68th BFI London Film Festival brings in highest in-person audience in 10 years

The 68th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express closed on Sunday 20 October with the European premiere of Academy Award winning documentarian Morgan Neville’s Piece by Piece, a vibrant journey through the life of cultural icon Pharrell Williams, all told through the lens of LEGO animation. In addition to Morgan Neville and Pharrell Williams, the event was attended by an exciting array of special guests from the worlds of music, fashion and sport. The Closing Night Gala took place at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall which returned as the festival’s Headline Gala and Special Presentation venue for a fourth time since its inaugural year in 2021.  

“Our biggest thanks go to the artists and industry colleagues from the UK and across the globe who fuelled our collective curiosity this year,” said BFI London Film Festival Director Kristy Matheson. “It was a delight to see audiences engage with each other and this programme – proving once again the joy and comfort we all find in screen culture.” 

The Mayor of London’s Gala of We Live in Time took place on 17 October at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall and was attended by the film’s director John Crowley and lead Andrew Garfield as well as Mayor Sadiq Khan who introduced the film and commented on the importance of the festival to our city and the power of cinema in bringing audiences together.  

Placing audiences at the heart of the festival, the winners of this year’s LFF Audience Awards, as chosen by members of the public who saw the films during the festival (including at UK-wide venues) are also announced today. Darren Thornton’s funny and heartwarming comedy drama Four Mothers, about one Irish son juggling four very different mothers, takes the Audience Award for Best Feature; Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson’s Holloway, which follows six women who were formerly incarcerated at what was once the largest women’s prison in Europe is the winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary; and Jamie Benyon’s Two Minutes, wins the Audience Award for Best Short Film, for a tale about two brothers, who are interrupted while they are robbing  an off licence by their grandmother. 

Audiences flocked to the festival’s vibrant and bustling cultural hubs – the South Bank where the Headline Gala venue Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall sits alongside BFI Southbank and BFI IMAX; and London’s West End, where partner venues Vue West End, the Prince Charles Cinema, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Curzon Soho and Curzon Mayfair showed an array of titles from across the programme. The festival also hosted this year’s Archive Special Presentation at Alexandra Palace, which hosted the world premiere of Silent Sherlock: Three Classic Cases, the inaugural programme from the BFI National Archive’s major new project, funded by Iron Mountain’s Living Legacy Initiative, to fully restore Stoll’s epic Sherlock Holmes film series. 13 features screened at nine UK-wide partner cinemas with additional screenings of The Wild Robot and Endurance also playing in cities across the UK’s nations and regions; 10 short film nominees were available digitally on BFI Player and an Industry Forum took place at Picturehouse Central, a busy hub for industry delegates.  

The 68th edition welcomed more than 815 international and UK filmmakers, immersive art and extended reality artists and series creatives to present their work at venues across the capital. The festival kicked off with a press conference for the world premiere of Opening Night Film Blitz led by Steve McQueen with Saoirse Ronan, Elliott Heffernan, Stephen Graham and Benjamin Clementine. The festival’s highly anticipated series of Screen Talks included acclaimed filmmakers Andrea Arnold, Steve McQueen, Sean Baker, Mike Leigh, Denis Villeneuve, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, remarkable acting talents Lupita Nyong’o and Zoe Saldaña as well as the versatile Daniel Kaluuya discussing his career in front of and behind the camera.  

The festival featured an exciting range of 252 titles (comprising features, shorts, series and immersive works) hailing from 79 countries, and featured 63 languages with 44% of works from female and non-binary filmmakers. All features and series screened to UK audiences for the first time, including 38 world premieres (14 features, 2 series, 19 shorts, 3 immersive), 12 international premieres (6 features, 4 shorts, 2 immersive) and 21 European premieres (17 features, 1 series, 3 shorts).

Across the programme, including events for industry delegates and the immensely popular LFF for Free programme, the festival had 230,342 attendances, the highest in-person attendance in the last 10 years. Around half of this year’s bookers for London screenings and events (49%) were new to the LFF and occupancy across the festival’s London screenings and events has increased to 92%, up from 90% in 2023. 

The winners of this year’s BFI London Film Festival Awards were announced at the festival’s close on 20 October. They were chosen by juries, presided over by Alexandre O. Philippe, (Official Competition), Dionne Edwards (First Feature Competition), June Givanni, (Documentary Competition) and Chloe Abrahams (Short Film Competition). The winners of the competitive awards were: 

• Winner of the Best Film Award in Official Competition – Memoir of a Snail (Dir. Adam Elliot) 
• Winner of the Sutherland Award in the First Feature Competition – On Falling (Dir. Laura Carreira)  
• Winner of the Grierson Award in the Documentary Competition – Mother Vera (Dirs. Cécile Embleton, Alys Tomlinson)  
• Winner of the Short Film Award in the Short Film Competition – Vibrations from Gaza (Dir. Rehab Nazzal) 

LFF Expanded, the immersive and extended reality strand of the BFI London Film Festival, returned for 2024 with a three-week showcase of 12 groundbreaking projects from UK and international artists, filmmakers and creative teams. With four major installations, plus a free programme of XR and gaming works, the programme, presented across multiple London venues, including BFI IMAX, BFI Southbank, Outernet London and the Southbank Centre’s Undercroft, platformed artists working at the cutting-edge of screen technology, incorporating augmented and virtual reality, screen-based installations and immersive sound. 

Our LFF Expanded programme showcased the very best in thought-provoking experiences, with artworks that reimagined the future of health, explored the merging relationship between games and cinema, and invited audiences to gain insight into real-life experiences of ADHD, breast cancer and aphasia. Highlights included Impulse: Playing with Reality, an award-winning mixed-reality work from Anagram, narrated by Tilda Swinton, that explores what it’s like to live with ADHD; The Great Endeavour, an awe-inspiring cinematic experience from acclaimed artist Liam Young that envisions a future where we work together to transform the planet through carbon capture; Arcade, an installation from Darkfield — offering audiences an interactive narrative that explores the evolving relationship between players and avatars and Superradiance: Embodying Earth, a multiscreen video and sound installation from Memo Atken and Katie Peyton, presented at BFI IMAX, that combines AI with dance. This year also marked the first time video games have been showcased at the BFI London Film Festival, with an interactive Games Lounge, featuring five fun and creative projects for audiences to play for free. 

Returning this year, LFF for Free offered audiences a diverse programme of more than 60 events for audiences to attend completely free of charge, including family events, talks, video games, augmented reality experiences and A Beginners Guide To, a series of lunchtime talks exploring the careers of directors with works in the 2024 festival. Highlights included an event and accompanying exhibition celebrating 30 years of DreamWorks Animation; an exploration of machinima with the team behind Grand Theft Hamlet, DJ nights inspired by films showing at LFF, including Twiggy, Piece by Piece and Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story, plus fun and creative activities for children inspired by new films Savages, Blink and That Christmas. This year also marked the inaugural edition of Film in Print – a new programme celebrating the very best of film writing, featuring free talks including from Mark Cousins, Ellen E. Jones, Dr Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Peter Bradshaw, Leila Latif, Ella Kemp and Bechdel Test Fest founder, Corrina Antrobus. 

The Surprise Film was Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live in 1975, when a ferocious troupe of young comedians and writers changed television – and culture – forever. The Surprise Film was introduced by Reitman and co-writer Gil Kenan at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall; Saturday Night stars an ensemble cast that includes Gabriel LaBelle, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood and Lamorne Morris.   

Now in its sixth year, our annual BFI LFF Critics Mentorship Programme continues to look at how we can better serve writers from underrepresented communities. Devised to develop film writing skills through a schedule of sessions covering the first few days of the festival along with mentorship by industry media professionals, the programme is run by co-lead mentors Akua Gyamfi (founder, The British Blacklist) and Amon Warmann (contributing editor, Empire, co-host Fade To Black). LFF continued to support the Red-Carpet Accelerator Programme offering underrepresented emerging journalists placement in red carpet media lines as part of a development scheme in partnership with The British Blacklist and DDA.  

This year’s LFF Industry Forum events welcomed more than 3,000 delegates attending a variety of events including packed houses for the talks programme at Picturehouse Central. The in-person talks and panel events explored the fundamental proposition facing the UK and international film and screen industries in developing and growing businesses, audiences and talent in how to work with talent and nurture creativity, whilst balancing commercial risk. 

These included Spotlight conversations with Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, co-chairs of Working Title Films, in conversation with BFI Chief Executive Ben Roberts, on their passion for movies, their relationships with filmmakers and talent, and nurturing new generations working in front of and behind the camera; Katie Goodson-Thomas, Head of International Production and Development at Searchlight, on how they work in supporting films and filmmakers in conversation with journalist and film festival consultant Wendy Mitchell; and Jay Hunt OBE, BFI Chair, the only person to have been creative head of BBC1, Channel 4 and Channel 5, gave an exclusive career interview with broadcaster and writer Claudia Winkleman. Oscar and BAFTA award-winning film sound designer, supervisor and mixer Johnnie Burn (The Zone of Interest, Poor Things, Nope), revealed the unique ways that he has created sound that contributes to the cinematic storytelling of the films he has worked on in conversation with filmmaker and producer Charlotte Matheson.   

Other highlights included panel discussions with international and UK experts including the production journeys for two distinctive non-fiction films with filmmakers Cécile Embleton for Mother Vera and Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter for Two Strangers Trying Not To Kill Each Other, in conversation with Raul Niño Zambrano, Creative Director, Sheffield DocFest; dealing with originals, adaptations and remakes whilst assessing risk on new or pre-existing intellectual properties with Kevin Loader (Free Range Films), Tolu Stedford (Story Compound), Meg Thomson (Globalgate Entertainment) and Alex Walton (WME Independent), chaired by Rowan Woods, Creative Director of the Edinburgh TV Festival; navigating international markets with international sales agents Sata Cissokho (Memento International), Virginie Devesa (Alpha Violet), Madeleine Tangney (Visit Films) and Sophie Green (Bankside Films) with journalist and film festival consultant Wendy Mitchell; the anatomy of getting first feature Last Swim off the ground with writer-director Sasha Nathwani, co-writer and producer Helen Simmons, cinematographer Olan Collardy and producers Campbell and Nisha Mullea in discussion with Mariayah Kaderbhai, Head of Programmes, BAFTA; the inspirations and ambitions shared by six emerging writers from across the UK producing work diverse in form and story; and reveals on the behind the scenes promotion strategies by marketing experts Laura Mirabella (Vision Distribution) and Mathias Noschis (Alphapanda) for  Paola Cortellesi’s There Is Still Tomorrow and Colm Bairéad’s The Quiet Girl. 

The LFF Industry Forum also welcomed producers from France participating in the New Waves co-production meetings with UK producers organised by the Institut Français UK, the BFI and the CNC in partnership with Unifrance; and an inaugural delegation of Italian producers taking part in Cinematic Bridges through a BFI International partnership with the Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual of the Ministry of Culture in Italy (DGCA-MiC), Cinecittà, and the Italian Cultural Institute of London.    

Other LFF Industry Forum events included the launch of the Good Work programme backed by BFI National Lottery funding to support the industry bring about positive change and address practices impacting the health and wellbeing of the industry’s workforce. The festival’s UK Talent Days, in partnership with the British Council connected international industry professionals with UK creative talent and emerging professionals to support the development of new and future UK films, opportunities for investment and partnership. A Buyers & Sellers event provided a unique opportunity for international sales agents to meet UK buyers; and a networking lunch for invited UK and international delegates was co-hosted by the LFF and the UK Global Screen Fund as well as a UK Talent Party supported by the British Council.  

International talent agents, festival directors and programmers, producers, sales agents and distributors also attended the LFF Works-in-Progress showcase which presented nine new feature films and documentaries by UK-based filmmakers. The projects attracted strong interest with business outcomes being tracked as they make their way to market.  The BFI NETWORK@LFF programme provided festival opportunities and filmmaker talks for UK-based writers, directors and producers. 

Event partners supporting the LFF Industry Forum included Alliance for Women Film Composers, AMPAS, BFI NETWORK, the British Council, Directors UK, FOCUS — The meeting place for international Production, Reddit, Tongues on Fire - UK Asian Film Festival and Women in Film and Television. Existing partner Film London which returned with the established Production Finance Market bringing together UK and international producers and financiers.  

The BFI Film Academy programme at LFF provided young people aged 16 to 25 with multiple opportunities to engage with the festival, enhance their creative skills, and network with both peers and industry professionals. The Film Academy Day, supported by Netflix, was held on the final day of the festival and featured two sold-out educational events followed by networking drinks. 

Telling Your Story, Your Way was aimed at emerging documentary filmmakers. It brought together two trailblazing directors, Elizabeth Sankey (Witches) and Victoria Mapplebeck (Motherboard), as they explored the art of autobiographical storytelling in film. Reclaiming the Frame: Collective Filmmaking with The Stimming Pool dived into the world of collective filmmaking with the Neurocultures Collective and filmmaker Steven Eastwood and explored how their work has redefined storytelling with a vibrant and inclusive perspective.  

Meanwhile, #GenerationNow, a selection of short films from the BFI London Film Festival main shorts programme, exploring the experience of young adulthood, was available on BFI Player throughout the festival. Complementing this, SCENE, a series of pre-recorded interviews with the #GenerationNow filmmakers, provided insights into filmmaking, career paths, and tips on breaking into the screen industries. The SCENE interviews are available to watch on YouTube.