How do you decide what to watch at a film festival?

Cin­e­ma is often described as a ​“broad church” but I see it more as an ice­berg. A small per­cent­age of titles achieve vis­i­bil­i­ty while the major­i­ty lan­guish beneath the sur­face, no less majes­tic for exist­ing beneath sea-lev­el. The 2019 BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val pro­gramme makes a virtue of div­ing beneath the sur­face (if you’ll per­mit me to keep rid­ing my metaphor) to plat­form and cham­pi­on works beyond the usu­al fes­ti­val favourites of old estab­lished auteurs.

Nav­i­gat­ing the pro­gramme is an exer­cise that requires more imag­i­na­tion than pure­ly scan­ning for name-brand recog­ni­tion. Yes, there is a glitzy tranche of head­line-grab­bers. Mar­tin Scorsese’s The Irish­man is a clos­ing night film of mar­ket­ing dreams, and there are plen­ty of titles arriv­ing with Cannes, Venice and Toron­to buzz. (Wel­come to our town Noah Baumbach’s Mar­riage Sto­ry, Céline Sciamma’s Por­trait of a Lady on Fire, Mati Diop’s Atlantics, Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, Cor­neliu Porumbiou’s The Whistlers, Ter­rence Malick’s A Hid­den Life, Robert Eggers’ The Light­house and Sarah Gavron’s Rocks to name but a few).

Still, this is a a pro­gramme made up of 229 fea­tures and 116 shorts, and once you flick past the head­line galas, recog­nis­able bread­crumbs are less fre­quent, and fig­ur­ing out what you want to taste becomes a more daunt­ing task. As a con­se­quence, indi­vid­ual pro­gram­mers stand in as tastemak­ers. You read blurbs, look for pas­sions and themes that emerge across a par­tic­u­lar programmer’s choices.

For exam­ple, Michael Blyth, maven of the Cult strand whose devo­tion for genre films is cou­pled with dili­gent appraisal of a film’s scope will always give me a few sol­id view­ing ideas. In this case: Vivar­i­um, which stars Jesse Eisen­berg and Imo­gen Poots, is a satir­i­cal sci-fi about a cou­ple whose attempts to mount the prop­er­ty lad­der land them in a strange nether­world. Then there’s Noc­tur­nal, an ​“atmos­pher­ic” debut by Nathalie Biancheri that focus­es on the rela­tion­ship between a 16-year-old girl and an old­er male admirer.

Anoth­er pro­gram­mer worth attend­ing to is Tega Oki­ti whose taste was seen in action dur­ing August across the BFI sea­son No Direct Flight Lon­don, which she co-pro­grammed with cura­tor Gay­lene Gould. For the LFF Oki­ti con­tin­ues to place cut­ting-edge tal­ent from Africa and its dias­po­ra on the map: Niger­ian fea­ture The Man Who Cuts Tat­toos is set in an Edo vil­lage and fol­lows the emo­tion­al and lit­er­al grow­ing pains of a young girl who must under­go the prac­tice of scarification.

First-time fea­ture direc­tor Michael Omonua made a short called Brood with a bold, absurd­ly fun­ny motif that bodes well for this new flick. Anoth­er debut comes cour­tesy of actor-turned-direc­tor Aki Omoshay­bi whose Real is a por­trait of a new cou­ple attempt­ing to sub­due their per­son­al hard­ships in order to grow an inti­ma­cy together.

Else­where pro­gram­mer Sophie Brown has writ­ten a from-the-heart arti­cle rec­om­mend­ing five titles from the Debate strand. She posi­tions her choic­es as light­ning bolts capa­ble of illu­mi­nat­ing the dark places in our cur­rent world, writ­ing here, ​“There’s an urgent need for imag­in­ing alter­na­tive futures, but in order not to repeat his­to­ry, we need to under­stand how we got here.”

I’m intrigued to see with keen­er eyes a part of the world (Hox­ton) that I super­fi­cial­ly know in The Street by dec­o­rat­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er Zed Nel­son, and also Rewind by Sasha Joseph Neulinger, which sounds like an auda­cious and per­son­al attempt to reck­on with both child­hood trau­mas and the group behav­iours that enabled it to con­tin­ue unabated.

This is the first year with Tri­cia Tut­tle in the offi­cial (as opposed to last year’s act­ing) role of Fes­ti­val Direc­tor. For a sense of the val­ues she brings, lis­ten to her dis­cussing her work with shout-outs to three of her top female-direct­ed picks: Mir­rah Foulkes’ Judy & Punch; Bil­lie Piper’s Rare Beasts; and Marielle Heller’s A Beau­ti­ful Day in the Neigh­bor­hood on Anna Smith’s pod­cast Girls on Film. For the full gamut of female-direct­ed titles, pro­gram­mer Kate Tay­lor has com­piled this handy and exhaus­tive list.

Hav­ing spent as much time as my lim­it­ed lung-pow­er will allow swim­ming around the more sub­merged titles, I am drawn to Mal­go­rza­ta Szumowska’s The Oth­er Lamb because Han­nah Wood­head of this parish told me ​“it’s about join­ing a cult because the cult leader is hot” – a con­cept that makes me feel seen and attacked. I Die of Sad­ness Cry­ing For You is a doc­u­men­tary about a Span­ish song form that chan­nels female pain.

Shoot­ing the Mafia is the new doc­u­men­tary by Kim Longinot­to whose work exists in a sphere of tran­scen­dent empa­thy. Episodes one and two of forth­com­ing BBC series Trigonom­e­try are on my list because it’s by dead­pan Greek genius Athi­na Rachel Tsan­gari, and Wet Sea­son because it’s the sec­ond fea­ture by Antho­ny ​“Ilo Ilo” Chen and works with­in my extend­ed metaphor about being underwater.

To close: this pre­view is but a small haul of the good­ies to be found, and com­pil­ing it has awok­en a humil­i­ty that feels appro­pri­ate. There it a type of atti­tude ram­pant among film fans that reminds me of peo­ple I met when I was trav­el­ling, who would reel off lists of coun­tries they had vis­it­ed, like: ​“Viet­nam DONE, Thai­land DONE, Laos DONE.” We’re nev­er done.