The festival will open with Rian Johnson’s ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ and close with Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero’. In between, masterpieces of cinema will rule over Old Foggy for nearly two weeks.
The 69th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express takes place from 8-19 October 2025 and it is always a celebration for me when the London Film Festival is taking place. There is nothing like enjoying a festival in one’s home town, touching down on your own pillow each night. Granted, I don’t do it as much as my colleagues both by choice and by personal obligations yet the one, most exhausting aspect of being a film journalist is the amount of nights I spend away from my bed. And miss it.
The BFI is a grand cinematic organization, which perhaps more than any other in the Western world, understands the power of cinema. So it’s no surprise that the LFF, as it’s called for short, is such a bonanza of amazing works. London based journalists have a couple of weeks of pre-festival screenings to attend, where they can catch up with world cinema, and then massive press and industry screenings at Picturehouse Central in Soho enables us to watch it all. From the comfort of our hometown, if you’re lucky enough to call London home.
This year Netflix looms large, with the opening film as one of their titles and Jay Kelly, the George Clooney starrer, also in the LFF line up. Of course, Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein will also feature in this year’s program, as will another streamer’s award contender, Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, distributed by Amazon.
International Oscar contenders include Kaouther Ben Hania’s devastating film The Voice of Hind Rajab, fresh from its emotional debut in Venice. The film is this year’s Tunisian awards entry, even if the story is a Palestinian one.
The Palestinian entry to this year’s awards race is one near and dear to my heart. Annemarie Jacir’s highly anticipated epic film Palestine 36, which will screen on two separate occasions and will feature its stellar cast — Jeremy Irons, Hiam Abbass and Saleh Bakri to name a few — is “a powerful exploration of the events leading up to the Arab Revolt of 1936,” as the LFF program points out.
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent has been getting Oscar buzz since it premiered earlier this year in Cannes, though it has not officially received Brazil’s endorsement for an Oscar run.
The entry from the Philippines, to the Oscar race, is Lav Diaz’s Magellan, a short (by Diaz’s standards!) 160 film starring Gael García Bernal. The film will screen twice during LFF and it’s one film I also plan on watching on the big screen.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Maryam Touzani’s bittersweet drama Calle Malaga, which premiered in Venice and will also be at LFF, goes on to become the Moroccan entry this year. Her previous film The Blue Caftan was the country’s 2023 Oscar contender and between Touzani and her filmmaker husband Nabil Ayouch they have been playing tandem on the nominations.
Of course, Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident will not receive the official nomination by Iran to participate in the Best International Feature Film race at the Oscars. Yet everyone has been celebrating the Iranian auteur and he will have his own gala on the afternoon of October 11th at the Royal Festival Hall.
To be noted, in this year’s lineup 103 works are made by female and non-binary filmmakers, which makes up 42% of the program. All features and series will screen to UK audiences for the first time, including 27 World Premieres (6 features, 1 series, 19 shorts, 1 immersive), 11 International Premieres (10 features, 1 short) and 20 European Premieres (11 features, 1 mid length, 7 shorts, 1 immersive).
Kristy Matheson, BFI London Film Festival Director, said: “This Autumn we invite audiences to craft their own festival journey across our programme of premiere screenings, dynamic interactive exhibitions and compelling talks programmes with some of cinemas leading practitioners. We look forward to you joining us this year to experience the incredible state of the medium in 2025 – brimming with formal innovations, provocations and essential roadmaps for navigating the world around us."
LFF for Free will return and like in past years, will offer audiences a fun and wide-ranging programme of talks, workshops, DJ Nights, exhibitions and filmmaker Q&As, in-person at BFI Southbank as well as short films online on BFI Player – all completely free of charge.
And last, but not least, the Screen Talks will include Yorgos Lanthimos, Daniel Day-Lewis, Richard Linklater, Jafar Panahi, Lynne Ramsay, Tessa Thompson and Chloe Zhao, in person and also available online on BFI Player exclusively and BFI YouTube.
For the full program, check out the BFI website.
Images courtesy of the BFI, used with permission.