The full BFI London Film Festival 2023 line-up… | Little White Lies

Festivals

The full BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val 2023 line-up has been announced

31 Aug 2023

Words by Marina Ashioti

A woman sitting on a bed in a dimly lit, cosy bedroom with wooden furniture and curtains.
A woman sitting on a bed in a dimly lit, cosy bedroom with wooden furniture and curtains.
Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ Poor Things and Emer­ald Fennell’s Salt­burn are among the picks of this year’s bumper LFF crop.

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

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