BFI London Film Festival Presents

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 glitter-covered, cross-generational love letter to boybands and the girls who love them that will have you bopping along.

There are echoes of Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman in this gripping tale of class divisions and ethical responsibility in contemporary Argentina.

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.

A soulful new voice emerges in Elizabeth Lo’s evocative award-winning debut documentary, which details life on the streets of Istanbul from the perspective of the city’s stray dogs.

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.

Romantic sparks fly between the daughters of two opposing politicians in Wanuri Kahiu’s neon-bright story of forbidden love in Kenya.

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

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

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

Mark Stanley plays the petrol-head who never left town, in this Bruce Springsteen-inspired tale of thwarted dreamers.

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.

Imagine Big Brother at sea, but with no evictions. Director Marcus Lindeen innovatively uncovers the human stories behind a 1970s social experiment, salaciously dubbed ‘The Sex Raft’.

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

Werner Herzog is on typically thought-provoking form, dramatising the work of a ‘rent-a-relative’ service, in this Tokyo-set meditation on contemporary alienation.

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

Based on Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 novel and a long time in the making, Václav Marhoul’s extraordinary The Painted Bird finds a lone Jewish boy on a dark odyssey towards home during wartime.

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.

Aki Omoshaybi’s earnest debut explores the love between two people who work hard to keep their romance on track while struggling to manage personal hardship.

Kristen Stewart shines as an idealistic yet fragile Jean Seberg in this stylish drama that packs a punch.

Alfre Woodard is quietly devastating as a weary prison warden presiding over her twelfth execution, in this Sundance-winning death row drama.

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

Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson star in this hypnotic fusion of beauty and brutality from Robert Eggers, director of The Witch.

Trey Edward Shults (It Comes at Night) continues to impress with one of the year's most dazzling cinematic achievements, a study of a family's dramatic unravelling and redemption.

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

Billie Piper stars in her own directorial debut, a no-holds-barred, Fleabag-esque anti-romcom about a modern woman’s struggles in work and love.

Italian maestro Marco Bellocchio’s bravura gangster odyssey dramatises the extraordinary real life story of the first major Mafia boss to turn state’s informant.

Simon Bird’s directorial debut is a warm and witty graphic novel adaptation about a single librarian trying to reconnect with her introverted, metalhead teenage son.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

James Norton stars as Welsh journalist Gareth Jones whose 1930s visit to Soviet Ukraine uncovered the truth of Stalin’s state-sponsored famine and reputedly inspired George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

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.

This eye-popping portrait of great American choreographer Merce Cunningham celebrates the centenary of his birth.

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

The Best Film winner at the 2013 BFI London Film Festival is an exquisitely shot, moving drama about a Polish nun exploring her family past, from UK-based director Pawel Pawlikowski.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Capturing his rise to super-stardom and subsequent tragic fall, Mystify gives remarkable insight into INXS lead singer Michael Hutchence and a truth he took to the grave.

Welcome to Ladyworld, a shadowy dwelling where tensions run high and nothing is ever quite what it seems.

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

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.

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

In this thought-provoking and playful documentary, ebullient director Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stépanian (Disaster Playground) takes you on a journey to find the origins of knowledge.

Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville star in this intimate and sensitively-handled drama about a couple dealing with breast cancer.

Andrew Bujalski serves up a big-hearted comedy with his day-in-the-life look at Double Whammies – a Hooters-style bar and its tight-knit, all-female staff.

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

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.

A teenage tearaway is forced to face up to his actions and confront his burgeoning sexuality, in this provocative Slovenian coming-of-age tale.

A lavish trip to the Turkish Riviera goes horribly awry in this disturbing tale of power, exploitation and complicity from the writer of Border.

In this astonishingly personal film, artist Richard Billingham delves into his Black Country upbringing to recreate visceral family memories and desperate living in Thatcher’s Britain.

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

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.

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.

Cynthia Erivo gives a show-stopping turn as the American revolutionary anti-slavery heroine Harriet Tubman in Kasi Lemmons' biopic.

Steve Coogan and John C Reilly give delightfully bang-on-target performances as comedy’s most famous double act as they enter their twilight years.

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.

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

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.

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.

Diamantino, Portugal’s (the world’s!) top football player, becomes embroiled in a genetic experiment and a conspiracy to leave the EU, in this joyful, postmodern political fantasy.

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. 

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

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.

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

This delightful and infectiously joyous film finds a young woman balancing her dreams of being a country music star with the responsibilities of motherhood.

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.

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.

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.

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

Barry Jenkins follows his Oscar®-winning Moonlight with an audacious, distinctive and assured adaptation of James Baldwin’s account of love, injustice and racism in America.

This disturbing new black comedy from Sergei Loznitsa (In the Fog) examines the civil conflict in Ukraine through the prism of the absurd.

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

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

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.

Andrey Zvyagintsev (Elena, Leviathan) delivers a masterpiece in this caustic look at contemporary Russian society, a failed marriage and the disappearance of a child. A major prize winner at both Cannes and BFI London Film Festival.