The BFI London Film Festival 2018 Programme Has Arrived and It Is Amazing!

12:04:00



Good Morning Lovelies, 

Here comes the big BFI London Film Festival news! Sit down, take some deep breaths and be prepared to book up a whole host of tickets lovelies, because this year’s selection is pretty epic!

Over the course of 12 days in October, the event will host 21 World Premieres, nine International Premieres and 29 European Premieres, whilst welcoming a whole load of amazing cast and crew members too who are celebrating the 225 features at the event.

With a headline Gala Screening being hosted at Cineworld Leicester Square every night of the event, the opening film will be Steve McQueen’s Widows before the event ends on the 21st October with Stan & Ollie. Inbetween them, fans will be treated to gala screenings of The Favourite, The Coen Brothers The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff, Beautiful Boy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Colette, The Front Runner, director Dan Fogelman’s Life Itself, Outlaw King, A Private War starring Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Stanley Tucci and Tom Hollander, as well as Luca Guadagnino’s, follow up to his triumphant Call Me By Your Name (LFF 2017) with Headline Gala Suspiria, starring Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton.

Other gala screenings at the event include this year’s Festival Gala, Wild Rose. The Cult Gala screening of Assassination Nation. Ali Abbasi’s Border features as the Dare Gala. Whilst, Lee Chang-dong’s critically acclaimed Burning features as this year’s Thrill Gala in association with Sight & Sound. And Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum, opens as this year’s Debate Gala, with The Great Victorian Moving Picture Show featuring as the Archive Gala and Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, featuring as this year’s Love Gala.

The Laugh Gala will be the UK Premiere of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, whilst this year’s Family Gala sees LFF favourite Mamoru Hosoda return with Mirai and the Journey Gala’s screening is Roma. With the Create Gala closing the screenings with The White Crow.

The LFF will also bring back some exciting presentations and talks with their LFF Connects series welcoming in-depth interviews with Keira Knightley, Alfonso Cuarón, David Hare, Lee Chang-dong and Simon Amstell, with more being confirmed nearer the Festival. Whilst the event will stream to cinemas all over the UK specially selected films such as They Shall Not Grow Old and Mike Leigh’s Peterloo.

Ten Special Presentations will shine the spotlight on new work from major directors. Including Tinge Krishnan’s Been So Long, Fahrenheit 11/9 by Michael Moore, The Hate U Give by George Tillman Jr, The Little Drummer Girl by Park Chan-wook, Carol Morley’s Out Of Blue, Viktor Kossakovsky’s Aquarela, Make Me Up by Rachel Maclean’s and finally the BFI Flare Special Presentation returns with the trailblazing Rafiki by Wanuri Kahiu.

Amongst all of these, the Official Competition this year will be one of the toughest yet, as the films below fight it out to win the top prize at the event:

  • Birds Of Passage
  • Destroyer
  • Happy New Year, Colin Burstead
  • Happy As Lazzaro
  • In Fabric 
  • Joy
  • The Old Man &The Gun
  • Shadow
  • Sunset 
  • Too Late To Die Young

Films that not only we will enjoy rooting for but star some of these great cast and crew members, who have already confirmed that they will be attending the festival. These include: Steve McQueen, Michelle Rodriguez, Viola Davis, Daniel Kaluuya, Steve Coogan, John C. Reilly, Jon S. Baird, Jeff Pope, Faye Ward, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone, Joe Alwyn, Nicholas Hoult, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Coleman, James Smith, Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Tim Blake Nelson, Liam Neeson, Bill Heck, Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Felix van Groeningen, Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, Anne Carey, Amy Nauiokas, Wash Westmoreland, Keira Knightley, Dominic West, Denise Gough, Elizabeth Karlsen, Stephen Woolley, Hugh Jackman, Jason Reitman, Dan Fogelman, Olivia Cooke, David Mackenzie, Matthew Heineman, Rosamund Pike, Jamie Dornan, Stanley Tucci, Luca Guadagnino, Ali Abbasi, Lee Chang-Dong, Nadine Labaki, Alfonso Cuarón, Ralph Fiennes, George MacKay, George Tillman Jr, Amandla Stenberg, Angie Thomas, Carol Morley, Patricia Clarkson, Peter Jackson, Viktor Kossakovsky, Rachel Maclean, Wanuri Kahiu.

Speaking about this year’s selection, Amanda Nevill, Chief Executive, BFI said, “Opening doors for everyone is at the heart of the BFI’s purpose and the BFI London Film Festival is the ultimate platform for filmmakers, established and new, to showcase their latest work to audiences in a city renowned for welcoming cosmopolitan creativity.  The Festival’s great programme always challenges our global perspective with fresh ideas and viewpoints, something so valuable at this extraordinary moment when we, as a nation are so engaged in a passionate debate about the UK’s future.”

Whilst, Tricia Tuttle, Festival Artistic Director said “We have the great pleasure and privilege at the LFF to be both a public Festival, bringing the best global cinema to the UK’s diverse and adventurous audiences, but also playing a key role in supporting producers, sales agents and distributors to launch their films. It’s our goal that LFF offers films to satisfy any cinema goer. We want to offer 12 days of pleasure – whether it’s being challenged to think about the world, or indeed the movies in a different way, or just strapping yourself in for the ride.”

This is only a small selection of films that will be at the event lovelies, with many more having been announced on their website, so make sure to check it out. Booking will open very soon, but if you are worried that you won’t be able to come to London for the event, don’t! The BFI Player is bringing back it’s very exciting festival collection showcasing films from previous years and this year, which can be found here: player.bfi.org.uk/.

Which films are you most excited to see at the event lovelies? 

Blog Soon, 
Joey X 

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