As previously announced, this year’s Opening Film will be Sony’s ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA THE MUSICAL, directed by Matthew Warchus. The film will receive its World Premiere at LFF gala venue the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, with Warchus expected to attend along with key cast including Emma Thompson, Lashana Lynch and Stephen Graham. The Festival closes with the European Premiere of Rian Johnson’s GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY from Netflix, the followup to 2018’s hugely successful Knives Out, with Rian Johnson and key cast in attendance. The Opening Night film will screen at selected cinemas during the course of the Festival, while the Closing Night film will have preview screenings UK-wide on 16 October, including live red carpet highlights.As previously announced, this year’s Opening Film will be Sony’s ROALD DAHL’S MATILDA THE MUSICAL, directed by Matthew Warchus. The film will receive its World Premiere at LFF gala venue the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, with Warchus expected to attend along with key cast including Emma Thompson, Lashana Lynch and Stephen Graham. The Festival closes with the European Premiere of Rian Johnson’s GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY from Netflix, the followup to 2018’s hugely successful Knives Out, with Rian Johnson and key cast in attendance. The Opening Night film will screen at selected cinemas during the course of the Festival, while the Closing Night film will have preview screenings UK-wide on 16 October, including live red carpet highlights.
HEADLINE GALAS
This year’s American Express Gala is a powerful and poignant story about human connection and the magic of cinema. From one of the world’s most acclaimed directors, Sam Mendes, comes EMPIRE OF LIGHT, which will have its European Premiere at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. A stellar lineup of cast and crew are expected to attend including Mendes, Pippa Harris, Roger Deakins, Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward and Colin Firth.
This year’s American Airlines Gala is a jewel of a tragicomedy, THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, from filmmaker Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri); a shimmering tale of friendship, feuds and Irish identity starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s follow-up to The Revenant sees him return to Mexico with BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLE OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS, an ambitious and visually inventive reflection on the ethics and possibilities of filmmaking.
In the sublime, Hitchcockian noir thriller from Park Chan-wook, DECISION TO LEAVE, a detective gets a little too close to the murder he’s trying to solve; at its centre are the mesmeric performances of Tang Wei and Park Hae-il, with the director working at the dizzying peak of his powers. In LIVING, directed by Oliver Hermanus, Bill Nighy delivers one of the finest performances of his distinguished career. With a script written by Kazuo Ishiguro and based on Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa, Nighy plays a man determined, in the time he has left, to make a mark on the world.
Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro presents Carlo Collodi’s dark fable GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO, about a naive wooden puppet, in dazzling stop-motion animation. The Festival is delighted to screen the World Premiere of this enchanting and magical film, which features an all-star voice-acting cast including Ewan McGregor and Cate Blanchett. Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan star as New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, whose brilliant investigation pulled back the curtain on Harvey Weinstein’s serial abuse of women in SHE SAID, a crackingly good film about female solidarity and the fundamental importance of the fourth estate, from director Maria Schrader.
Florian Zeller directs this blistering adaptation of his acclaimed play THE SON, in which a divorced couple struggle to deal with their teenage son’s mental-health crisis, featuring a career-best performance from Hugh Jackman, alongside Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby and a brief, unforgettable cameo from Anthony Hopkins. The Mayor of London’s Gala is TILL, the stunning second feature by Chinonye Chukwu (Clemency) about Mamie Till’s landmark fight for justice following the abhorrent lynching of her son Emmett in 1955. Starring Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Whoopi Goldberg, Tosin Cole and Haley Bennett, TILL is as relevant now as ever, and intelligent, emotional and gripping from the first shot to the last.
This year’s BFI Patrons’ Gala is Darren Aronofsky’s resplendent film THE WHALE, about a man trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter before it’s too late, starring Brendan Fraser and Sadie Sink, who both give pitch-perfect performances. Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s ‘unfilmable’ cult novel WHITE NOISE is a wonderfully idiosyncratic dark comedy starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, that is the writer-director’s most ambitious and surreal project to date. In THE WONDER, the ever-unpredictable Chilean director Sebastián Lelio ventures to 19th -century Ireland for this domestic psychodrama, which sees religious faith battle against scientific reason. An ambitious and provocative endeavour, the film is grounded by a captivating central performance from Florence Pugh.
SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS
Richard Eyre’s adaptation of Alan Bennett’s acclaimed play ALLELUJAH, about a hospital for the elderly under threat of closure is a lively, witty and acerbic critique starring Jennifer Saunders, Bally Gill, David Bradley, Derek Jacobi and Judi Dench. This often refreshingly angry film stands as testament to two titans of UK culture: Alan Bennett and our threatened NHS. Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry give career-best performances in CAUSEWAY, an astutely observed, quietly impactful story of a US soldier adjusting to life back home. With her remarkably assured debut feature, director Lila Neugebauer has crafted a richly affecting and thoughtful portrait of grief, trauma, co-dependency and the difficulty of moving forward.
Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer star in this year’s Series Special Presentation, THE ENGLISH, a sweeping tale of love and revenge from award-winning television auteur Hugo Blick (An Honourable Woman, Black Earth Rising). THE ENGLISH is stylised filmmaking that both critiques and pays homage to the traditional Western, using it as a vehicle for exploring the toxic foundations of the USA. Joanna Hogg returns to the LFF with an enthralling ghost story, THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER, featuring an astonishing central performance by Tilda Swinton. Embracing some of the heightened stylistic flourishes seen in The Souvenir Part II, this film takes Hogg into exciting new territory, while retaining her distinctive naturalistic signature.
Ali Abbasi’s sophomore feature HOLY SPIDER is a terrifying retelling of the case of the Spider Killer, a serial killer hunting down sex workers in Iran. With blistering intent, Abbasi (Border) reconfigures the tropes of the serial-killer genre, creating a film that not only grapples with the attempt to bring a criminal to justice but examines what really stands for ‘justice’ in this world. Women have been a driving force in the recent Chilean Revolution, as director Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile, Nostalgia for the Light) highlights in the galvanising documentary MY IMAGINARY COUNTRY, a timely testament to the collective power of people uniting to force change.
Like a forgotten treasure from the golden age of British cinema, sweeping romantic drama MY POLICEMAN, boasts an arresting performance from Harry Styles as the titular law enforcer. Director Michael Grandage has crafted a love story that is epic in scope, but intimate in its attention to detail. Winner of the US Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, NANNY is a mesmerising and captivating debut feature from Nikyatu Jusu about a Senegalese nanny working undocumented in New York for a wealthy white family, while her son remains at home in Senegal. This is a complex portrait of labour, privilege and motherhood, with a layered and compelling performance from Anna Diop at its centre.
Newly remastered in 4K by the BFI National Archive for its 25th anniversary, with the funding support of Simon and Harley Hessel, Gary Oldman’s directorial debut NIL BY MOUTH, starring Ray Winstone and Kathy Burke, remains a work of unflinching authenticity and ferocious power. Shot with a visceral, up-close intimacy, its impact remains every bit as searing today. A decade after her award-winning debut My Brother the Devil, Sally El Hosaini returns to the LFF with THE SWIMMERS, a moving true story of a Syrian teenager who dreams of swimming in the Olympics. Working from a script co-written with Jack Thorne that gives so many big feels – from heart-stopping moments of peril to ones of joyous triumph – El Hosaini assuredly directs the story of a young woman’s indomitable will to achieve her dream.
Presented in association with Time Out is Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winning TRIANGLE OF SADNESS. Riotously funny, with a barbed wire-sharp wit, the film dissects our dependence on each other, while also examining the dynamics of power and privilege through the prism of beauty, wealth, class and knowledge. Sarah Polley directs a stellar cast including Frances McDormand, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Ben Whishaw in WOMEN TALKING, a stylish and ambitiously conceived adaptation of Miriam Toews’ bestseller about abuse and solidarity in a remote Mennonite community.
This year’s BFI Flare Special Presentation is THE INSPECTION, Elegance Bratton’s electrifying and deeply personal subversion of the military boot camp movie, where a young gay Black man is targeted for his sexuality while training to be a Marine. The Experimenta Special Presentation is PIAFFE, a playful and sexy debut feature by artist Ann Oren, about a foley artist who goes on a voyage of selfdiscovery as a mysterious horse tail starts to grow from her derriere. It will be screened with short film “U SCANTU”: A DISORDERLY TALE, which reimagines women with supernatural powers in Sicilian folklore as bike-riding teenagers that rock the city with mischievous enchantment.
