London calling: LFF preview

The big recent additions – glossy Gala screenings at the Royal Festival Hall, showcases via UK-wide partner cinemas, an online BFI Player offering and a burgeoning Expanded section, which this year includes the world premiere of Guy Maddin’s Haunted Hotel: A Melodrama in Augmented Reality – all return in 2022. The festival team’s focus is to fine-tune a more tightly curated programme: around 30 per cent fewer films are showing than in 2019.

LFF has commonly been known as a showcase of the ‘best of the fests’, bringing the big titles from Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Sundance and beyond to the UK for the first time. But an increased number of world premieres points to LFF as a destination beyond that label.

Director of BFI festivals Tricia Tuttle says, “Having 24 world premieres, including Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, feels like a coup, and it underlines we have grown the festival in stature while reducing its scale.” Senior programmer Michael Blyth agrees: “Over the last few years we’ve done a lot of work to make sure that LFF is a destination for new films and world premieres. This year we have a very strong selection of world premieres – more than we’ve ever had before.”

Premieres of films by British directors are most prevalent, including a new documentary by Asif Kapadia, about which Blyth is enthusiastic: “It’s a performance of the show Creature, by choreographer Akram Khan, presented in film form. It’s an interpretive, visceral, experiential dance piece – a dynamic, exciting piece of work.”

Another stage-to-screen adaptation making its world premiere at LFF is festival opener Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical, directed by Matthew Warchus: “It’s a rare moment to open any major international festival with a family film,” says Blyth. “Matilda is just a blast. It’s such an imaginative, creative, fun film, but it really does speak to a completely different audience [to past LFF opening titles]. The idea of having something that kids can get excited about as an opening night Gala sets up something different for LFF.”

Also at the festival is Pinocchio, which for Blyth offers something more serious than might be expected: “Pinocchio might seem like this lighter family fun moment, [but] there’s a darkness and a complexity to it as well.” For the closing night, detective Benoit Blanc returns for Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

But it’s not all about being the first festival to get their hands on a film. “World premieres are great, and they’re so meaningful for filmmakers, but audiences care about the films that they want to see,” Blyth says. UK audiences are just as enthused about seeing the hits from other major European festivals for the first time.

Some of the films making their British debut as LFF Galas and Special Presentations after showing at other major festivals are Noah Baumbach’s White Noise, Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Bardo, Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave and Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness – a big-swinging, vomit-spewing social satire that cries out to be seen in the 2,700-capacity Royal Festival Hall. Another hotly tipped title is Damian Marcano’s second feature Chee$e, a fresh comedy from Trinidad and Tobago that was a breakout hit at Austin’s South by Southwest.

Blyth offers a parting piece of advice for LFF-goers: “Pick a film unlike something you’ve seen before, from a country you’ve never seen a film from before, from a filmmaker you’ve never heard of. Do something different, because this is that moment to take some risks.”

His own recommendation, a Macedonian feature debut from Sundance, may be one to fit those criteria: “You Won’t Be Alone is a 19th century-set film about a witch who transforms a young girl into a body-hopping entity that goes out into the world to discover life. It’s extraordinary in its beauty, scope and intimacy, and at the same time it’s fucking horrifically gory and violent. It’s like an exploitation film by Terrence Malick, an extraordinary film.”

Tuttle is equally eager to highlight some of the new voices showcased by the festival: “I love the creative ambition and distinctive perspectives illustrated in three UK debuts: Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean, Thomas Hardiman’s Medusa Deluxe and Dionne Edwards’ Pretty Red Dress. When seen side by side, they are so refreshingly unique and make me feel optimistic about the future of UK cinema.”

‘Doing something different’ for some cinephiles might be as simple as sampling the festival’s episodic offerings, which rather than being siloed away in their own strand are interwoven throughout LFF’s programme. It may seem counterintuitive to be giving small-screen series big-screen premieres but, says LFF series programmer Rowan Woods, it’s what their quality deserves: “There’s now so much longform work that feels incredibly cinematic and formally inventive, and that can sit shoulder to shoulder with the best international cinema. There’s also something really exciting about seeing certain TV shows in a collective setting – it creates a shared cultural moment that is hard to replicate with on-demand viewing. It’s a real sense of occasion because it’s such a special, one-off experience.” Woods does acknowledge, however, that “not all TV is best experienced in a cinema context and part of the programming process is making that distinction”.

Loath to pick one highlight, Woods references new series from “heavyweight international filmmakers” Lars von Trier (The Kingdom Exodus) and Marco Bellocchio (Exterior Night), before adding that “queer coming-of-age series High School, directed by Clea DuVall and based on the memoir by musicians Tegan and Sara, is also a total delight – I challenge you to find a better soundtrack this year.”

Also moving from the small to the big screen, after a rapturous reception at this summer’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, is Finnish miniseries Eight Deadly Shots (1972), which is, for BFI head curator and LFF Treasures strand programmer Robin Baker “almost the star attraction” of the festival. Of the five-hour series, which recreates the build-up to a real-life mass shooting and will be shown in its entirety at the LFF, he says: “Everybody I spoke to who saw it at Cinema Ritrovato described it as not only their film of the festival but also one of the best they’d seen for years. Having that kind of discovery, I can’t imagine it could be anything else other than one of the hits of the festival.”

Headlining the Treasures strand of archival cinema is the world premiere of a new BFI remaster of Gary Oldman’s Nil by Mouth (1997). With 160 feature films, as well as short films, series and VR, it’s impossible in this small space to highlight more than a handful of the festival’s finest offerings. But a final mention is due for the LFF Competition, which for the first time will be presented in collaboration with Sight and Sound.