Pro­gram­mers Picks from the 2017 BFI Lon­don Film Festival

With 243 fea­tures to choose from over just 12 days, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees when choos­ing what to watch at the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val. You might want to see the big tick­et gala films, check out the lat­est from your favourite direc­tor, or take a lucky dip. It is always, though, worth heed­ing what the pro­gram­mers them­selves sin­gle out. Here is a selec­tion of 10 films, in no par­tic­u­lar order, flagged up by the LFF’s offi­cial selec­tors as well worth seeing.

Debut film­mak­er Cory Finley’s trea­cly dark play of wits sees two pre­co­cious and priv­i­leged teenage girls plot­ting a mur­der in the rar­i­fied man­sion-filled sub­urbs of Con­necti­cut. For the most part this is a deli­cious­ly sharp two-han­der between The Witch​’s Anya Tay­lor-Joy as Lily and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl​’s Olivia Cooke as Aman­da, a duo whose rekin­dled child­hood friend­ship has dead­ly con­se­quences for Lily’s annoy­ing step father. But Anton Yelchin brings sur­pris­ing pathos to his final role as the small-time drug deal­er the girls dupe into being involved in their grim­ly amus­ing plot. Like oth­er clas­sics about wicked teens, Cru­el Inten­tions, Heav­en­ly Crea­tures and Heathers, this is clever, vis­cer­al, twist­ed and thrilling­ly enter­tain­ing. Tri­cia Tuttle

I want­ed to write about Lucky any­way. But now, with the pass­ing of its much-loved lead Har­ry Dean Stan­ton, what more is there to say about one of the great char­ac­ter actors, and char­ac­ters, of Amer­i­can cin­e­ma? Well, one thing, per­haps the only thing, is to talk about the man through the work. Though a long­time fan, my dis­tinct aver­sion to ​“Grumpy Old Men” movies – which seem to coat a thin veneer of rebel­lious­ness over reac­tionary con­ser­vatism – the sto­ry of an iras­ci­ble nona­ge­nar­i­an star­ing down mor­tal­i­ty, even tai­lored to its star, had lit­tle appeal.

Such pre­con­cep­tions reck­on with­out the grace­ful mod­u­la­tion of debut direc­tor John Car­roll Lynch, him­self a fine char­ac­ter actor (Far­go, Zodi­ac). Ten­der­ly, yet unsen­ti­men­tal­ly and with much humour, he expands Lucky’s can­vas to more uni­ver­sal reflec­tions on human tran­sience. Then there’s Har­ry Dean’s gen­uine­ly great per­for­mance: yes, one steeped in his own per­sona, but as open and vul­ner­a­ble as his pre­vi­ous career peak in Paris, Texas. If there were any jus­tice, he’d sweep the end-of-year act­ing awards… though he prob­a­bly won’t and isn’t that more true to the man? The LFF screen­ings will be high­ly emo­tion­al – one last time to cel­e­brate a true Amer­i­can orig­i­nal. Leigh Singer

This fab­u­lous road trip movie tells the sto­ry of a son, Kasper, and his rather uncon­ven­tion­al father, Georg, nav­i­gat­ing their rela­tion­ship in the wake of fam­i­ly loss. There’s a warmth, open­ness and sense of fun in the sto­ry­telling that’s dis­arm­ing and yet emo­tion­al­ly pen­e­trat­ing. Kasper’s beloved moth­er Irene has recent­ly passed away, throw­ing him and his father off bal­ance. Respec­tive­ly moth­er­less and wid­owed, all of a sud­den Kasper and Georg seem to be mis­fits in their home­town, so the prospect of a trip to the remote island of Ona via the nowheresvilles of rur­al Nor­way offers a time­ly dis­trac­tion. What fol­lows is a won­der­ful­ly realised odyssey of camp­fire con­fes­sions, old flames, new love, anti­quat­ed cars and a pret­ty crazy petrol sta­tion heist.

From the open­ing sequence of an exquis­ite­ly made-up male bal­let dancer per­form­ing clas­si­cal moves to an alt-coun­try/indie rock track, it’s clear that Nor­we­gian wun­derkind film­mak­er Hen­rik Mar­tin Dahls­bakken has a unique and emo­tion­al­ly direct style. His script is frank but sen­si­tive, draw­ing pow­er­ful and nuanced per­for­mances from his leads (Ben­jamin Hel­stad, who takes the role of Kasper, exhibits a range and grav­i­tas rem­i­nis­cent of Joaquin Phoenix). Going West is a sub­tly bal­anced amal­gam, both humor­ous and heart break­ing. I was com­plete­ly blown away by it, and think that you will be too. Sarah Lut­ton

S Craig Zahler’s first film, Bone Tom­a­hawk, was an idio­syn­crat­ic west­ern the likes of which had nev­er been seen before. Bold, bril­liant and uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly bru­tal, it con­tained images so shock­ing, those (un?)fortunate enough to wit­ness its hor­rors will have them for­ev­er burnt into their retinas.

Now he’s back with an out­ré take on the prison thriller, and the results are every bit as bold, just as bril­liant, and pos­si­bly even more uncom­pro­mis­ing­ly bru­tal than we could have pos­si­bly dared hope for. In a career best turn, Vince Vaughn plays a drug couri­er who winds up in prison, where his blood­thirsty ene­mies use him as a pawn in a dead­ly game. This is art­house exploita­tion at its bone-crunch­ing, skull-crack­ing best. Michael Blyth

Jon Garaño and Jose Mari Goenaga’s Flow­ers (Lore­ak) was one of those small, qui­et fea­tures that cre­at­ed a bit of a buzz at the 2014 LFF. Garaño has now teamed up with Aitor Arre­gi – Goe­na­ga remains on the team as co-writer and direc­tor – in a Basque-lan­guage dra­ma based on the life of Miguel Joaquín Eleizegui Artea­ga, who was born in in the ear­ly nine­teenth cen­tu­ry in a remote ham­let in Guipuz­coa grow­ing to a then unprece­dent­ed height of sev­en feet 11 inch­es before dying in his thir­ties in 1861.

On one lev­el this is a rags-to-rich­es sto­ry – Joaquín dis­played as a ​“freak” in order to save his fam­i­ly from penury – but the film taps into a series of anx­i­eties around the pol­i­tics of dis­play that prove gen­uine­ly unset­tling. The rela­tion­ship between Joaquín and his wily broth­er Martín is beau­ti­ful­ly han­dled, and the atmos­pher­ic visu­al style, with its grey tones and sub­dued light­ing, expert­ly cap­tures the emo­tion­al pulse of the film. Maria Del­ga­do

Based on an epic poem, Czech direc­tor Václav Kadrnka’s sec­ond fea­ture is set at the time of the (prob­a­bly myth­i­cal) Children’s Cru­sade. Its sim­ple sto­ry begins when a small boy puts on a suit of armour and leaves to join them. His father, the knight Bořek decides to bring him home but his jour­ney turns into a spir­i­tu­al quest – a med­i­ta­tion on loss, and a jour­ney into his own mind.

While the film was shot in south­ern Italy in areas through which the Cru­saders might have passed (Puglia, Cal­abria, Sar­dinia), it is essen­tial­ly out­side of time. Kadrnka’s min­i­mal­ist style pro­vides a refresh­ing anti­dote to much of con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma and is enhanced by a superb music score from Ire­na and Vojtěch Hav­el. Its use of image and rhyth­mic pro­gres­sion echoes its poet­ic ori­gins as well as recall­ing the work of French direc­tor Robert Bres­son. Peter Hames

A gigan­tic stat­ue of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe looms over a beach resort in Hainan island, Chi­na. In a near­by hotel a young undoc­u­ment­ed work­er is on the night shift when she wit­ness­es some­thing she wish­es she hadn’t. The next day at school, two girls are found to have been assault­ed. As they try to get on with their lives in the days that fol­low, both wit­ness and vic­tims find more trou­ble com­ing their way, from fam­i­lies, police and a sys­tem stacked against them.

With a com­pas­sion­ate approach to its char­ac­ters and a crit­i­cal eye on soci­ety, Angels Wear White explores the way cer­tain ideas of sex­u­al­i­ty cast shad­ows on the lives of women and chil­dren, and how these ideas can be tran­scend­ed. Fol­low­ing her 2013 film Trap Street, direc­tor Vivian Qu returns to LFF with a bold, grip­ping dra­ma that will be a fes­ti­val dis­cov­ery for audi­ences seek­ing a fresh fem­i­nist film­mak­ing per­spec­tive. Kate Tay­lor

Just as the woods of 17^th cen­tu­ry New Eng­land held satan­ic secrets in Robert Eggers’ atmos­pher­ic hor­ror tale The Witch, the moun­tains of 15^th-cen­tu­ry Aus­tria are mys­te­ri­ous and treach­er­ous in Lukas Feigelfeld’s hyp­not­ic debut. The visu­al equiv­a­lent of doom met­al, this impres­sion­is­tic and some­times lit­er­al­ly hal­lu­cino­genic dra­ma tells the sto­ry of a young girl named Albrun, who goes to live in a remote, snow­bound wood­en shack with her moth­er. The old woman falls ill, and Albrun begins to realise that they are not like the near­by vil­lagers, who vil­i­fy and per­se­cute them.

Quite what they actu­al­ly are forms the sub­ject of the sec­ond half of the movie, as Albrun tries to come to terms with her des­tiny. Is she a witch? And if so – the big­ger ques­tion – what is her innate capac­i­ty for evil? Feigelfeld qui­et­ly and steadi­ly ramps up the dread in a tale of insan­i­ty that plays the Polan­s­ki card twice, mix­ing the preter­nat­ur­al fears of Rosemary’s Baby with the psy­chic frag­men­ta­tion of Repul­sion. And for all its pagan trap­pings, Hagazus­sa – the Old High Ger­man word that gave us ​“hag” – is very much a mod­ern moral­i­ty tale, one that asks whether mon­sters are born or cre­at­ed. Damon Wise

Much more than just a film about danc­ing, this daz­zling doc about the Amer­i­can con­tem­po­rary per­former is a raw and inti­mate explo­ration of the cre­ative process, female desire and the dilem­mas encoun­tered by a woman in her thir­ties. Close­ly fol­low­ing Jene for over three years, Dan­ish film­mak­er Elvi­ra Lind paints a sen­si­tive por­trait of an artist at a turn­ing point in her life. Leav­ing behind 10 years with the pres­ti­gious Bat­she­va dance com­pa­ny in Tel Aviv under the direc­tion of charis­mat­ic chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Ohad Naharin and her Israeli boyfriend, she returns to Amer­i­ca to pur­sue a solo career as a dancer and choreographer.

Jene’s per­son­al sto­ry is inter­laced with her cre­ation of a rad­i­cal new piece about pain, plea­sure and the female body, in which she dar­ing­ly expos­es her­self (both fig­u­ra­tive­ly and lit­er­al­ly) in front of a live audi­ence. A phys­i­cal and vis­cer­al view­ing expe­ri­ence which effort­less­ly cap­tures the cap­ti­vat­ing pow­er of dance, as well as offer­ing bonus cameos from famous faces such as Lau­ra Dern and Oscar Isaac. Lau­re Bonville

Noth­ing quite pre­pares you for the joy of watch­ing mov­ing pic­tures of the world 110 years ago on the big screen – and in colour. Kinema­col­or was one of the great British tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions of ear­ly cin­e­ma, trans­form­ing the films that were made with its ​‘nat­ur­al’ colour process. Today they seem no less mag­i­cal – like the world refract­ed through the most beau­ti­ful Insta­gram filter.

In this spe­cial event – held in mem­o­ry of the first cura­tor of the BFI Nation­al Archive – Kinema­col­or expert Luke McK­er­nan will tell the sto­ry behind this remark­able colour process. Luke will also be shar­ing some of these new­ly restored rar­i­ties with us (only a hand­ful of Kinema­col­or films sur­vive), tak­ing us on a time-trav­el­ling trip from Italy’s Lake Gar­da, down the Nile and onward to the spec­ta­cle of the 1911 Del­hi Dur­bar, com­plete with a cast of ele­phants. Robin Bak­er

The 61^st BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val runs 4 – 15 Octo­ber. Check out the full pro­gramme at what​son​.bfi​.org​.uk/lff/