THE 67th BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES FULL 2023 PROGRAMME.

The 67th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) in partnership with American Express today announces the full programme line-up, which will be presented in cinemas and online, across the UK. Over twelve days from 4 – 15 October, the LFF will invite audiences to return to its fantastic flagship venues in the heart of London – BFI Southbank and the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, which between them host Galas, Special Presentations and Official Competition. Films and Series from all strands of the Festival will screen in many of central London’s iconic cinemas with a curated selection of features also being showcased at 9 partner venues across the UK.

The LFF will present a compelling and diverse programme of films, shorts, series and immersive works from 92 countries, featuring 79 languages playing across the 12 days of the festival. This includes 99 works made by female and non-binary filmmakers – 39% of the programme.

An impressive number of major alumni filmmakers return to LFF including: Martin Scorsese, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sally El Hosaini, Jonathan Glazer, Steve McQueen, Michel Gondry, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Adura Onashile, Bertrand Bonello, Robin Campillo, Lukas Moodysson, Maite Alberdi, William Oldroyd, DK Welchman, Hugh Welchman, James Benning, Claire Simon, Angela Schanelec, Nicolas Philibert, Lila Avilés, Tatiana Huezo, Victoria Linares Villegas, Michel Franco, Quentin Dupieux, Catherine Breillat, Mohamed Ben Attia, Molly Manning Walker, Kitty Green, Aki Kaurismäki, Marco Bellocchio, Hirokazu Koreeda, Amat Escalante, Nuhash Humayun, Kaouther Ben Hania, Trần Anh Hùng, Baloji, Marie Amachoukeli, Jesse Lewis Reece, Cédric Kahn, Alexandre O. Philippe, Ladj Ly, Alex Gibney, James Krishna Floyd, Dominic Leclerc, Frederick Wiseman, Fawzia Mirza, Pat Collins, Deepa Mehta, Bill Ross, Turner Ross and Mahalia Belo.

The Festival is also introducing audiences to a thrilling new generation of international filmmakers with 47 debut features in LFF from: Mika Gustafson, Raven Jackson, Erica Tremblay, Randall Park, Adura Onashile, Noora Niasari, Laura Moss, Mary Helena Clark, Mike Gibisser, Fox Maxy, Zeno Graton, Myriam U. Birara, Savanah Leaf, Agniia Galdanova, Cyrielle Raingou, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, Leandro Koch, Paloma Schachmann, Michael Lukk Litwak, Chloe Abrahams, Felipe Carmona, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Julia Jackman, Moin Hussain, Naqqash Khalid, Kibwe Tavares, Mohamed Kordofani, Baloji, Zoljargal Purevdash, Amjad Al Rasheed, Lillah Halla, Amanda Nell Eu, Stéphan Castang, Rosine Mbakam, Thien An Pham, Seán Devlin, Chris Pine, Ernst De Geer, David Allen, Rachel Ramsay, James Erskine, Cyril Aris, Caroline Ingvarsson, Victor Iriarte, Neo Sora, Tulapop Saenjaroen, Fawzia Mirza, Ali Catterall, Jane Giles, Thomas Hyland and Dana Kavelina.

Every feature and series will screen to audiences in the UK for the very first time, with many shown publicly for the first time ever anywhere in the world. Premieres include 29 World Premieres (14 features, 2 series and 13 shorts), 7 International Premieres (6 features and 1 short) and 30 European Premieres (22 features, 1 series and 7 shorts). World Premieres from filmmakers and artists include: Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya’s THE KITCHEN which closes the festival, CHICKEN RUN: DAWN OF THE NUGGET by the award-winning British stop-motion giant Aardman Studios, Immersive artwork MY TRIP by Bjarne Melgaard, coming of age rom-com BONUS TRACK by Julia Jackman, Daniel Kokotajlo’s STARVE ACRE, THE BOOK OF CLARENCE by Jeymes Samuel, THE BUCKINGHAM MURDERS by Hansal Mehta, Theresa Ikoko’s GRIME KIDS from the Series strand, the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation restoration of Michael Powell’s 1960 masterpiece PEEPING TOM in association with STUDIOCANAL, and the BFI National Archive and The Film Foundation’s restoration of Horace Ové’s pioneering 1975 debut PRESSURE. International Premieres include SALTBURN, directed, produced and written by Emerald Fennell which opens the festival, as well as collaboration between Deepa Mehta and Sirat Taneja I AM SIRAT and THIS IS GOING TO BE BIG by Thomas Charles Hyland. Major European Premieres include ONE LIFE by James Hawes starring Anthony Hopkins, EXPATS directed by Lulu Wang starring Nicole Kidman, TOGETHER 99 by Lukas Moodyson, DEAR JASSI by Tarsem Singh, Alexander Payne’s THE HOLDOVERS and ALL OF US STRANGERS by Andrew Haigh.

Kristy Matheson, BFI London Film Festival Director, said: “In preparing this 2023 festival, my colleagues and I have been endlessly buoyed by the artistry, ideas and talented individuals and communities that have come into our orbit. It’s now time to share all this wonder and we can’t wait for audiences to experience it all this October here in London and across the UK with LFF on Tour and online at BFI Player.”

Ben Roberts, CEO, BFI said: “Cinema has reclaimed its status as a cultural force, an art-form that can spark a conversation around the world, and which will resound loudly through the wide-ranging line-up of essential cinema that our 67th edition of the BFI London Film Festival will offer. I am particularly excited that the Festival will be sharing the exhilarating experience of new work from global filmmakers alongside so many debut features from the UK this year. I congratulate Kristy on her first LFF programme and the talented team who continue to find creative ways to reach new audiences, including through our free programme.  We couldn’t do it without our loyal supporters, including our principal partner of 14 years American Express, so huge thanks to them and our many other sponsors, funders, partners, including the UK Government and the UK’s National Lottery players who do so much to enable both the Festival and our work throughout the year.”

Audiences will enjoy a rich programme of fiction, documentary, animation, artists’ moving image, short film, newly restored classics from the world’s archives, and exciting international works made in immersive and episodic forms. LFF for Free will return to BFI Southbank with a vibrant wide-ranging programme of talks, short films and immersive works alongside imaginative, playful events and filmmaker Q&As, both in-person at BFI Southbank and at Gallery@OXO plus short films online on BFI Player – all completely free of charge. The Festival will also be accessible UK-wide via a specially curated programme of 14 free short films on BFI Player, which viewers will be able to enjoy from 4 – 15  October.

The LFF is delighted to invite audiences once again to its London hubs on the South Bank and in the West End, with both areas remaining at the heart of the BFI London Film Festival experience. Galas will screen at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall on an 18-metre screen with full high-spec 7.1 channel surround sound, ensuring every seat in the over-2000-seater venue is the best in the house. Titles from the main programme will screen at a range of cinemas across the city from the BFI’s own South Bank Cinemas – BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX – to fantastic partner venues Vue West End, the Prince Charles Cinema, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Curzon Soho and Curzon Mayfair, each of them bringing audiences up close and personal with filmmaking talents from the UK and across the globe. Festival venues across the UK include Broadway Cinema in Nottingham, Chapter in Cardiff, Glasgow Film Theatre, HOME in Manchester, MAC in Birmingham, Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast, Showroom Cinema in Sheffield, Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle and Watershed in Bristol.

The LFF’s Competition sections celebrate a range of cinematic talents premiering at this year’s Festival and feature an incredible range of filmmakers from across the world. 11 films will screen in Official Competition, competing for the Best Film Award, which showcases inspiring, inventive and distinctive international filmmaking, while 11 films will also screen in the First Feature Competition, competing for the Sutherland Award, which recognises the most original and imaginative directorial debut. The Grierson Award will acknowledge feature-length documentaries with integrity, originality and social or cultural significance; 8 films will screen in the Documentary Competition. The Short Film Award will recognise short-form works with a unique cinematic voice, with 10 films selected in this category. The winners of these four competitive awards will be chosen by LFF Awards Juries, the members of which will be announced in the coming weeks and the winning films will be announced of the final day of the Festival – 15 October – with surprise screenings of the winning feature films taking place that night. The ever-popular Audience Award will also return for 2023, with audiences being able to vote for their favourite work they saw at this year’s Festival, be it fiction, documentary, short or XR work.

As previously announced, LFF Expanded the Festival’s programme of Immersive Art and Extended Realities will run from 6-22 October and invite audiences to explore and experience powerful new ways of telling stories on screen. Featuring British and international artists, filmmakers and creative teams, such as Shirin Neshat, Tania de Montaigne, Bjarne Melgaard, Karen Palmer, Darren Emerson and Anagram, this year’s programme offers audiences a huge diversity of approaches to storytelling at the cutting edge of screen technology. This year, LFF Expanded finds a new home at Bargehouse at OXO Tower Wharf, in the heart of the cultural hub of the South Bank, hosting 9 projects with free work also being showcased at the nearby Gallery@OXO. The programme also includes two free augmented reality walks, additional projects will appear in the largest digital space in Europe cultural hotspot Outernet London and features a groundbreaking audiovisual spectacle at Science Gallery London.

In its third year, the LFF Series strand returns to showcase compelling new episodic programming including EXPATS directed by Lulu Wang following the vibrant lives of a close-knit expatriate community with an exciting ensemble cast. Also featured in the strand are the World Premieres of Theresa Ikoko’s hotly-anticipated GRIME KIDS, inspired by the book by DJ Target and detailing the emergence of the East London grime scene in the early 2000s; and heist series CULPRITS by J Blakeson’s thrilling twist of the heist genre, starring Nathan Stewart-Jarrett and Gemma Arterton.

The Festival aims to be inclusive, accessible and welcoming, and alongside the major LFF For Free programme, which will be announced in mid-September, there will be a limited number of £10 tickets available to all London screenings, as well as £5 tickets for those aged 25 & Under. Young cinema goers and emerging professionals can also enrich their experience with the Festival through our FAMILY screenings (with tickets priced at £5 for children and from £10 for adults), our education programmes, and via events and screenings for young aspiring professionals presented with BFI Film Academy and the BFI Future Film Festival.

A full programme of events and screenings is available for press and industry delegates across the Festival. Within a programme of Spotlight talks and panel discussions, global industry leaders, writers, directors and producers will be talking about urgent subjects that are top of the industry’s agenda, sharing their insights and experience with delegates. Full details will be announced in the coming weeks.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/lff