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Like Christmas come early for movie-lovers, this year’s BFI London Film Festival is just around the corner. As usual, the festival extends far beyond the capital, with UK-wide cinemas like Broadway in Nottingham and Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast joining a host of London picture houses – and, of course, the BFI Southbank and Royal Festival Hall – in screening films and hosting or simulcasting all the big galas. So, even if you’re hundreds of miles from the fest’s South Bank hub or late to the party in terms of ticket buying, there’s still opportunities ahead to snag seats for even the most in-demand movies and events. And don’t forget that more tickets for some sold out screenings go on sale at 10am on October 1.
The dozen films below include a few of those big hitters, but we’re also flagged a few lower-profile screenings that are well worth your time and money. As usual, Time Out will be previewing the festival in depth and detail in the days ahead, so keep an eye on our LFF hub for handy tips and info.
All of a Sudden
Ryusuke Hamaguchi broke through with his spellbinding Haruki Murakami adaptation Drive My Car in 2021. He’s bringing his latest to London with its big Cannes ovations still ringing in its ears. This one sees the auteur taking his enriching brand of humanism to Paris where Virginie Efira’s nursing home director forms a tender bond with a Japanese theatre director fighting cancer. Time Out’s review describes it as ‘a philosophical drama to restore your faith in humanity’. Pretty decent, then.
6.45pm, Sat Oct 10
2.15pm, Sun Oct 18
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
Clio Barnard’s energised state-of-the-nation drama about a group of working class mates partying, parenting and striving to make it all work in modern-day Birmingham is Time Out’s presentation at this year’s LFF, that’s how much we love it. The cast is stacked with young British and Irish talent – Anthony Boyle, Daryl McCormack, Joe Cole, Joe Lycurgo, Lola Petticrew – and it’s adapted from a Keiran Goddard novel by Enda Walsh, so the screenplay rips too.
8.40pm, Fri Oct 16
12pm, Sun Oct 18
11.30am, Sun Oct 18
The History of Concrete
A documentary about concrete sounds about as enthralling as watching, well, concrete dry. But non-fiction maestro John Wilson paints the grey stuff in kaleidoscopic colours in his delightfully surreal and fizzingly funny movie. Concrete is an unexpected motif at this year’s LFF. Concrete Turned to Sand and Concrete Land are also available for any building material completists out there.
6.15pm, Tue Oct 13
8.35pm, Wed Oct 14
8.45pm, Thu Oct 15
3.45pm, Sat Oct 17
The Dreamed Adventure
The arid landscapes of rural Bulgaria are the striking setting for a different kind of crime thriller from Western director Valeska Grisebach. A female archaeologist (Yana Radeva, a revelation) bumps into an old friend, Said (the inscrutable Syuleyman Letifov), whose car has been stolen on a dusty back road. Their reconnection begins an journey that plunges them into criminal conspiracy – and LFF viewers into Europe’s shadowy badlands.
5.30pm, Sat Oct 10
2.35pm, Sun Oct 11
The Face of Horror
Anna Biller’s debut The Love Witch was a memorable fusion of the kitsch, the lustrous and the savagely pointed. Her follow-up should join those dots afresh. Based on an old Japanese ghost story, follow-up The Face of Horror is a love letter to Technicolor horrors that introduces another sharp-witted heroine (Kristine Froseth), this time seeking vengeance from her faithless husband from beyond the grave.
6pm, Thu Oct 15
8.30pm, Sat Oct 17
Artificial
Controversially dropped by its studio, Amazon MGM, in a decision that presumably had something to do with its $50-billion deal with OpenAI, Luca Guadagnino’s study of Sam Altman has found a new home and a high-profile showcase at this year’s London Film Festival. The Social Network’s Andrew Garfield plays the AI firm’s eccentric founder and Ike Barinholtz is Elon Musk. Money talks but so does art, and Artificial will have a lot of eyes on it when it premieres at the fest on October 11.
9pm, Sun Oct 11
2.50pm, Thu Oct 15
11.30am, Fri Oct 16
La Bola Negra
This Spanish queer epic arrives at the LFF after a rapturous redemption at both Cannes and Toronto (where it won the people’s choice award). Festival buzz doesn’t always translate into a sure-fire crowdpleaser, but Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s historical drama is bound to delight anyone looking for a film with big ideas and outsized emotions. With a widescreen canvas that spans three timelines, it’s already looking like Netflix’s best shot at Oscar glory next year. Find out what all the fuss is about.
9pm, Thu Oct 8
2pm, Mon Oct 12
8pm, Thu Oct 15
8.15pm, Thu Oct 15
A Long Winter
If you’ve just pulled yourself together after Andrew Haigh’s tear-duct-emptying All of Us Strangers, brace yourself because the Brit is back with another poignant human drama full of quiet truths about family life and the linger power of memory. Like his 2023 Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott drama, Haigh adapts from literature: this time from a short story by Colm Tóibín. Gladiator II’s Fred Hechinger is a man returning to his childhood abode in snowy Colorado where he confronts the pain of the past. Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Caitríona Balfe and Kit Connor co-star.
8.45pm, Wed Oct 14
12.15pm, Thu Oct 15
2.30pm, Sat Oct 17
2.45pm, Sat Oct 17
Minotaur
Based loosely on Claude Chabrol 1968 classic Unfaithful Wife, the brilliant Minotaur is a typically unblinking and dark-hued fable of a nation free-falling into collective psychopathy from dissident Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (Leviathan). Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), a weaselly CEO in a satellite town near Moscow, needs to find 14 employees to send to front after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while coming to terms with his wife’s adultery. Neither will go remotely how you might expect.
5.45pm, Fri Oct 16
8pm, Sat Oct 17
8pm, Sat Oct 18
Queer Edward II
Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey is now a veteran of films like Atonement and We Need to Talk About Kevin. Starting out in the business, he was given an access-all-areas pass to film Derek Jarman and his cast, including a young Tilda Swinton, as they made their queer update on Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II in 1991. The footage that emerged forms the basis for a delightful making-of doc that offers a politically acute vision of Thatcherite Britain and the fight for gay rights in the face of Section 28.
6pm, Sun Oct 11
8.45pm, Tue Oct 13
7pm, Sun Oct 18
14th
Ava DuVernay’s 13th was an enraging investigation into America’s racist prison-industrial complex. The versatile filmmaker’s follow-up sees he turn her attention to recent threats to the Fourteenth Amendment, under which citizenship and equal rights are protected and which the incumbent regime in DC has been systematically eroding. DuVernay assembles figures from both side of the aisle, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Republican senator Jeff Flake, in what should be a provocative and enlightening look at modern America.
6pm, Mon Oct 12
1.25pm, Fri Oct 16
8.30pm, Sun Oct 18
Animol
Top Boy star Ashley Walters steps behind the camera for the first time with a hard-hitting but sensitive prison drama set inside a youth detention facility. The Long Walk’s Tut Nyuot is Troy, a good kid who finds himself in this lock-up with some unsavoury types and a well-intentioned counsellor (Stephen Graham) helping him find a path forward. Somewhere between Adolescence and Scum, Animol should be a challenging, empathetic portrayal of young lives gone astray.
6.25pm, Sun Oct 11
1.10pm, Thu Oct 15
9pm, Sun Oct 18
7 Miles Out
Dreams of a Life director Carol Morley turns her attention to another painful true story with 7 Miles Out – her own. The writer-director adapts her 2015 semi-autobiographical eponymous novel about a Stockport girl who loses her dad in traumatic circumstances and finds solace in Manchester’s 1970s and ’80s music scene. Blue Jean’s Lucy Halliday plays Morley’s on-screen alter ego, Anne. Expect a soundtrack full of post-punk classics and a cathartic story of grief and losing yourself.
6.05pm, Sat Oct 17
12.15pm, Sun Oct 18
Everything you need to know about this year’s BFI London Film Festival
The best films of 2026 (so far).