The 2016 BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val line-up has been announced

Already on the dock­et, announced as ear­ly, antic­i­pa­to­ry treats, we have Amma Asante’s apartheid-era romance, A Unit­ed King­dom, kick­ing off the whole she­bang, and then we have Ben Wheatley’s much-antic­i­pat­ed peri­od shoot-’em-up Free Fire screen­ing to mark the festival’s close. But what will be hap­pen­ing in the mid­dle of it all? Well, all has been announced, but the first thing to say is that the ​“strand” gala screen­ings will take place at a new, pur­pose-build, 780-seat cin­e­ma on the Embank­ment, sen­si­bly named the Embank­ment Gala Cin­e­ma. Which is excit­ing. But now, to the films…

First out of the gate is JA Bayona’s A Mon­ster Calls, with Felic­i­ty Jones, Liam Nee­son and new­com­er Lewis Mac­Dougall, who stars as a young boy expe­ri­enc­ing baroque, gor­geous­ly ani­mat­ed visions in reac­tion to his mother’s ail­ing phys­i­cal state. Then there’s Denis Villeneuve’s pre-Blade Run­ner sci-fi amuse bouche, Arrival, star­ring Amy Adams as a gung-ho lin­guist out to make a con­nec­tion with alien beings.

Else­where in the big gala stakes there’s Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (his fol­low-up to Whiplash) which, after its breath­less recep­tion at Venice, will no doubt sell out instant­ly, so get your tick­et-buy­ing fin­ger lim­bered and ready. There’s the Sun­dance dar­ling, Man­ches­ter by the Sea, Ken­neth Lonergan’s pur­port­ed­ly mas­ter­ful fol­low-up to his def­i­nite­ly mas­ter­ful Mar­garet. Nate Parker’s con­tro­ver­sial The Birth of a Nation is in the mix, while Tom Ford is back, this time with his Noc­tur­nal Ani­mals, and Oliv­er Stone directs Joseph Gor­don-Levitt (with some big accent work hap­pen­ing, if the trail­er is to be believed, in Snowden.

As always, there is an unholy tonne of movies sched­uled, so here are a cou­ple of LWLies must-must-must sees: first and fore­most, sell every­thing you own and more to secure a tick­et for Maren Ade’s Toni Erd­mann, the Ger­man com­e­dy epic set to become everyone’s new favourite movie; Jim Jar­musch returns on top form with his utter­ly charm­ing paean to the artist inside us all, Pater­son; Her­mia & Hele­na is the lat­est from Shake­speare fan­boy Matías Piñeiro; Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Chris­tine is a deli­cious and trou­bling doc­u­men­tary which explores the divide between fic­tion and real­i­ty; and don’t miss the dark ani­mat­ed mas­ter­work, My Life as a Cour­gette, which boasts an immac­u­late script by the great Céline Sciamma.

Else­where, we’re very much look­ing for­ward to see­ing Gabe Klinger’s Por­to, his fic­tion­al fol­low-up to an award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary on the friend­ship between Richard Lin­klater and James Ben­ning. Noc­tura­ma, by Bertrand Bonel­lo, has made a name for itself as a polit­i­cal hot pota­to, so we’re obvi­ous­ly keen to catch that one. And, of course, being Ter­rence Mal­ick cheer­lead­ers, we’re going to be front and cen­tre for the screen­ing of his new cre­ation of exis­tence sort-of-doc, Voy­age of Time, nar­rat­ed by Car­ol.

Else­where, the archive strand will be pre­sent­ing a new restora­tion of Arthur Robison’s 1929 polit­i­cal dra­ma, The Informer, which is set against the polit­i­cal ruc­tions of a new­ly-inde­pen­dent Ire­land in 1922. Mar­lon Brando’s labour-of-love west­ern epic, One-Eyed-Jacks, will also be play­ing in its brand-spank­ing new restored form, as will Fred­er­ick Wiseman’s Hos­pi­tal, a film which boasts quite pos­si­bly the great­est vom­it­ing scene in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. There are shorts pro­grammes, pan­els, events, talks and red car­pets by the hun­dred, details of which can be found on the Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val web­site. As the fes­ti­val draws clos­er, look out for more cov­er­age on the must-see movies in the line-up.

The BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val runs from the 5 to 16 Octo­ber, 2016. For full details of the line-up head to www​.bfi​.org​.uk/lff