The BFI London Film Festival will be rolling into town on 4 October, and this 67th edition has the potential to be one of the most exciting yet. Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, a thriller about privilege, status and desire starring her trusty Promising Young Woman collaborator Carey Mulligan, as well as Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike and Richard E Grant, has been given the shiny opening gala spot.
Closing the festivities will be Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares’ dystopian London-set directorial debut, The Kitchen. Fans of Chicken Run are in for a poultry-packed treat, as Sam Fell and Aardman studio’s belated sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget will receive its world première on 14 October at one of the festival’s main venues, the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.
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As is customary for LFF, the programme is brimming with arthouse sensations, genre gems, crowd-pleasers, immersive VR works and restored treasures from the BFI archive. This edition, the first delivered by new festival director Kristy Matheson, is also stacked auteur heavyweights. Among the headline galas are Yorgos Lanthimos’ much-anticipated Poor Things – destined to be one of the year’s most talked about films – and Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein bio, Maestro, both hot off their September premieres in Venice.
Also in the mix are Martin Scorsese’s Killers of The Flower Moon, Todd Haynes’ scabrous May December, David Fincher’s thriller The Killer, Alexander Payne’s retro comedy The Holdovers, Andrew Haigh’s queer ghost story, All of Us Strangers, James Hawes’ historical biopic, One Life and Jeymes Samuel’s messiah complex satire, The Book of Clarence.
We’re also looking forward to special presentations of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, Richard Linklater’s Hitman and Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, while other exciting titles include Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Angela Schanelec’s Music and Molly Manning Walker’s How To Have Sex.
All this is only the tip of an iceberg made up of hundreds of titles that fall into a neat set of strands – Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Experimenta, Family, Treasures and Shorts – beckoning audiences to soak up the best offerings from this year’s festival circuit
The 67th BFI London Film Festival runs from 4 – 15. For more info and to check out the full programme visit bfi.org.uk/lff
