Steve McQueen’s Widows To Open BFI London Film Festival 2018

Summer is in full swing, but the approach of autumn brings with it the promise of the BFI London Film Festival – and the 2018 edition is set to begin with a bang. Steve McQueen’s crime thriller Widows will get its international premiere at the LFF, opening the festival on 10 October.

The film is McQueen’s first feature since the Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave, and the director is changing gears from historical drama to an adaptation Lynda La Plante’s 1980s TV series, with a screenplay from Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn. The film stars Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki and Cynthia Erivo as the titular widows — a group of women whose criminal husbands all die in a job-gone-wrong. With the debt left at their feet, they decide to finish the job themselves.

“I am absolutely delighted that Widows will be opening this year's BFI London Film Festival,” says McQueen. “Watching the UK TV version of Lynda La Plante's original thriller as a teenager in the ‘80s had a major impact on me and so it feels very special to be sharing this film with a UK audience."

The BFI London Film Festival 2018 will run from 10 – 21 October, with the rest of the programme due to be announced on 30 August.

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