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Mike Leigh, Andrea Arnold, Asif Kapadia are a few of the hometown heroes bringing their new films to this year’s BFI London Film Festival.
The full line-up for this year’s London Film Festival (LFF) line-up has just been announced and it boasts a mighty 255 films – feature length and shorts – plus plenty of free events and immersive works via the LFF Expanded strand.
On the programme is Leigh’s new London drama Hard Truths, Arnold’s Cannes-acclaimed Bird and Kapadia’s dystopian docudrama 2073.
LFF audiences will get an early look at Daniel Craig’s much-praised performance in Queer, Luca Guadagnino’s William Burroughs adaptation set in Latin America.
Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language drama, the American-set The Room Next Door, is also making its UK bow at the festival, alongside Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora, Maria, a Maria Callas biopic starring Angelina Jolie, and RaMell Ross’s Colson Whitehead adaptation The Nickel Boys.
Brooklyn director John Crowley is bringing his new romantic drama We Live in Time to the fest, starring Andrew Garfield, Florence Pugh and that cheery carousel horse.
Time Out’s own special presentation this year is A Real Pain. Written, directed by and starring Jesse Eisenberg, it’s a bittersweet road trip movie about the legacy of the Holocaust through the prism of two bickering Polish-American cousins (Eisenberg and Succession’s Kieran Culkin).
Represented on the programme are 112 films and other works made by female and non-binary creators – or 44 percent of the line-up, up from 42 percent in 2023.
Among them are Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch, Sandhya Suri’s police drama Santosh, Mati Diop doc Dahomey, Sadie Frost’s Twiggy, and Noémie Merlant’s The Balconettes.
Fans of LGBTQ+ cinema will want to check out this year’s BFI Flare gala, A Nice Indian Boy, a romantic comedy starring Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff. Yes, Deadpool’s Dopinder and Frozen’s Kristoff together at last.
Fans of international cinema are richly catered for with offerings from 80 countries and in 64 languages. Jia Zhangke’s Caught By the Tides, Viet & Nam, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, Palestinian drama Thank You For Banking With Us, and Hong Sangsoo and Isabelle Huppert team-up A Traveler’s Need are all there for anyone wanting to lend added a sheen of worldly sophistication to their Letterboxd account.
Steve McQueen’s Blitz starring Saoirse Ronan is opening the festival on October 9, with Pharrell Williams’ doc, Piece By Piece, bringing the curtain down on October 20. The full programme is announced on September 4.
To get behind the scenes of the filmmaking process, look out for an illustrious line-up of screen talks. Arnold, Leigh, Steve McQueen, Denis Villeneuve, Lupita Nyong’o, Zoe Saldaña and Daniel Kaluuya are among those sharing their wit, wisdom and experience with LFF audiences this year.
As in recent years, the London Film Festival reaches far beyond the capital. London’s Southbank – the Royal Festival Hall, BFI IMAX, BFI Southbank, and Bargehouse for the LFF Expanded XR strand – represents its main home, with screenings also taking place at five London partner cinemas: Curzon Mayfair, Curzon Soho, ICA, Prince Charles Cinema and Vue West End.
There are multiple LFF venues outside London, too, including Nottingham’s Broadway Cinema, Cardiff’s Chapter Arts Centre, Glasgow Film Theatre, MAC in Birmingham, Belfast’s Queen’s Film Theatre, Showroom Cinema in Sheffield, Newcastle’s Tyneside Cinema and Watershed in Bristol.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on September 17. Head to the official festival site for all the info.
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