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As one of the world’s most accessible film festivals, the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) isn’t one of those exclusive events that’s restricted to the movers and shakers of the film world. Everyone is welcome at an 11-day film-athon that brings new movies, TV series, premieres, talks and other movie-related events to London and several other UK cities every October.
This year’s LFF boasts another impressive and carefully curated line-up of movies, shorts and extended reality works – all of which are on sale to the general public now. But with 112 films and other works to pick from, starting with Steve McQueen’s Blitz on October 9 and ending with Pharrell Williams doc Piece by Piece on October 20, a steer can come in handy. Here are 12 films and TV series to splash out on.
Our pick of the best films at 2024’s LFF, dates and tickets
1. Hard Truths
Rejoice, LFF-ers, because Mike Leigh is back. The hometown hero is bringing his latest – and according to early word from Toronto – typically acute family drama to the festival. Hard Truths reunites him with Secrets & Lies pair Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin. Set in a post-pandemic London and an obituary of sorts to Tory Britain, it follows a sarky, pissed-off Londoner (Jean-Baptiste) who’s at odds with the world. Expect ‘a tough but compassionate intimate study of family life’ made with the Londoner’s unique humanist stamp.
6pm, Mon Oct 14
2.30pm, Wed Oct 16
8.30pm, Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you love: Secrets & Lies
2. Nightbitch
Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? was a spiky, funny true story about a literary forger. Her latest, starring Amy Adams as a mum who turns into a dog, is definitely not a true story but it looks like another sharply observed and winningly perceptive study of a woman at the edge of reason. Adams is never not great – you don’t get six Oscar nominations just by learning your lines – and this should be another must-see showcase for her formidable chops.
6pm, Wed Oct 16
12pm, Thu Oct 17
3pm Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you love: Tully
3. The Franchise
Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes is a towering team-up and the first three episodes of their new HBO superhero satire will be one of the hottest ticket at the fest. Written by Jon Brown and starring Himesh Patel, Jessica Hynes and Richard E Grant, it goes behind the scenes on an MCU-style production as everything goes wrong in increasingly bananas ways. Marvel fans may want to give it a wide-ish berth. Everyone else, form an orderly queue.
Sat Oct 12, 9pm
Book tickets if you love: Tropic Thunder
4. We Live in Time
There’s more to this A24 weepy than that crazy carousel-horse-turned-meme-sensation. More, even, than its stars Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield’s ridiculously entertaining press tour. Because the internet’s current favourite film is the handiwork of Brooklyn director John Crowley, who has real previous in crafting bittersweet romances. This one matches up Garfield and Pugh’s Londoners when she runs him over, and follows the car-crossed lovers through their eventful life together.
6pm, Thu Oct 17
11.30pm, Fri Oct 18
9.15pm, Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you love: About Time
5. Anora
Sean Baker is already an LFF veteran, having wowed the fest with The Florida Project in 2017. This year, he’s taking it up a level by bringing his newly enshrined Palme d’Or winner Anora for its UK premiere and discussing it via a screentalk on October 12. Mikey Madison plays Ani, a no-BS exotic dancer who agrees to play escort to the spoilt son of a Russian oligarch for a tonne of cash. Like a cross between an old-fashioned screwball and a panic attack, it’s funny and full-on.
9.10pm, Fri Oct 11
11.45am, Tue Oct 15
8pm, Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you love: Uncut Gems
6. All We Imagine As Light
Indian director Payal Kapadia’s depiction of the lives of three Mumbai women was a major event at Cannes this year, and its LFF screenings could be roadblocked too. If you can get tickets, you’re in for a gorgeous, powerful story of female solidarity that crosses generational divides and ultimately lifts the soul.
9pm, Fri Oct 18
12pm, Sat Oct 19
9pm, Wed Oct 16
Book tickets if you love: Cléo from 5 to 7
7. Dahomey
We were smitten with Mati Diop’s debut Atlantiques in 2019, a Senegalese romantic drama made with a supernatural touch, and her latest is similarly touched by magic. This year’s Berlin Golden Bear winner, Dahomey is one of the big-hitting documentaries on this year’s LFF programme: a travelogue and treatise on the restitution of stolen art – in this case, from the old kingdom of Dahomey in modern-day Benin.
5.15pm, Sat Oct 12
6.30pm, Mon Oct 14
9pm, Tue Oct 15
Book tickets if you love: Concerning Violence
8. One to One: John & Yoko
Kevin Macdonald told Whitney Houston’s powerful, often painful story in the kaleidoscopic Whitney. His latest portrait of musical icons sees the Scottish filmmaker turns to John Lennon and Yoko Ono and their 1972 charity concert in New York. Expect a vivid collage of unseen footage from the Lennon archives, home movies and 16mm concert footage – and a vivid time capsule back to a chaotic, radical and creative moment in American life.
6.10pm, Tue Oct 14
12pm, Wed Oct 15
8.30pm, Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you love: Moonage Daydream
9. The Extraordinary Miss Flower
Billed as ‘part film, part theatre, part fever dream’, this one is at the more experimental edge of the LFF programme and should be all the more intriguing for it. Co-directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, who made superlative Nick Cave doc 20,000 Days on Earth, it was inspired by the discovery of a suitcase of letters sent to the titular Geraldine Flower in the ’60s and ’70s and pieces her story together with beguiling musical accompaniment from Icelandic singer-songwriter Emilíana Torrini.
5.30pm, Sat Oct 19
3.45pm, Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you love: 20,000 Days on Earth
10. A Real Pain
Time Out’s own special presentation at the festival is a gem of a road trip movie that unpacks the generational trauma of the Holocaust in funny, awkward and deeply humane style. Writer-director Jesse Eisenberg and Succession’s Kieran Culkin play bickering cousins who travel to Poland to honour their beloved grandma, thrashing out their own, more contemporary angst in the process.
6pm, Sun Oct 13
3.15pm, Tue Oct 15
12pm, Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you loved: Everything Is Illuminated
11. Viet and Nam
One of our favourites from this year’s Cannes line-up, this queer love story from Vietnam is as an emotionally rich and rewarding as anything on this year’s line-up. Set in 2001 with the country facing up to the legacy of war, it follows two loved-up coal miners who seem destined to take different paths in a quest to escape a haunted, oppressive society.
6pm, Wed Oct 16
12pm, Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you love: All of Us Strangers
12. The Room Next Door
Pedro Almodóvar’s first feature film in English arrives in London with a Venice Golden Lion in its carry-on, a heap of awards buzz and two actresses at the top of their game. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton play estranged friends who reconnect when one of them is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Could this be the Spaniard’s answer to Terms of Endearment? It’ll definitely be on of the LFF’s blue riband films this year.
6pm, Sat Oct 19
11.45pm, Sun Oct 20
Book tickets if you love: Still Alice
The 2024 BFI London Film Festival runs from October 9-20. Tickets go on sale to the general public on September 17 from the official site.
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