Summer blockbuster season has come to an end, and awards season is beckoning – but before the BAFTAs and Oscars come around, London will play host to the film industry’s most exciting filmmakers and their upcoming features. The BFI London Film Festival returns to the capital this October, now with a confirmed line-up of hotly anticipated pictures.
As previously announced, the festival will open on 10 October with Steve McQueen’s crime thriller Widows – his first film since the Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave – and will round off with the world premiere of Laurel and Hardy biopic Stan & Ollie on 21 October. In between those opening and closing galas, the festival will include headline screenings of some hugely exciting upcoming films – Yorgos Lanthimos’ darkly comic period drama The Favourite; the Coen Brothers’ Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet’s heartbreaking family drug drama Beautiful Boy; Marielle Heller’s art forgery comedy-drama Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Wash Westmoreland’s Still Alice follow-up Colette; Jason Reitman’s political scandal biopic The Front Runner; Dan Fogelman’s generation-spanning familial love story Life Itself; David Mackenzie’s Robert the Bruce epic Outlaw King; the Rosamund Pike-starring Marie Colvin biopic A Private War; and Luca Guadagnino’s highly-anticipated Dario Argento adaptation Suspiria. And breathe.
That’s not all – as part of the Festival and Strand Galas line-up, Empire presents the UK premiere of Terry Gilliam’s long-long-long awaited comedy adventure The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, starring Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce and Stellan Skarsgård. Elsewhere, the festival will see screenings of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk; Alfonso Cuarón’s personal epic Roma; Mike Leigh’s Peterloo; Michael Moore’s Trump documentary Fahrenheit 11/9; Peter Jackson’s First World War documentary They Shall Not Grow Old; David Lowery’s The Old Man & The Gun; Ben Wheatley’s Happy New Year, Colin Burstead; Peter Strickland’s In Fabric; Paul Dano’s directorial debut Wildlife; and the opening two episodes of Park Chan-Wook’s serialised John Le Carré adaptation The Little Drummer Girl.
It’s a tantalising list of films worth getting very, very excited about – take a good look at the full programme below.
Opening Gala
Widows – Steve McQueen
Closing Gala
Stan & Ollie – Jon S. Baird
Headline Galas
The Favourite – Yorgos Lanthimos
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – The Coen Brothers
Beautiful Boy – Felix van Groeningen
Can You Ever Forgive Me? – Marielle Heller
Colette – Wash Westmoreland
The Front Runner – Jason Reitman
Life Itself – Dan Fogelman
Outlaw King – David Mackenzie
A Private War – Matthew Heineman
Suspiria – Luca Guadagnino
Festival and Strand Galas
Wild Rose – Tom Harper
Assassination Nation – Sam Levinson
Border – Ali Abbasi
Burning – Lee Chang-dong
Capernaum – Nadine Labaki
The Great Victorian Moving Picture Show – Various
If Beale Street Could Talk – Barry Jenkins
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote – Terry Gilliam
Mirai – Mamoru Hosoda
Roma – Alfonso Cuarón
The White Crow – Ralph Fiennes
Special Presentations
Been So Long – Tinge Krishnan
Fahrenheit 11/9 – Michael Moore
The Hate U Give – George Tillman Jr.
The Little Drummer Girl (episodes 1 and 2) – Park Chan-wook
Out Of Blue – Carol Morley
Peterloo – Mike Leigh
They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson
Aquarela – Viktor Kossakovsky
Make Me Up – Rachel Maclean
Rafiki – Wanuri Kahiu
Official Competition
Birds of Passage – Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra
Destroyer – Karyn Kusama
Happy New Year, Colin Burstead – Ben Wheatley
Happy As Lazzaro – Alice Rohrwacher
In Fabric – Peter Strickland
Joy – Sudabeh Mortezai
The Old Man & The Gun – David Lowery
Shadow – Zhang Yimou
Sunset – László Nemes
Too Late To Die Young – Dominga Sotomayor
First Feature Competition – Sutherland Award
The Chambermaid – Lila Avilés
The Day I Lost My Shadow – Soudade Kaadan
Dead Pigs – Cathy Yan
Girl – Lukas Dhont
Holiday – Isabella Eklöf
Journey To A Mother’s Room – Celia Rico Clavellino
Only You – Harry Wootliff
Ray & Liz – Richard Billingham
Soni – Ivan Ayr
Wildlife – Paul Dano
Documentary Competition – Grierson Award
Bisbee ’17 – Robert Greene
Dream Away – Marouan Omara and Johanna Domke
Evelyn – Orlando von Einsiedel
John McEnroe: In The Realm of Perfection – Julien Farau
The Plan That Came From The Bottom Up – Steve Sprung
Putin’s Witnesses – Vitaly Mansky
The Raft – Marcus Lindeen
Theatre of War – Lola Arias
What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire? – Robert Minervini
Young and Alive – Mattieu Bareyre
Short Film Award
Another Decade – Morgan Quaintaince
De Natura – Lucile Hadžihalilovic
The Field (Le Champ De Mais) – Sandhya Suri
Hello, Rain – C J ‘Fiery’ Obassi
Lasting Marks – Charlie Lyne
Leash – Harry Lighton
Monelle – Diego Marcon
Salam – Claire Fowler
Solar Walk – Réka Bucsi
Veslemøy’s Song – Sofia Bohdanowicz
Keep up to date with all the latest movie news, click here to subscribe to Empire on Great Magazines and have the latest issue delivered to your door every month.