BFI London Film Festival 202424 Images
It’s that time of year again when you call in sick, try to remember your Letterboxd password, and reacquaint yourself with the ex whose BFI membership grants you access to early tickets. That’s right, it’s the BFI London Film Festival, this year taking place from October 9 to 20, papering over the chasm between brat summer and cuffing season and allowing you to mingle with other cinephiles whose highlight of the year is dashing around Zone 1 in London to watch the best films of 2025 several months in advance – or, in some cases, incredible works of art that will never play on a big screen again.
For those unaware, the London Film Festival is an action-packed event whereby numerous screenings have in-person Q&As from directors, actors, and sometimes attention-loving producers who insist on joining the stage for some reason. The rooms are packed with enthusiastic crowds, there’s a genuine thrill to not knowing if something will be life-changingly brilliant or life-changingly awful, and you’re watching the films so early that the best bits haven’t been spoiled yet – or, even better, you could be the one to blab about the twists to your colleagues, especially the ones you don’t like and will hate you for it.
With a number of tickets being only £5 for anyone under 25 (or anyone prepared to lie about being under 25), the festival also transforms the city – well, a handful of cinemas, and the Pret that everyone congregates in between screenings – into a hub of cinephilia. As there’s literally too much to see, here are a handful of recommendations from the lineup.
Starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in a trippy, sexually explicit adaptation of a William Burroughs book, Queer marks Luca Guadagnino reteaming with key collaborators from Challengers: the same writer, cinematographer, and even musicians in Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Instead of tackling tennis, though, Queer is a 1940s period-drama in Mexico about the quest for love, ayahuasca, and an Oscar nomination for an A-lister eager to prove he’s more than James Bond. Moreover, unlike Call Me By Your Name, which spins the camera away from its sex scenes, Guadagnino’s latest provocation has already caused a scandal on the festival circuit for its nudity and unabashed eroticism.
For some real cinema, you should stop playing Grand Theft Auto, get off your sofa, and make it to BFI IMAX for Grand Theft Hamlet, which is, yes, an entire film shot within the game of Grand Theft Auto. A rare chance to watch machinima on the biggest screen in the UK, the docu-drama hybrid is a poignant, escapist fantasy about unemployed actors yearning for a better life – or at least one in which murder is not only fun but encouraged. Unfolding in English, Spanish, and Arabic, the dark comedy examines the endless possibilities of a virtual existence, as well as the loneliness associated with playing ultra-violent video games all day.
What if the indie band Pavement, who haven’t released a note since 1999, were bigger than Taylor Swift? That’s the premise of Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, a satirical reinvention of the music documentary genre that imagines an alternate universe in which the niche slacker guitar group dominated every Spotify playlist. Featuring Joe Keery, Jason Schwartzman, and Nat Wolff in a fake biopic interspersed throughout the running time, the tricksy celebration of the greatest band ever (that’s my opinion, I can’t speak for Dazed) features cameos from Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig explaining to Stephen Malkmus why they mocked his fans in Barbie.
While Layla, which earned acclaim at Sundance, isn’t strictly autobiographical, it’s written and directed by Amrou Al-Kadhi, a non-binary drag performer whose screenplay delves into their own experiences of London’s LGBTQ+ scene. Starring Bilal Hasna, a British-Palestinian actor, as Layla, the provocative drama paints a vivid portrait of a drag performer whose lifestyle is kept hidden from their strict Muslim family. Meanwhile, Layla embarks on a romance with Max, a cisgender white guy played by Louis Greatorex. To quote Hasna: “I hope that the film shows the world that you can be queer and Palestinian at the same time.”
For months, it’s been speculated on the festival circuit that the year’s best coming-of-age drama will likely be Good One, a father-daughter story from first-time filmmaker India Donaldson. Departing New York for a weekend of camping, 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) must navigate the getaway with her father, Chris (James Le Gros), and Chris’s friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy), whose son dropped out at the last moment. A queer teen who detects tension amongst the adults, Sam answers and dodges questions from the two middle-aged men, while Donaldson’s camera captures the subtleties of the trio’s dynamic.
Destined to be this year’s arthouse underdog that snags an Oscar nomination, Flow is a wordless animation from Latvia about creatures joining forces amidst excess flooding. Gints Zilbalodis’s acclaimed follow-up to Flow depicts, like Robot Dreams, a world without humans, only these CG animals are still left with the remnants of mankind’s damage to the planet. Even without words, the wonderous adventure, which has been compared to Hayao Miyazaki, has plenty to say about climate change, and it has a special screening at BFI IMAX – the lack of dialogue means you won’t need to worry about straining your neck to read the subtitles.
As part of LFF Expanded (a strand of immersive installations, mostly at Bargehouse in Oxo Tower Wharf), Impulse (Playing with Reality) is a 40-minute film that explores ADHD through MR (mixed reality). By wearing a headset, viewers undergo the highs and lows of what the directors deem “entering the ADHD mind”. The MR technology allows digital and physical elements of the real world to interact, while the whole experience is narrated by Tilda Swinton. Just make sure you don’t walk into a wall and hurt yourself while taking part.
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Making its world premiere at the London Film Festival, Laila Abbas’s debut feature is an Arabic-language family-drama that explores sexism, grief, and Islamic inheritance laws. Starring Yasmine Al Massri and Clara Khoury as two squabbling sisters, the German-Palestine production examines a contentious aspect of Shariah law whereby a man can receive twice as much as a woman due to his gender. When the heartbroken duo realise that their brother stands to inherit half of their dead father’s money, they team up for an elaborate scheme to get what’s rightfully theirs.
In Georgia, Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) is a hospital obstetrician who, at night, performs secret abortions, an act that isn’t technically illegal in the country but is unofficially outlawed. Nina, then, is risking her safety with her service, and faces potential trouble when she’s placed under investigation. As with her austere debut Beginning, Dea Kulumbegashvili favours long, still, confident shots that establish Nina’s ongoing paranoia and heighten the tension. Kulumbegashvili is, in fact, a protégé of Luca Guadagnino, who is one of the listed producers of a film that dares to apply a fantastical twist to its very human story.
Starring Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, and a gigantic, wisecracking brain that engulfs the frame, Rumours has a chance to be the strangest and funniest film at this year’s festival. Co-produced by Ari Aster, the absurdist satire captures the surreal, sordid antics of seven international politicians at a G7 summit who try, and fail, to write a joint statement about how the world should be run. As it’s Guy Maddin and the Johnson brothers, this isn’t real life, but an avalanche of esoteric gags about masturbating zombies, artificial intelligence, and the end of the world.
The BFI London Film Festival runs from October 9 to 20 at venues in London and across the UK. Tickets go on sale to the public on 17 September. BFI members can book tickets now. For more information click here.
