20 Under-the-radar treats for the 2018 Lon­don Film Festival

It can be daunt­ing when you first break open that bulging Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val brochure and just see hun­dreds of ran­dom titles spring­ing off the pages. To ease the pain, we’ve delved deep into the pro­gramme and list­ed 20 titles that we either like, or are very excit­ed to catch.

Asako I & II
One of the low-key hits of the 2018 Cannes com­pe­ti­tion line-up, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s odd­ly sur­re­al and pow­er­ful romance is a ghost sto­ry about ghost­ing, as a young woman los­es her true love, only to lat­er bump into a man who looks exact­ly like him. There are light shades of Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go in its explo­ration of phys­i­cal ver­sus emo­tion­al love, but this is very much its own, eccen­tric thing. Buy tick­ets

Bis­bee ​’17
Robert Green expands his inter­est in doc­u­men­tary dis­sec­tion with his fol­low-up to the excel­lent Kate Plays Chris­tine. This new one taps into ideas of lega­cy and local his­to­ry, as the denizens of small south­ern bor­der town attempt to rec­on­cile their dark past with the­atre, song and self-reflec­tion. Buy tick­ets

Girl
The dif­fi­cul­ties of wrestling with iden­ti­ty while attempt­ing to lead a nor­mal life is the sub­ject of debut boy Lukas Dhont’s extra­or­di­nary debut fea­ture, built around a har­row­ing cen­tral per­for­mance from Vic­tor Pol­ster as a bal­let prodi­gy des­per­ate to com­plete her male-to-female gen­der realign­ment. Buy tick­ets

Don­bass
Ukrain­ian direc­tor Sergei Loznit­sa is not a man to sit back and allow his coun­try implode in a clag­gy show­er of brazen cor­rup­tion, and this lat­est work plays like a Python sketch film that could bare­ly be near­er the knuck­le. Abject depres­sion and dejec­tion have sel­dom been so fun­ny. Buy tick­ets

I DO NOT CARE IF WE GO DOWN IN HIS­TO­RY AS BAR­BAR­IANS
What a great title, and one which seems to be very rel­e­vant con­sid­er­ing the cur­rent polit­i­cal tumult. This lat­est from the always-reli­able Roman­ian helmer Radu Jude play­ful­ly unpicks the machi­na­tions behind a dead­ly mas­sacre which occurred at the tail end of World War Two. Buy tick­ets

The Kinder­garten Teacher
We’re excit­ed for this Amer­i­can remake of an Israeli film from 2015, in which a mild-man­nered kinder­garten teacher (played by Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal) encoun­ters a savant 5‑year-old who, at ran­dom inter­vals, starts to blurt out lines of poet­ry. Is he a young prodi­gy, or are these ultra-artic­u­late mus­ings com­ing from some­where unex­plained? Buy tick­ets

Madeline’s Made­line
It feels like an absolute age since lucky audi­ences at Sun­dance and Berlin Film Fes­ti­vals saw this lat­est film from Josephine Deck­er, so we’re thrilled that LFF have brought it to town. Star­ring new­com­er Hele­na Howard as a young mem­ber of an exper­i­men­tal the­atre group who finds the lines between per­for­mance and real­i­ty begin­ning to blur, we can’t wait to see how this one plays out. Buy tick­ets

Long Day’s Jour­ney Into Night
There’s an inter­ti­tle at the begin­ning of this warped and won­der­ful Chi­nese odyssey which says that this is not a 3D film, but that view­ers should put their 3D glass­es on when the main hero does. Which is about an hour in to the film. Direc­tor Bi Gan is already being hailed a mod­ern mas­ter for this nar­cot­ic dream movie, and the cognoscen­ti just might be right on this one. Buy tick­ets

Maya
We’re big fans of Mia Hansen-Løve here at LWL (you may remem­ber our Eden issue from 2015) so count us in for her lat­est film. A war reporter recent­ly releas­es from capavi­ty retreats to his child­hood home in India, where he finds him­self attract­ed to a young woman named Maya. Made with a pre­dom­i­nant­ly female crew and shot on loca­tion in Goa, we’ve got high hopes for this one. Buy tick­ets

Muse­um
Based on an out­ra­geous true sto­ry, Alon­so Ruiz­pala­cios’ film recalls the 1985 Mex­i­co City heist, in which two dar­ing stu­dents relieved the Muse­um of Anthro­pol­o­gy of 140 price­less arte­facts on Christ­mas Day. Star­ring the ever-charm­ing Gael Gar­cía Bernal and push­ing the bound­aries of the well-trod­den heist movie path, we’re always down for a good crime dra­ma. Buy tick­ets

Sup­port the Girls
Cur­rent­ly gen­er­at­ing a healthy dose of pos­i­tive buzz in the Unit­ed States, we’ll be able to catch Andrew Bujalski’s com­e­dy in Octo­ber thanks to LFF. Focus­ing on the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of a group of women who work at a Hoot­ers-style estab­lish­ment, the film stars Regi­na Hall, Haley Lu Richard­son, and James Le Gros, but we’re most excit­ed for the poten­tial it has to real­ly com­ment on class pol­i­tics, sex­ism, and the pit­falls of the ser­vice indus­try. Buy tick­ets

Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor?
As UK audi­ences had Play School and Blue Peter, the US had Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bour­hood. For more than 30 years Fred Rogers enter­tained and edu­cat­ed mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans, and become an endur­ing, reas­sur­ing pres­ence in pop cul­ture. This new doc­u­men­tary from Mor­gan Neville (who won an Acad­e­my Award for 20 Feet From Star­dom back in 2014) pro­vides a heart­felt trib­ute to the man. Neville also has anoth­er doc play­ing at LFF this year – They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, about Orson Welles’ lost-and-found final film, The Oth­er Side of the Wind. Buy tick­ets

The Bill Mur­ray Sto­ries: Life Lessons Learned From A Myth­i­cal Man
The man, the myth, the leg­end Bill Mur­ray is the sub­ject of this doc­u­men­tary which exam­ines the many urban leg­ends around him, while also grap­pling with Murray’s on-screen per­sona. With a nar­ra­tive built on Mur­ray fans shar­ing out­landish encoun­ters with the enig­mat­ic actor, Tom­my Avallone’s film looks like a whole lot of fun that grap­ples with the nature of celebri­ty and Murray’s myth­i­cal sta­tus. Buy tick­ets

The Image Book
Jean-Luc Godard is not real­ly inter­est­ed in what cin­e­ma is. Through his intri­cate video col­lage work and dys­pep­tic cine-polit­i­cal orra­tions, he is man con­stant­ly push­ing at the bound­aries of the mov­ing image and attempt­ing to see the medi­um reach its full poten­tial. The Image Book is like an immac­u­late remix of a film that was nev­er made, a tor­rent of pri­mal sound and image that needs to be seen to be believed. The LFF are offer­ing the rare chance to catch it on an IMAX screen. Buy tick­ets

The Green Fog
Cana­di­an cine-alchemist Guy Maddin returns with his lat­est cut-and-paste con­coc­tion, this time team­ing with Evan John­son and Galen John­son to cre­ate a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Ver­ti­go, but only using clips from oth­er movies. Colour us high­ly intrigued. Buy tick­ets

Lords of Chaos
Based on the real-life sto­ry of Norway’s 90s black met­al scene, Jonas Åkerlund’s biopic charts the hav­oc caused across Scan­di­navia by Øys­tein Aarseth and his band May­hem, whose quest for nihilis­tic may­hem at any chaos reaped cat­a­stroph­ic results. Åker­lund comes from a strong music video back­ground – he’s worked with Madon­na, Metal­li­ca and Bey­once – so expect a heavy dose of styl­is­tic flair. Buy tick­ets

The Lit­tle Drum­mer Girl
Tech­ni­cal­ly this one isn’t a film, but it’s hard to not get excit­ed about a new work from Park Chan-wook. Based on a John le Car­ré nov­el, this series fol­lows a young actor (Flo­rence Pugh) who becomes caught up in an espi­onage plot after meet­ing an enig­mat­ic stranger (Alexan­der Skars­gard) on a Greek beach. We’re excit­ed to see Park’s dis­tinc­tive style applied to this ​‘70s spy thriller. Buy tick­ets

Petra
Do seek out this intrigu­ing slice of famil­ial dis­cord from Span­ish direc­tor Jaime Ros­ales, the tale of a young woman who heads on a quest to dis­cov­er the iden­ti­ty of her absent father. She soon dis­cov­ers that it might be a local artist named Jaume, and so decides to move in with him and his new fam­i­ly. And from then on, strange things start to occur. Buy tick­ets

Gor­don and Pad­dy
A whim­si­cal cross between Wind in the Wil­lows and The Killing, Gor­don and Pad­dy tells the tale of an aging toad detec­tive who meets a plucky young mouse while inves­ti­gat­ing a series of unusu­al crimes in their peace­ful vil­lage. Effort­less­ly charm­ing but gen­tle enough for younger audi­ences, Nordic leg­end him­self Stel­lan Skars­gård voic­es the tit­u­lar toad – which is rea­son enough to book a tick­et. Buy tick­ets

7^th Heav­en
It’s hard to go wrong if you’re delv­ing into the festival’s archive titles – thank­ful­ly back to its own sep­a­rate strand this year. If you’re think­ing of dip­ping your toe into the clas­sics on offer, then we would high­ly rec­om­mend catch­ing the new restora­tion of Frank Borzage’s swoon-wor­thy 1927 romance, 7^th Heav­en, star­ring the Janet Gaynor and Charles Far­rell. Buy tick­ets

The 2018 BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val starts on 10 October.