Best of BFI London Film Festival

A struggling actor faces relentless knockbacks in Naqqash Khalid’s sharp-witted comment on race and identity in the film industry.

Léa Seydoux wanders through a maze of past, present and uncertain future in Bertrand Bonello’s audacious blend of period drama and conceptual crystal-gazing.

Michael Morpurgo’s beloved novel is brought to life in this delightful, animated tale of a young castaway who discovers he’s not alone.

Tran Anh Hùng directs Juliette Binoche in this delicious culinary romance that leaves no crumbs. Winner of the best director award at Cannes.

A young woman journeys through childhood trauma and emerging sexuality in this staggering drama from an exciting new voice in British cinema.

Nothing is quite as scary as puberty in this exuberant feminist pre-teen body horror from first time Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu.

David Cronenberg's multi award-winning psychological thriller exploring the bizarre lives of identical twins Elliot and Beverly, both played by Jeremy Irons.

Sharp and sexy comedy that offers a fresh take on desire and fidelity in the 21st century.

A stunning post-apocalyptic British drama navigating the anxieties of parenthood and the future of the world.

Steve McQueen’s cinematic commemoration of the Holocaust offers a multidimensional experience full of gravity and sublimity.

Spanish director Pablo Berger delivers a rich and emotionally engaging dialogue-free animation about friendship, set in a bustling 1980s New York City.

This enthralling Italian historical drama depicts the kidnapping of a young Jewish boy, who is then sent to the Vatican to be converted to Christianity.

A young Jewish woman’s relationship with a British policeman stationed in British Mandatory Palestine has lasting consequences for the region in Michael Winterbottom's powerful thriller.

The mother-daughter relationship is explored to cathartic effect in this complex and poignant hybrid documentary about a woman and her missing daughters.

This moving tribute to the late composer and musician speaks volumes about his enormous talent, pioneering work and dedication to his craft.

Inspired by Haruki Murakami’s short story, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi takes us on an unpredictable and self-revelatory journey in this serene yet riveting Oscar-winning drama.

A married tailor falls for his younger apprentice in Maryam Touzani’s richly textured and sweepingly beautiful exploration of love, desire and tradition.

Using an advanced oil painting animation technique, The Peasants is a visually thrilling rendering of Władysław Reymont’s Nobel Prize-winning tale.

A group of London teenage boys turn to motorbike crime for survival in George Amponsah’s high-octane follow-up to The Hard Stop.

Sisi the Empress (Vicky Krieps) gets an irreverent make-over in Austrian director Marie Kreutzer’s exhilarating BAFTA-nominated period drama, winner of Best Film at BFI London Film Festival 2022.

Like Ghostwatch reimagined as a cheesy 1970s chat show, this deviously clever found-footage horror has scares to spare.

Agathe Rousselle makes a ferocious debut as a killer on the run, in Julia Ducournau’s electrifying techno-chiller and Palme d'Or winner.

Riotously funny with a barbed wire-sharp wit, Academy Award and BAFTA-nominated Triangle of Sadness garnered Ruben Östlund (The Square, Force Majeure) his second Cannes Palme d’Or award.

This mellow drama, set in a picturesque Tunisian orchard, is a beautiful reminder of the importance of friendship and savouring the joys of the everyday.

After crashing his grandma’s car, fourteen-year-old aspiring rapper Shabu spends his summer trying to pay her back, in Shamira Raphaëla’s hilarious, upbeat, better-than-fiction documentary.

Alice Diop reinvents the courtroom drama in this concentrated, gripping study of a writer and the young African woman accused of murdering her own daughter. Based on a true story.

Two brothers struggle to run their homegrown hospital for birds in Delhi as the challenges of extreme pollution and social unrest loom, in Shaunak Sen’s visually captivating documentary.

Panah Panahi’s thrilling debut is by turns tender, quirky, even laugh-out-loud funny as we join an Iranian family on a mysterious, chaotic road trip.

Jacques Audiard ventures into new territory with a vibrant take on love and Paris, as four characters cross amorous paths in the modern city.

The Dardenne brothers’ Cannes prize-winner – about the plight of two teenage African migrants struggling to survive in Belgium – is characteristically gripping, sobering and deeply moving.

Sisterly bonds are pushed to breaking point in this simmering drama set on the Irish border, the debut feature from acclaimed shorts director Cathy Brady.

A triptych of charming romantic mishaps from Ryusuke Hamaguchi, director of the Oscar and Bafta-nominated Drive My Car.

Albert Serra’s hypnotic Palme d'Or-nominated film centres on a government official in Tahiti – a superb Benoît Magimel – who embodies the greed, hypocrisy and paranoia of colonial power.

Clement Virgo’s film is a stunning portrait of wounded masculinity.

An emotionally scarred London chef (Stephen Graham) struggles to keep it together in this formally extraordinary and beautifully acted single-take thriller.

Mark Cousins returns with another journey across the landscape of film, examining what changes the 21st century has brought.

François Ozon offers a gender-reversed reworking of a Fassbinder classic, with Denis Ménochet excelling in a brittle contemplation of the agonies of love and art.

Sho Miyake crafts a moving, one-of-a-kind sports film, anchored by Yukino Kishii’s precise, subtle, unsentimental performance as Deaf aspiring boxer Keiko.

Sally Hawkins gives a standout performance as a fragile young woman in Craig Roberts’ humane depiction of mental illness.

In this beautiful adaptation of Graham Swift’s novel, starring Josh O’Connor and Odessa Young, a writer has a creative awakening steeped in books, love and loss.

When Lisa and Georgi fall in love their future is threatened by the Evil Eye, which unaccountably changes their appearance overnight in Alexandre Koberidze’s work of cinematic magic and 2021 FIPRESCI winner at Berlin.

An aspiring teen gymnast’s world is turned upside down with the arrival of the half-brother she never knew she had.

Jessica Hynes’ directorial debut is a life-affirming lesson in the importance of learning to stand up for yourself.

Daniel Craig is the Kentucky Fried Poirot with all-star suspects - Chris Evans, Ana de Armas and Toni Collette among them - in this nimble and brilliant crime caper.

Pablo Larraín's sublime ‘fable from a true story’ imagines a Christmas weekend at Sandringham in the early 1990s, as an unhappy Princess Diana contemplates saying ‘no’.

Vicky Krieps and the late Gaspard Ulliel star in this moving story of a terminally ill woman’s decision to take her life back into her own hands.

Francis Lee follows up God’s Own Country with a film that is every bit as immersive, tactile and emotionally powerful, aided by the devastatingly good Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan.

Carol Morley (Dreams of a Life, The Falling) returns with a wonderfully stylised, offbeat noir thriller about a murder investigation and multiple realities.

Observing locals and visitors creates a highly original portrait of the Thai tourist town of Krabi in this collaboration between award-winning directors Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers.

Based on Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, Academy Award-nominated Bill Nighy stars as a man determined to wake from his slumber and make a mark on the world.

A thought-provoking documentary about the Australian Rules football star Adam Goodes that raises crucial questions about casual racism.

Budding writer Ayanna’s life is transformed over the course of one hot Harlem summer, when a handsome and mysterious stranger walks into her life.

Winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance Film Festival, Flee is a testament to friendship, family and acceptance.

A package of keepsakes from 1980s wartime Beirut arrives in contemporary Montreal, in this stylish intergenerational drama from acclaimed directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige.

A young woman undergoes a disturbing transformation in Ruth Paxton’s extraordinary psychological horror tale.

Cosmo Jarvis (Lady Macbeth) gives a visceral performance as the hired muscle for a crime family in rural Ireland.

A terminally-ill boxer, a runaway call girl, a double-crossing drugs heist and a gang war; Takashi Miike doesn’t do things by halves.

The winner of Best Film at the 2019 BFI London Film Festival is a hallucinogenic, intoxicating thriller about child soldiers.

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg play a pair of first-time buyers who get more than they bargained for in this twisted fable about the horrors of suburban living.

How do you live, knowing the exact date of your death? A young man is haunted by a prophecy that his life will end as soon as he turns 20.

Celebrated Saudi director Haifaa Al Mansour (Wadjda) returns with an inspiring drama about a young doctor unexpectedly becoming an electoral candidate.

Award-winning director Jerry Rothwell's compelling documentary is a rare cinematic and sensorial insight into the world of non-speaking autistic people.

Aaron Schimberg’s dextrous, darkly comedic discourse on physical difference makes you think about cinematic representation without offering simple resolutions.

In the tough suburbs of Paris, sixteen-year-old Marieme decides to reinvent herself when she joins a girl gang.

Paul Verhoeven’s much-maligned masterpiece is placed under the microscope in this fascinating rumination on the one and only Showgirls.

Armando Iannucci brings David Copperfield fizzing to life with all-star collaborators in this exuberant, entertaining and sharply pertinent adaptation.

A teenage girl forms a mysterious relationship with an older man in this atmospheric debut from director Nathalie Biancheri.

Acclaimed Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki delivers her most assured and affecting work yet, with this astonishing and heart-wrenching depiction of life in the shadows.

The wife of a puritanical farmer seems resigned to her lot, until she has her head turned by the arrival of a young couple in Thomas Clay’s provocative period drama.

When reserved 17-year-old Ida goes to live with her aunt and cousins, she soon becomes embroiled in the family’s aggressive business affairs in this tense, brooding and utterly gripping thriller.

Faders on stun: Hollywood sound editor Midge Costin’s immersive, educational and hugely enjoyable documentary exploring the power of sound in cinema.

Bi Gan's ‘destroyed film noir' is a dazzling dive into an immersive dreamscape.

Intimate portrait of the life and career of the pioneering filmmaker, poet and critic, Jonas Mekas, assembled from thousands of hours of his personal film footage and letters.

Effortlessly charming buddy movie about a young man with Down's syndrome (Zack Gottsagen) in pursuit of his dreams, with Shia LaBeouf.

In Simon Amstell’s affecting, bittersweet comedy, a rising young filmmaker is thrown into emotional turmoil by a burgeoning romance and the upcoming premiere of his second feature.

A pyromaniac returns to his mother’s farm in Oliver Laxe’s visually jaw-dropping study of the Galician landscape.

Ralph Fiennes delivers a sensational performance as one of four passionate souls sharing a villa in the Sicilian sunshine, with jealousy, intrigue and violence simmering beneath the surface.

Chloë Sevigny and Kristen Stewart captivate in this bodice-ripping retelling of the strange and fascinating case of Lizzie Borden.

Six scenes, six years: from first sparks to the fading embers of a love affair, in this intense relationship study by British actor-turned-director Tom Cullen.

Alice Rohrwacher follows The Wonders with a delightfully singular, time and genre-bending rumination on the fate of innocence when faced with corruption and greed.

A deserving winner of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize, this sumptuous tale of two sisters cruelly separated by family and fate makes for deeply moving drama.

Mastery, showmanship and the art of filming tennis are laid bare in an entertaining, innovative archive documentary that’s like no sports film you’ve seen. 

Jacques Audiard’s award-winning crime drama chronicles the rites of passage and eventual rise to power of a young French Arab. Tough, taut, truthful.

Heartbreak and resilience fuel Jia Zhangke's quietly epic saga, in which one woman’s fortitude and knack for crime carry her through a rapidly changing China.

Chloé Zhao's luminous and enthralling study of a young South Dakotan cowboy’s struggle following a rodeo injury.

Lee Chang-dong (Poetry) returns with this spellbinding, richly complex thriller about obsession, class conflict and suppressed male rage.

Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a career-best performance as a kindergarten teacher who finds herself in an ethical quagmire after discovering the poetic talents of a precocious student.

Modern dance is an evocative narrative tool in Georgia Parris’ debut, which investigates a young woman’s identity and the complex relationship she has with her mother and sister.

Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land, City of Ghosts) makes a striking dramatic debut with this pulse-racing biopic of The Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin (Rosamund Pike), killed in 2012 whilst reporting from Syria.

Mads Mikkelsen astounds in this gripping tale of one man’s gruelling fight for survival against the elements.

Two decades in the making, Terry Gilliam’s wildly imaginative Cervantes adaptation is finally with us, and it’s everything we have come to expect from this visionary filmmaker.

Following the death of his mother, an emotionally unstable cop sees his life slowly unravel in this extraordinary tragicomedy.

Dance perfection meets political defection in director Ralph Fiennes’ intoxicating account of the young life of Rudolf Nureyev.

A young couple whose relationship has divided a community are forced on the run through the streets and moors of nocturnal Yorkshire.

A moving and fiercely gripping response to Ireland’s current housing crisis, Rosie tells the story of a Dublin family seeking a roof for the night.

Jacques Audiard’s soul-stirring Palme d’Or winner tells of a veteran Tamil Tiger guerrilla who finds fresh violence in his new life in Paris.

The matriarch of the Marcos dynasty hopes to see her maternal delusions validated and political power restored, while Philippine activists fight for transparency and democracy, in this captivating study by Lauren Greenfield.

Bill Nighy, Sam Riley and Alice Lowe star in this stylish and heartfelt comedy-drama about a Scrabble-obsessed tailor searching for a lost son.

An estranged father-son relationship in the vibrant city of Nazareth makes for an immensely entertaining drama by Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir (When I Saw You).

As brutal and uncompromising as its title would suggest, the third feature from S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl in Cell Block 99) is another instant classic crime drama.

Artist Lisa Selby’s audacious and powerful documentary portrait of a life touched by addiction is a deeply personal odyssey through love, artistry and selfhood.

Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet give blistering performances as a father and son in this gripping story of a family dealing with addiction over many years.

Nicole Kidman is astonishing – and almost unrecognisable – as a jaded police detective haunted by her past in Karyn Kusama’s brooding thriller.

In this playful, dark comedy a dominatrix offers a widower an unexpected chance for sexual and psychological release.

Winner of the 2014 Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, a bold and visceral tale of canine uprising.

Mads Mikkelsen stars in a distressing examination of a false indictment, and the collective hysteria that ensues, in this electrifying drama from Festen director Thomas Vinterberg.

Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal play a couple on the rocks in Paul Dano’s directorial debut, an elegant 1950s-set melodrama.

Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or-winner, about an octogenarian couple trying to cope when a stroke leaves the wife partly paralysed and speechless.

Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård are sensational as scheming cousins on a lucrative but ethically dubious mission, in this fast, funny and topical technological caper.

This witty, Belle Époque-era biopic stars Keira Knightley and Dominic West as literary couple Colette and Willy, whose relationship rewrote social and gender rules.

Rust and Bone is as punchy and abrasive as its title suggests – but intensely moving and surprisingly poetic too.

With his deceptively simple but heartfelt feature debut, director Khadar Ahmed follows a Somali man as he desperately tries to seek help for his ailing wife.

The wealthy elite feed off the lower classes in a deliciously twisted Brazilian social satire that’s definitely not for the squeamish.

Seriously ill Milla (Eliza Scanlen) clashes with her parents, who disapprove when she brings home her sketchy new boyfriend Toby, in this tragicomic debut from Shannon Murphy.

Delightfully unexpected buddy movie about a heartbroken TV weatherman's relationship with a migrant worker.

Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan star as a pair of New Orleans paramedics who encounter a series of bizarre deaths linked to a new designer drug with otherworldly effects.