From Emerald Fennell’s tale of privilege and obsession (Saltburn) to Jonathan Glazer’s subversive Auschwitz tale; here are eleven films to look out for at LFF this year
The UK’s most prestigious film festival is back this October – with a frankly ridiculous 252 titles in tow for its 67th edition. Taking place at venues like the Royal Festival Hall and BFI Southbank, The BFI London Film Festival (LFF), as always, promises a wealth of narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and “extended reality” works – including big-hitters from Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Sundance, and early frontrunners for the BAFTAs and Academy Awards.
With hyped headliners and hidden gems from 92 different countries all on display, you’ll need tips on where to start with the meticulously curated programme. AnOther is keen to provide:
Saltburn (Emerald Fennell) – lead image
Keeping alive our creepy fascination with the wealthy elites, meanwhile, is sophomore filmmaker Emerald Fennell – who competed for Best Picture and Best Director (and won Best Screenplay) at the Oscars in 2021 for her debut, Promising Young Woman.
Saltburn, this year’s Opening Gala, stars Barry Keoghan (an Oscar nominee for The Banshees of Inisherin) as an Oxford University student infatuated with an aristocratic classmate (Jacob Elordi). He ends up spending the summer with him at a lavish estate with snotty parents Rosamund Pike and Richard E Grant, plus entourage – in a movie that promises thrills, wit, and early 00s bangers from Bloc Party, The XX and the Sugababes.
The Kitchen (Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya)
Big-hitting heavyweights form the crux of LFF’s ‘Headline Galas’ section, with Martin Scorsese’s four-hour period crime opus Killers of the Flower Moon and David Fincher’s Michael Fassbender-led The Killer among the most-hyped. Elsewhere, Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster) promises sex, Stone (Emma), and surrealist comedy in Victorian-era sci-fi Poor Things, this year’s Venice Golden Lion winner. But perhaps it’s this year’s Closing Gala that holds the most intrigue.
In The Kitchen, Kano spends his days romping around a London estate on a jumbo motorcycle (check out Jeff Nichols’ Midwest moto-movie The Bikeriders for another biker gang highlight). But this isn’t Top Boy – this is the year 2040; a time when social housing has been widely eradicated to make way for lavish gentrification. What ensues is a story of family and class struggle that riffs on Afrofuturist and Blade Runner-style dystopias – with Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya in the director’s seat for the first time alongside Kibwe Tavares.
High & Low: John Galliano (Kevin MacDonald)
A new film about John Galliano is made all the more exciting by the presence of Kevin MacDonald in the director’s chair. The Scottish filmmaker has documentary pedigree: he won an Oscar in 1999 for One Day in September, about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, and later impressed with works on Bob Marley (Marley) and Whitney Houston (Whitney).
This feature doc explores the life and times of fashion industry icon and four-time British Designer of the Year Galliano – from his childhood and career prominence to his fashion industry exodus following his anti-Semitic tirade, ultimately arriving at his present-day redemption as creative director of Maison Margiela. Penélope Cruz and Naomi Campbell are among the figureheads to appear elsewhere in the film.
Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)
A slew of heavy-hitters from Japan make the LFF festival line-up this year. There’s the latest from 2022 Oscar-winner Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car): Venice 2023 Grand Jury Prize winner Evil Does Not Exist; while the first feature in a decade from Studio Ghibli head Hayao Miyazaki in the form of The Boy and the Heron. Elsewhere, 2018 Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters) returns with Monster – which won the Queer Palm and Best Screenplay awards at Cannes this year. But the most-anticipated Japanese production on offer this year may well be the one by a German filmmaker.
Perfect Days tells the story of a lowly Tokyo toilet attendant as he goes about his modest day-to-day life – but this simple story excels thanks to the direction of Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas), and the presence of powerhouse actor Koji Yakusho (Cure), who took home Best Actor at Cannes for his performance. The film has now been submitted as Japan’s official nomination for the 2024 Academy Awards – a big statement, given the competition.
Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus (Neo Sora)
A surprise announcement comes in the form of the final concert film of beloved composer Ryuichi Sakamoto – who died from cancer earlier this year. The legendary Yellow Magic Orchestra founder and scorer of films by directors like Bernardo Bertolucci, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Brian de Palma was 71 when he passed in March, shortly after the release of his final album.
Despite his death, he is doubly present at the LFF this year: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster boasts Sakamoto’s final film score, whereas Opus is a more intimate offering. Directed by the composer’s own son, this documentary explores Sakamoto’s final days with a tender piano recital of his most beloved works – including the ethereal classic Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.
The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green)
Big-hitting TV stars light up the ‘Official Competition’ section of LFF this year. Elf portrayer Morfydd Clark (The Rings of Power) leads folk horror Starve Acre alongside Targaryan prince Matt Smith (House of the Dragon), while Jeremy Allen White (The Bear) and Jessie Buckley (Chernobyl) head up sci-fi romance Fingernails with Riz Ahmed. You’ll best know three-time Emmy winner Julia Garner from Netflix’s Ozark – though she was also captivating as a downtrodden film production assistant in Kitty Green’s brilliantly cold The Assistant in 2019.
That’s why it’s great to see Garner collaborating with the Australian filmmaker again for her sophomore narrative feature, The Royal Hotel – which follows two backpackers who, after running out of cash in the Outback, are forced to take on work at a rowdy bar in a remote mining town. Another famous elf, Hugo Weaving (Lord of the Rings; The Matrix), plays the part of bar manager Billy – whose behaviour crosses the line.
Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros (Frederick Wiseman)
Speaking of The Bear, there are at least two distinguished food films at the LFF this year. In The Pot au Feu, Juliette Binoche (Three Colours trilogy) plays a chef working for an epicure in France in the year 1885; 14-time Michelin Star recipient Pierre Gagnaire served as the film’s culinary director, with Tran Anh Hung subsequently winning Best Director at Cannes.
Similarly delectable is 93-year-old Frederick Wiseman’s documentary on the prestigious, family-run La Maison Troisgros restaurant near Lyon – itself a Michelin three-starred restaurant. His four-hour chronicle captures the creation of daily menus; the sourcing of wines and cheeses; the art of cooking; and the family dynamics of the owners as the reins are passed from one generation to the next.
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
Esteemed auteurs from all over the world supply the ‘Special Presentations’ programming this year – Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides), Michel Franco (New Order) and 2023 Cannes Jury Prize winner Aki Kaurismäki (The Other Side of Hope) included. One of the more local inclusions this year hasn’t made a feature film in a decade – but his last one was really good.
In 2013, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin cast Scarlett Johansson as a shapeshifting alien prowling the streets of Glasgow to prey on unassuming men, mixing verité filmmaking with Mica Levi’s minimalistic score to critical acclaim. In 2023, Glazer’s back to tackle the Holocaust by spinning Auschwitz on its head. Instead of focusing on the victims, The Zone of Interest squares upon executioners with kindly names like Rudolf and Hedwig – exploring their bucolic family lives in homes just a few metres away from the site of the genocidal killings.
Grime Kids (Theresa Ikoko; Abdou Cisse)
In early 00s London, somewhere between the frequencies of Kiss FM and Classic FM, an underground music revolution was taking place via the sounds of Wiley, Lethal Bizzle and Dizzee Rascal. Here in the tower blocks of Roman Road and Bow, pirate radio stations like Rinse FM backed a vibrant scene then unchecked by the mainstream – before latter-day progenitors like Stormzy would take it all the way to the top.
This era of rampant creativity serves as the backdrop to the BBC’s new TV series Grime Kids, which receives its premiere via two-episode screenings at the LFF. Described as “a love letter to East London”, the series – inspired by the book by DJ Target and written by Rocks screenwriter Theresa Ikoko – traces the lives of five inspired school kids who form a crew, affirming a subculture that was then on the brink of exploding.
How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker)
Otherwise known as cinematographer for music videos by A$AP Rocky, James Blake and Wolf Alice, 29-year-old Molly Manning Walker made headlines at Cannes in May 2023 after her debut feature How to Have Sex was awarded the Un Certain Regard prize. The film – visually distinctive and highly kinetic, as you’d expect – concerns virginal teenager Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) and a heady summer holiday in Malia with a complex undercurrent to it.
It was inspired by Manning Walker’s own experience of sexual assault aged 16, as she told Cannes Film Festival earlier this year – and the notion that such assaults were often wrongly addressed on screen. A cutting social commentary is the crux of the film’s power, but the booze and bass-saturated kaleidoscope of neon lights and sun-soaked hangovers make it a sensory marvel as well.
Penal Cordillera (Felipe Carmona)
There’s plenty of anticipation for two foster-care dramas in this year’s ‘First Feature’ competition. One is A24’s new drama Earth Mama (Savanah Leaf), which explores the system’s oppression of young Black mothers; the other is Hoard (Luna Carmoon), a 90s-set psychological drama starring Stranger Things’ Joseph Quinn and newcomer Saura Lightfoot Leon.
More of a wild card is the intense-sounding Penal Cordillera, by Chilean director-screenwriter Felipe Carmona. It concerns four ruthless torturers of the Pinochet dictatorship who, despite serving long prison sentences, are unwilling to accept responsibility for their crimes. Their luxury prison in the shadow of the Andes mountains includes a pool, gardens, aviaries, and submissive guards – but the bubble threatens to burst when an inmate’s television interview prompts a violent backlash.
UK Premiere: Saturday, 7 October.
The BFI London Film Festival (LFF) 2023 runs from 4-15 October 2023.
