We're thrilled to announce that we have six films from our slate at this year's BFI London Film Festival!
The BFI London Film Festival is the UK’s foremost celebration of screen culture that invites audiences to engage with the finest filmmaking talents from our shores and around the world with screenings and events in London and across the UK with LFF on Tour. The LFF will present its immersive programme LFF Expanded, now in its fifth year, at venues around the South Bank, while LFF for Free - a fun, thought-provoking and creative mix of free events for audiences of all tastes - will also return.
See what films we have in this year’s lineup. Read the full lineup here.
BLACK BOX DIARIES follows director and journalist Shiori Ito’s courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité shooting and emotional first-person video, Shiori's quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems. Read more here.
UK PREMIERE
DEBATE: 12 October: ICA, 18:00 & 13 October: Curzon Soho, 17:40
Ernest Cole, a South African photographer was the first to expose the horrors of apartheid to a world audience. His book House of Bondage, published in 1967 when he was only 27 years old, led him into exile in NYC and Europe for the rest of his life, never to find his bearings. Raoul Peck recounts his wanderings, his turmoil as an artist and his anger, on a daily basis, at the silence or complicity of the Western world in the face of the horrors of the Apartheid regime. He also recounts how, in 2017, 60,000 negatives of his work were discovered in the safe of a Swedish bank. Read more here.
UK PREMIERE
CREATE: 11 October: Curzon Mayfair, 18:10, 14 October: BFI Southbank NFT2, 14:30 & 18 October: BFI Southbank NFT4 (formerly the Studio), 20:45.
In a legendary feat of leadership and perseverance, Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton kept alive his crew of 27 men for over a year despite the loss of their ship in frigid pack ice. Over a century later, a team of modern-day explorers sets out to find the sunken ship. From National Geographic Documentary Films and directed by Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin and Natalie Hewit, ENDURANCE threads together the inspiring stories of these two landmark expeditions, bound by their shared grit and determination. Read more here.
WORLD PREMIERE
SPECIAL PRESENTATION (RFH): 12 October: Royal Festival Hall, 14:30 & 14 October: Vue West End, 20:50
When three of their four children are diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare, incurable disease that leads to severe visual impairment, the Pelletier family’s world changes forever. In the face of this life-altering news, Edith Lemay, Sébastien Pelletier and their children set out on a trip around the world to experience all its beauty while they still can. As they fill their memories with breathtaking destinations and once-in-a-lifetime encounters, the family’s love, resilience, and unshakeable sense of wonder ensure that their uncertain future does not define their present. Read more here.
INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
FAMILY: 12 October: Royal Festival Hall, 14:30 & 14 October: Vue West End, 20:50
Patricia Kingori is the youngest woman and Black professor in Oxford’s 925-year history. Captivated by the hidden, multi-billion dollar ‘fake essay’ industry, Patricia enters the world of the ‘shadow scholars’ - an estimated 40,000 highly-educated, underemployed Kenyans making ends meet by writing academic papers for global students. Scholars like Mercy, a single mother, struggling to support her daughter while writing thousands of words every night to help students in wealthy countries graduate and move into lucrative jobs. In the US, a desperate student sells nudes to pay for the promise of a passing grade for her midterms. The tension grows between the demand and the parallel threats of UK and Australian crackdowns and the rise of AI, and Patricia asks: If the world’s elite can pay for degrees they didn’t earn - and educated Kenyans cannot find jobs outside this industry - then what is the real value of education?
WORLD PREMIERE
GRIERSON DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION: 17 October: Vue West End 5, 18:20 & 20 October: BFI Southbank NFT2, 12:30
LOOK INTO MY EYES is a cinematic exploration of a group of New York City psychics that captures human beings trying their best to connect with, witness, and heal one another. Beginning with a plunge directly into the most private and raw of psychic sessions, a diverse group of clients ask questions they can’t ask anywhere else - and the psychics themselves gradually become the film's main characters as their own motivations and experiences of loneliness and loss are revealed. Read more here.
UK PREMIERE
JOURNEY: 10 October: Vue West End 5, 20:50 & 13 October: Curzon Soho 2, 20:30 & 13 October: Curzon Soho 3, 20:45