The 2018 BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val line-up has been announced

Div­ing into the new­ly announced line-up for the BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val is, for some, equiv­a­lent to wak­ing up on Christ­mas morn and tear­ing the wrap­ping off that moun­tains of pressies. It’s an over­load of infor­ma­tion and emo­tion – mak­ing sure you got every­thing you asked for, but with a few cool sur­pris­es thrown in for good mea­sure. And putting a polite face on aunty’s nov­el­ty socks.

Under the guid­ing hand of artis­tic direc­tor Tri­cia Tut­tle, who takes over from Clare Stew­art dur­ing her one-year sab­bat­i­cal, 225 fea­ture films have been locked into the line-up, and this year offers the cus­tom­ary mix of art­house must-sees, auteurist odd­i­ties, genre gems, archive trea­sures, and a gen­er­ous help­ing of the glossy crowd­pleas­er. The open­ing film this year is Steve McQueen’s slick-look­ing, female-pow­ered thriller, Wid­ows, while fes­tiv­i­ties will round off with the world pre­mière of Jon F Baird’s Stan and Ollie, which stars John C Reil­ly and Steve Coogan as the sil­ver screen titans of film comedy.

So that’s the stuff we know – what about the new sur­pris­es? Well, we were thrilled to note that the new film by the Coen broth­ers, The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs, has been giv­en a shiny spot in the gala strand, as has Luca Guadagnino’s re-envi­sion­ing of Dario Argento’s sem­i­nal gial­lo, Sus­piria. Marielle Heller fol­lows up her excel­lent Diary of a Teenage Girl with Can You Ever For­give Me? star­ring Melis­sa McCarthy in a rare ​“seri­ous” role, while Keira Knight­ley dons a bob as French erot­ic author Colette.

We’re excit­ed to see how Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met com­ports him­self a year after the tri­umph of Call Me by Your Name, as he stars in Beau­ti­ful Boy oppo­site Steve Carell. Jason Reit­man gets polit­i­cal with The Front Run­ner, while Ralph Fiennes head back behind the cam­era with his Nureyev biog, The White Crow. Then there’s Alfon­so Cuarón’s expan­sive yet inti­mate fam­i­ly saga Roma, des­tined sure­ly to be one of the year’s most talked about films. And the very strange Bor­der, a love sto­ry between trolls that gets very nasty and is based on a nov­el by the writer of Let the Right One In.

We’re also look­ing for­ward to Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ fol­low-up to Moon­light, If Beale Street Could Talk, based on a nov­el by the great James Bald­win. Britain’s Car­ol Mor­ley returns with anoth­er fic­tion fea­ture, named Out of Blue and adapt­ed from a nov­el by Mar­tin Amis. And then there’s Fahren­heit ¹¹⁄₉, Michael Moore’s lat­est doc­u­men­tary jere­mi­ad, and no prizes for guess­ing who he’s angry at this time. The festival’s usu­al themed sec­tion strands are back in force to help make extra sense of the daunt­ing­ly expan­sive pro­gramme. And the com­pe­ti­tion strands are back also, this time with added audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion element.

This year’s offi­cial com­pe­ti­tion selec­tion includes the fol­low­ing titles:

Birds of Pas­sage (Cristi­na Gal­lego, Ciro Guer­ra)
Destroy­er (Karyn Kusama)
Hap­py as Laz­zaro (Alice Rohrwach­er)
Hap­py New Year, Col­in Burstead (Ben Wheat­ley)
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)

Head­ing up the jury is Lenny Abra­ham­son, direc­tor of Room and the forth­com­ing ghost sto­ry, The Lit­tle Stranger. Of course, the films men­tioned here are mere­ly the tip of the tip of the ice­berg, and there are lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of oth­er titles in the mix. As we draw clos­er to fes­ti­val time we’ll be offer­ing a more detailed take on the pro­gramme and offer our indi­vid­ual rec­om­men­da­tions of films that you absolute­ly must seek out.

The 2018 BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val runs from 10 to 21 Octo­ber. Check out the full pro­gramme at bfi​.org​.uk/​b​f​i​-​l​o​n​d​o​n​-​f​i​l​m​-​f​e​s​t​i​v​a​l​-2018