmil XT Qubeka takes us into the heart of Pre-Apartheid South Africa with this superb thriller based on a true story; a visceral exploration of the colonial displacement that sowed the seeds for one of the most viciously racist, political regimes in history. Rave culture, lost love and brotherly bonds are seen through the prism of a narcotic haze in DUBLIN OLDSCHOOL, director Dave Tynan’s witty, adrenaline rush of an Irish drama, featuring rising star Emmet Kirwan. Sara Blecher (Ayanda, LFF 2015) returns with a markedly different film, MAYFAIR, a groundbreaking, multi-cultural African gangster thriller where an estranged son must break the rules to save his family and their criminal empire. The controversial exploits of baby-faced Argentine serial killer Carlos Robledo Puch are exhilaratingly reinterpreted in Luis Ortega’s stylish biopic EL ANGEL: a true story so eccentric, it could easily be mistaken for fiction.
CULT
From the mind-altering and unclassifiable to fantasy, sci-fi and horror, in the Cult strand, the dark side is welcomed. This year’s Cult Gala is Sam Levinson’s ferocious femme exploitationer, ASSASSINATION