The 69th edition of the BFI London Film Festival, the UK’s biggest film event, begins on October 8th.
As with most years, the lineup of about 250 films is hitting it big with other major festival heavyweights in 2025, along with the European premiere of Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.” Jim Jarmusch’s Venetian acquisition “Father’s Mother’s Brother’s Brother” is there. Jafar Panahi’s Cannes hits ‘It Was Just an Accident’ and ‘Frankenstein’, ‘After the Hunt’, ‘Bugonia’, ‘Die’, ‘My Love’, ‘Hamenet’, ‘The Testimony of Henry’.Many of the important titles are on the rise as the awards kick into gear It’s likely to get a significant push from studios and streamers hoping to impress a growing number of voters at the Bafta and Golden Globes. Eight features have also had their world premieres, including British boxing drama Giant. The festival will close on October 19th with Julia Jackson’s “100 Nights of Hero,” and expect the film’s all-star cast (including Charli XCX) to be in attendance.
Speaking to Variety ahead of the event, festival director Christy Matheson discussed the importance of Landing’s world premiere.
What do you think about this year’s festival edition?
I’m really excited. We’re looking at works that started in January and are in progress over the winter, but we’re actually looking at finished films from January onwards. And by the time we got out of the winter festival, the program team and I knew it was going to be very busy. And as we head into spring and summer, a wealth of movies continued to come. It didn’t seem to be slowing down as there were a lot of things we really liked and we made a pretty tough program meeting at the end. But yeah, I’m really proud of this program.
I know you can’t really do a single thing, but is there anything you’re particularly excited about?
This year there is a very large installation called “Nowiswhenweare (The Stars)”, created by an artist named Andrew Schneider. It has a soundscape made up of over 4000 reactive LED lights and something insane like over 450 sound channels, making it extremely immersive. So you go in and you’re in space. Because that’s something I haven’t really been able to see myself yet.
Obviously there’s an obsession with festivals that have world premieres. London usually manages to carve out some big name titles to debut, and last year opened with the world premiere of “Blitz,” but this time there are no major studio titles to bow out to. Is it becoming more difficult to negotiate premieres from studios and streamers?
We’re sitting in a gorgeous hallway, meaning it comes after all the major summer festivals. And I think you can see that as a real disadvantage, but for myself and the programming team, it feels like a real sense of freedom. There are a lot of movies released during this period and we are the audience facing the festival. That’s who we program, for the festival and for the audience, and with 230,000 admissions last year, there’s a lot of audience appetite for the festival. But I think this idea of chasing world premieres requires a lot of energy. And I feel for the audience, they’re not that interested in world premieres. As a curator, it is very important not to lose sight of your audience.
The festival has always been a platform for protest, but this year more than ever it gave rise to what is happening in the world, especially in Gaza. Do you expect to play a large part of this edition of the festival even if you are not involved in any of the films?
We run festivals, which are large-scale public events. And the essence of it being a big public event, we always plan for those moments to happen. There’s obviously a lot of thought that goes into production, mainly when we’re putting together a festival, and for us it’s about being able to present the film in a space that feels safe and very comfortable for the filmmakers and the audience. But I think people need to express their emotions. The point of art is that it brings many ideas and emotions. So by its very nature, it’s a space where people want to have a dialogue. So I think that’s a very normal thing to happen within a festival.
Beyond the safety aspect, aren’t there any efforts to reduce any of that?
We are always mindful, but we don’t want a situation where people don’t want to be able to express their emotions.
Another hot topic is AI and we’ve all seen the recent fuss and discussion about Tilly Norwood. Has AI somehow infiltrated the festival? Has anyone used chatgpt a bit to write a program or something?
no! I recently told someone that I have to write an outline for everything. And they said, oh, you need to get ChatGpt to do that. And what was I like? It was like an old lady moment. But no, we don’t use it. We make the schedule with a human in the room and write all the notes on the computer.
Have you ever allowed your watch to be programmed with movies starring AI actresses?
who knows! It could be happening and I don’t even know! I feel like we’re in a very strange space between two worlds. Maybe this is what people felt when the photo happened.
