Scheduled to take place in England’s capital from the 9th to the 20th October is the 2024 edition of the London Film Festival. The UK’s premier film celebration will be taking over the city with screenings at a whole host of London-wide venues including the BFI Southbank, BFI IMAX, Prince Charles Cinema and Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall to name but a few. As it has done for a number of years now, the festival will also be presenting a number of select screenings in regional cinemas too as part of LFF on Tour. For those who aren’t able to make it to cinemas there will be a number of films, of both feature and short length, made available for free on the BFI Player once the festival gets underway.
The lineup of feature films on offer has once again excited us here at DN headquarters. Sean Baker will be at the festival with his Palme d’Or winning feature Anora, a contemporary Cinderella-esque tale of love in the big city. Don’t let that fairytale synopsis fool you though, Baker will undoubtedly use it as another vehicle to shine a light on those who are maligned within our society. Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, of Chevalier and Attenberg fame, is back with her first film in nine years, Harvest, which looks to be a strange folk tale about a small community invaded by outsiders. Alex Ross Perry is also present with Pavements, his part-documentary, part-biopic, part-musical that tells the story of 90s indie rock band Pavement in a playful and metatextual fashion.
Looking to familiar names from the Directors Notes archive whose work is included in this year’s LFF feature selection, we have the genre-bending comedy Sister Midnight from Karan Kandhari, Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis’ animated animal adventure Flow which we’ve been looking forward to since its Cannes Certain Regard screening earlier this year, Alexandre O. Philippe’s Chain Reactions, a celebratory dive into The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the seminal horror’s 50th anniversary, and the Nicolas Cage starring Australian-set psychological thriller The Surfer from Lorcan Finnegan, who we last chatted to on DN about his disturbing suburban sci-fi VIVARIUM.
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One aspect of the lineup that stands out when perusing its offerings is the presence of iconic British filmmakers at the festival, with new features from Steve McQueen, Andrea Arnold and Mike Leigh included in this year’s galas. McQueen’s film Blitz stars Saoirse Ronan and looks to be an expansive, dramatic rendering of British life during the decisive moments of World War Two. Arnold’s Bird, which was received well at Cannes earlier in the year, sees the filmmaker branching out into magical realist territory whilst retaining the grounded honesty and beauty she has become known for. Leigh is back with Hard Truths, his first feature since 2018’s Peterloo, and is set to be a return to the grounded, character-centric familial dramas the legendary director built his career on.
The programme of renowned filmmakers isn’t just locked to British shores though as François Ozon, Ali Abbasi, Marielle Heller, Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino and Hong Sang-soo all have features included in the lineup as well. Having loved Challengers, Guadagnino’s new feature Queer looks particularly appealing, with the filmmaker shifting creative gears once again to adapt William S. Burrough’s novel. As a long-term fan of Sang-soo, I’m keen to catch A Traveler’s Needs too, which sees the prolific Korean director reunite with Isabelle Huppert for what looks to be another wonderfully sly ramble.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about the short films playing London Film Festival this year both in cinemas and for free online via the BFI Player, as the selection looks to be as impressive and eclectic as per usual. Horror filmmakers Ethan Evans and Jess Bartlett have Outside Noise playing the festival. Evans and Bartlett first came onto my radar with their viral Instagram short Time Out, which was brilliantly tense and unsettling, so I’m definitely excited to see what else they’ve been cooking up. Alex Peake’s Us Four, which we featured as part of our NFTS Graduate Showcase highlights earlier this year, is scheduled to make an appearance. It’s a really insightful and intimate short that blends animation styles to tell a story of sisterhood.
Other featured filmmakers who have been mentioned on DN’s pages before include Juliana Kasumu, whose short film BABYBANGZ was included in our LFF short film roundup back in 2021. She has Adura Baba Mi playing, a recollective documentary that explores her Nigerian father’s affectionate memories of their family. Razan Madhoon, whose short film Go Home we enjoyed at the Glasgow Short Film Festival in 2022, has new film The Nobody in the programme, which looks to be a gripping airport-set immigration drama about the confusion surrounding a passenger’s death during a flight.
All in all, it’s shaping up to be another strong year for the London Film Festival with plenty of fascinating cinema to catch on the big screen. Before we leave you, it’s also worth adding that there are a number of other strands of the festival that go beyond traditional filmmaking, branching out into everything from Immersive Art and VR creations to thought-provoking and abstract experimental work. If you want to hear from the filmmakers themselves there are a whole host of conversations as part of the festival’s Screen Talks lineup, with live discussions set with McQueen, Arnold, Leigh and Baker as well as actors Daniel Kaluuya and Zoe Saldana, and Dune director Denis Villeneuve.
For now, if you’re looking to venture forth and explore more of the programme you can do so on the London Film Festival’s official website. Then, once the festival is up and running, you can check back over here where we’ll be delving into some of our favourite picks from LFF as part of our usual Best of Fest coverage.
