20 Hid­den Gems at the 2024 BFI Lon­don Film Festival

When faced with the cin­e­ma del­uge that is the pro­gramme for the Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val, ini­tial excite­ment can often give way to anx­i­ety and then, pos­si­bly, con­fu­sion. What should I see? What should I take a gam­ble on? How can I make sure I’m not mak­ing a ter­ri­ble error of judge­ment? Well, no one can answer those ques­tions defin­i­tive­ly, but we can offer you this handy guide to 20 films play­ing in the themed, non-gala strands. Some of them we’ve man­aged to scoop up at pre­vi­ous fes­ti­vals; oth­ers are mere­ly on our own lists of ​“to see” films that we want to share with you.

A Fidai Film
Exper­i­men­ta
In 1982, the Israeli army invad­ed Beirut, raid­ed the Pales­tin­ian Research Cen­tre and loot­ed its archive. Kamal Aljafari’s lat­est ​“sab­o­tage film” looks excel­lent – an exper­i­men­tal, poet­ic weav­ing togeth­er of lost and reclaimed archival footage of life in Pales­tine before and after the 1948 Nak­ba, reclaim­ing and restor­ing the loot­ed mem­o­ries of Pales­tin­ian his­to­ry in a cin­e­mat­ic rebel­lion against a long his­to­ry of visu­al dispossession.

Man­ji
Trea­sures
The Trea­sures strand may be a pale shad­ow of its for­mer self, with just five titles play­ing at this year’s fes­ti­val, but you’d do well to catch this restora­tion of Yasuzô Masumura’s sex­ploita­tion melo­dra­ma from 1967. It sees two women descend into a world of trou­ble upon their deci­sion to embark on an illic­it affair, and the fall­out is pre­sent­ed in gaudy colour on a giant, widescreen canvas.

Col­lec­tive Mono­logue
Doc­u­men­tary
Filmed in var­i­ous zoos and ani­mal sanc­tu­ar­ies in Argenti­na, the per­cep­tive lens that Jes­si­ca Sarah Rinland’s film employs is one that invites us to see the world from an animal’s per­spec­tive, explor­ing a close­ness and emo­tion­al con­nec­tion that tran­scends the bound­aries between species.

Small Hours of the Night
Exper­i­men­ta
Com­posed of haunt­ing 16mm close­ups in a dark, smoke-filled room, Daniel Hui’s piece of docu-fic­tion draws from key moments of Sin­ga­pore­an his­to­ry dur­ing its dark­est peri­ods. The min­i­mal­ist stag­ing cen­tres the expe­ri­ence of a woman con­fined with­in an inter­ro­ga­tion room, with what looks like an impres­sive con­trol of light and shadow.

Julie Keeps Qui­et
Debate
While Chal­lengers will like­ly remem­bered as the film that proved the dra­mat­ic poten­tial of ten­nis in nar­ra­tive cin­e­ma, Leonar­do Van Dijl’s moral­ly pre­car­i­ous psy­chodra­ma, Julie Keeps Qui­et, fol­lows a young ten­nis play­er who must decide if she should speak out against an abu­sive, con­trol­ling coach if it might put her own sport­ing future into jeop­ardy. Hangs on an intense lead per­for­mance by Ruth Bec­quart, who also co-wrote the film.

Youth (Home­com­ing)
Debate
The sec­ond epic chap­ter of Chi­nese exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tar­i­an Wang Bing’s explo­ration into the low-wage tex­tile indus­try in his coun­try. Rather than pro­vide an open and par­ti­san polit­i­cal dis­course, Wang objec­tive­ly observes the scads of young work­ers as they jos­tle for more mon­ey and attempt to rise up the lim­it­ed pro­fes­sion­al lad­der that their default occu­pa­tion has allowed them.

Grand Tour
Love
Fol­low­ing his delight­ful pan­dem­ic doo­dle, The Tsug­ua Diaries, Por­tuguese direc­tor Miguel Gomes returns with a poet­i­cal­ly-inclined his­tor­i­cal gala­vant through south-east Asia in which a groom who jilts his bride at the altar heads off on an adven­ture, and then his bride decides to fol­low him. It’s a film about how roman­tic con­cepts of colo­nial­ism have embed­ded them­selves with­in a mod­ern mind­set, an idea which pos­es fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about how we tell stories.

Israel Pales­tine on Swedish TV 1958 – 1989
Debate
With sev­er­al decades’ worth of news­reels and media archival footage from Sweden’s pri­ma­ry pub­lic broad­cast­ing net­work, Göran Olsson’s three and a half hour long doc­u­men­tary painstak­ing­ly charts the com­plex­i­ties of shift­ing geopo­lit­i­cal cur­rents and the ways in which media nar­ra­tives have shaped his­tor­i­cal under­stand­ings of Palestine’s occu­pa­tion by a vio­lent, ever-expan­sion­ist zion­ist machine.

Col­lec­tive Sum­mon­ing
Exper­i­men­ta
Three for­mal­ly auda­cious short films – Noor Abed’s A Night We Held Between, Kom­touch Napattaloong’s No Exor­cism Film and Maryam Tafakory’s Razeh-del – are brought in con­ver­sa­tion under the frame­works of rit­u­al, myth and nation­al his­to­ry to reach towards a sense of ​“cross-tem­po­ral sol­i­dar­i­ty” across Pales­tine, Thai­land and Iran.

Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage
Laugh
We know that some film­mak­ers will go to the ends of the earth to get their dar­ling movie made. Cana­di­an writer/​director Matthew Rankin learned Far­si to bring a lived-in authen­tic­i­ty to his dead­pan ode to the Iran­ian New Wave. It’s a strange tale set in a sur­re­al amal­gam of Win­nipeg and Tehran, its sto­ry is kicked off when a young girl finds a ban­knote frozen in ice and trav­els around town to try and retrieve it.

The Bal­lad of Suzanne Cesaire
Exper­i­men­ta
​Suzanne Césaire was a pio­neer­ing fig­ure of Afro-Sur­re­al­ism, an anti-colo­nial­ist activist and writer whose achieve­ments are con­demned to exist in the shad­ow of her husband’s endur­ing polit­i­cal lega­cy. Reject­ing for­mal con­ven­tions, mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary artist Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich devotes a heart­felt, metafic­tion­al bal­lad to the life of ​“an artist who didn’t want to be remem­bered” in a way that’s been likened to a fever dream.

The Sealed Soil
Trea­sures
Mar­va Nabili’s haunt­ing 1977 debut fea­ture, the ear­li­est sur­viv­ing Iran­ian film direct­ed by a woman, has been new­ly restored in 4K. It explores a young woman’s rebel­lion against the patri­ar­chal restric­tions imposed on her when she reach­es the age of mar­riage in a deft and pow­er­ful explo­ration of female sub­ju­ga­tion and resistance.

Chain Reac­tions
Cult
Swiss film­mak­er Alexan­dre O. Philippe has his own lit­tle cot­tage indus­try in ele­vat­ed docs which look back ana­lyt­i­cal­ly at the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma. His new one, Chain Reac­tions, is timed to the 50^th anniver­sary of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre, and he brings in a num­ber of talk­ing heads culled from the worlds of film­mak­ing, jour­nal­ism and academia.

The Wail­ing
Cult
A friend who caught film­mak­er Pedro Martín-Calero’s debut fea­ture when it played at the San Sebastián Film Fes­ti­val described it as a Span­ish It Fol­lows, and the log­line would have it that psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror adds its own twist in that the major­i­ty of its cast are women. It’s a sto­ry about a woman search­ing for her bio­log­i­cal moth­er, and it’s a quest which comes with a num­ber of unwant­ed (to say the least) consequences.

Eep­hus
Jour­ney
This delight­ful, low-slung ode to the logis­tics and lore of base­ball is one of those movies where you real­ly don’t have to be a fan of the sport to be able to immerse your­selves into the deep­er con­cerns of the char­ac­ters and wider impli­ca­tions of its themes. It sees a social­ly-diverse posse of beer-swill­ing ball-play­ers assem­bling for the final ever game on a field set for demo­li­tion. Bit­ter­sweet, and then some.

Abid­ing Nowhere
Cre­ate
Nobody real­ly took Tai­wanese film­mak­er Tsai Ming-liang’s 2012 retire­ment announce­ment that seri­ous­ly, and after a brief pause he went on to make a num­ber of (superb) fea­tures, shorts and doc­u­men­taries. Abid­ing Nowe­here is a new entry into his ​“Walk­er” saga, in which actor and muse Lee Kang-sheng, dressed in orange monk robes, walks extreme­ly slow­ly across a num­ber of urban and rur­al land­scapes. In this one, he’s made it across the pond to Wash­ing­ton DC.

I’m Still Here
Spe­cial Pre­sen­ta­tion
With his first nar­ra­tive film in over a decade, the leg­endary Brazil­ian direc­tor Wal­ter Salles sen­si­tive­ly depicts the forced dis­ap­pear­ance of for­mer con­gress­man Rubens Pai­va after being abduct­ed by the mil­i­tary jun­ta. By no means is this a tra­di­tion­al biopic – Salles fix­es his gaze on the Pai­va matri­arch, Eunice, played with strik­ing, nuanced assur­ance by Brazil­ian actor Fer­nan­da Tor­res in a pro­found­ly emo­tion­al­ly lay­ered image of resistance.

The Trea­sury of Human Inher­i­tance
Exper­i­men­ta
Empa­thy and care lie at the core of this pro­gramme of three poet­ic shorts screen­ing along­side Alex­is Kyle Mitchell’s abstract film essay cen­tred on the ​‘lived body’, with works by Alex­is Kyle Mitchell, Sarnt Uta­ma­chote Paul Stew­art, Sarah Perks and JT Trinidad con­verg­ing in their poignant explo­rations of care, cohab­i­ta­tion and com­mu­ni­ty in the face of cri­sis, grief and adversity.

Har­vest
Spe­cial Pre­sen­ta­tion
Athi­na Rachel Tsangari’s hyp­not­ic Eng­lish lan­guage debut set in a medieval vil­lage is a sear­ing indict­ment of indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion over nature – a gor­geous myth about com­mu­ni­ty, cap­i­tal­ism accen­tu­at­ed by Sean Price Williams’ stun­ning cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Caleb Landry Jones’ impres­sive lead performance.

The Stim­ming Pool
Cre­ate
A prod­uct of The Neu­ro­cul­tures Col­lec­tive and direc­tor Steven East­wood, The Stim­ming Pool is a film which aims to empow­er a set of neu­ro­di­verse artists to be able to make their own cre­ative state­ments. The bold aim of this film is to place the view­er direct­ly into the head­space of an autis­tic artist, described as a vis­cer­al jour­ney through that world as expe­ri­enced lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly, con­scious­ly and subconsciously.