The 55th edition of the London Film Festival (LFF) starts tomorrow, October 12th, and runs until the 22nd. This year the festival will screen 204 features and 110 shorts from 55 different countries. A selection of films will compete for the festival’s 4 main prizes: the Best Film Award, The Grierson Award for Best Documentary, Best British Newcomer and The Sutherland Award (for most imaginative and original first feature). In addition, the British Film Institute will present its highest honour, BFI Fellowships, to actor Ralph Fiennes and director David Cronenberg, the first Canadian ever to receive the fellowship.
The festival comprises nine different sections, from big budget films by well-known directors, to first features, encompassing innovative new films from all over the world. There is a section devoted to European cinema, and special sections for British and French cinema. There are also separate sections devoted to shorts, experimental films, and classic films that have recently been restored.
For this year’s opening and closing films, the festival seems to have looked close to home, selecting UK productions or co-productions for both. 360, which kicks off the festival tomorrow, is decidedly international in scope, though: directed by Fernando Meirelles, who made his name with City of God (2002), the film revolves around a set of interconnected love stories that span the globe. Jude Law, Rachel Weisz, Anthony Hopkins and Jamel Debbouze star.
Rachel Weisz also takes the lead in the festival’s closing film, The Deep Blue Sea. This period piece is director Terence Davies’ adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s 1952 play about a married woman and member of the haute bourgeoisie who falls for a young former RAF pilot.
George Clooney is another star who figures prominently in this year’s LFF: he plays an aspiring American presidential candidate in The Ides of March (which he also directs), and a dad who must step up to his responsibilities when his wife falls ill in Hawaii-set The Descendants.
The festival will treat the public to the work of veteran masters such as French New Wave icon Michel Piccoli (now 85), who plays the stressed pontiff in Nanni Moretti’s We Have a Pope. 81-year-old documentarist Frederick Wiseman’s latest film, Crazy Horse, explores life inside the eponymous Paris cabaret.
Though younger, director Michel Haznavicius also knows how to maintain links with the past. Having established a retro aesthetic over the past decade with two James Bond spoofs (OSS 117, starring Jean Dujardin), the director now turns his gaze further back in cinema history, alighting at the end of the silent era in The Artist.
Known for his contemporary French thrillers (Lemming [2005] and Harry, He’s Here to Help [2000]), Dominik Moll has set his latest film much further in the past. The Monk is an adaptation of a 1796 novel much admired by the Surrealists, and was filmed once before by Ado Kyrou in 1972, based on a script co-written with Buñuel. It will be intriguing to see whether Moll’s witty, modern approach to psychological tension comes through in his take on an original gothic novel.
Michael Winterbottom also takes inspiration from classic literature in Trishna, which sets the story of Tess of the D’Urbervilles in modern-day India, and stars Freida Pinto. In another promising meeting of past and present, Takashi Miike (13 Assassins) applies 3D technology to bring Japanese history to life in Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai.
Maintaining a focus on the East, following the success of Persepolis (2007) Marjane Satrapi co-directs another film based on her work as a graphic novelist, this time in a live-action feature, Chicken with Plums. In another a follow-up to a popular debut (Caramel, 2007), director and actress Nadine Labaki returns with Where Do We Go Now?, another joyfully female-centric film.
For more information on the London Film Festival programme, and to book tickets, go to bfi.org.uk/lff
