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Tickets for this year’s BFI London Film Festival will be going on sale to the general public tomorrow morning (10am, September 16), and as always they’ll be going like the hottest of cakes. There’s plenty of big hitters on the line-up, from The Boss biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Yorgos Lanthimos’s sci-fi Bugonia, the latest films from Park Chan-wook (No Other Choice) and Lynne Ramsay (Die My Love), and Jafar Panahi’s magnificent Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident.
But we’ve delved a bit deeper into the programme to recommend a few that might not be on your radar yet. From ghostly Cornish sc-fi films to hard-hitting docudramas to sweat-inducing thrillers, here’s ten films to check out when the festival gets underway on October 8.
Sentimental Value
Joachim Trier reunites with his The Worst Person in the World star Renate Reinsve for a family drama that was treated to a 19-minute standing ovation in Cannes. While LFF-goers will not be expected to clap for that long, the early word is that this is one – which also stars Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning – is another ovation-worthy effort from the Norwegian maestro.
8.45pm, Sun Oct 12 – Royal Festival Hall
2pm, Tue Oct 14 – BFI Southbank
5.50pm, Sun Oct 19 – Curzon Mayfair
The Testament of Ann Lee
The Brutalist’s creators reunite for another epic immigrant tale – this time, a musical with Anna Fastvold directing and Brady Corbet co-writing. The story of 18th century zealot Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried), who channelled her deep grief and repressed sexuality into a new sect called the Shakers, it’s a mighty, cascading opus full of passionate energy and Oscar-winning composer Daniel Blumberg’s songcraft.
5.10pm, Sat Oct 11 – Curzon Mayfair, Screen
8.10pm, Wed Oct 15 – BFI Southbank
Resurrection
A startlingly vivid odyssey through cinema history, Chinese director Bi Gan’s (Long Day's Journey into Night) epic is a film that will fill open minds with indelible visions and dazzling ideas. Best of luck explaining it to your friends afterwards.
5.45pm, Thu Oct 9 – Vue West End
1.05pm, Sat Oct 11 – BFI Southbank
Sirât
We love Oliver Laxe’s crazed, dangerous, jack-knifing road-trip movie so much, we’re presenting it at the London Film Festival. A hypnotic fusion of rave-fuelled mind-bender, missing-person drama and apocalyptic thriller, it’s almost impossible to pin down. Our advice? Join us at BFI IMAX on October 13 and experience it for yourself.
5.30pm, Mon Oct 13 – BFI IMAX
3.40pm Tue Oct 14 – ICA
Rose of Nevada
You can feel the sea wind on your face as George MacKay and Callum Turner board a mysterious fishing vessel and enter a ghostly time-slip sci-fi that’s given a lovingly vintage aesthetic by Mark Jenkin. The director behind the brilliant Bait and the bewitching Enys Men, the Cornish auteur makes films like no one else. Don’t miss this one.
6pm, Mon Oct 13 – BFI Southbank
2.50pm, Wed Oct 15 – BFI Southbank
1.25pm, Sat Oct 18 – BFI Southbank
The Secret Agent
If you’re a fan of a pacy, gripping thriller, immediately book tickets for this based-on-real-life Brazilian nerve-shredder from Bacarau’s Kleber Mendonça Filho. Narcos’s Wagner Moura plays a man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time during the violent the final years of a brutal South American military dictatorship.
7.55pm, Tue Oct 14 – BFI Southbank
5.30pm, Wed Oct 15 – Prince Charles Cinema
2.30pm, Sat Oct 18 – Vue West End
Cover-up
Legendary New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh is the subject of this much-praised documentary from Citizenfour filmmaker Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus. It’s the perfect chance to step away from your social feeds and get some geopolitical perspective from a Pulitzer winner who, from Vietnam to Iraq, has been there and reported on it.
5.45pm, Wed Oct 15 – Curzon Soho
3.25pm, Thu Oct 16 – ICA
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Fair warning: this searing recreation of the plight of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl trapped in a car as the IDF close in, is not for the faint of the heart. But it’s one of the most powerful films on this year’s line-up: a docudrama that captures in vignette a vast tragedy. It reduced audiences at the Venice Film Festival to stunned silence. Expect a similar response at its LFF screenings.
9pm, Thu Oct 16 – BFI Southbank
12.15pm, Sat Oct 18 – Curzon Soho Cinema
12.30pm, Sat Oct 18 – Curzon Soho Cinema
My Father’s Shadow
One of the joys of this filmmaker-friendly festival is the chance to get in early with new talent. This year, British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr is one of the names to watch. Set during in Nigerian during the 1993 coup, it’s a story of dads and sons in a time of upheaval. Time Out is calling it ‘a film with the gentle impressionist gaze of Moonlight, the hard-scrabble edge of Bicycle Thieves, and a fourth-wall-breaking daring all of its own’. What more reason do you need?
9pm, Fri Oct 17 – BFI Southbank
12.30pm, Sat Oct 18 – Vue West End
100 Nights of Hero
Putting a queer-coded spin on The Arabian Nights, one-time BFI new talent winner Julia Jackman has packed serious amounts of acting talent (Emma Corrin! Nicholas Galitzine! Maika Monroe! Felicity Jones!) into this adaptation of Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel. To add spice, it’s also the first of Charli XCX’s on-screen performances as the pop star turns actor. It’s the LFF closing film and the buzz is deafening.
7.15pm, Sun Oct 19 – Royal Festival Hall
8pm, Sun Oct 19 – BFI Southbank
8.55pm, Sun Oct 19 – Curzon Mayfair
This year’s BFI London Film Festivals runs October 8-19. Head to the official site to buy tickets now.
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