Female solidarity and retribution top the bill at the 66th London film festival, whose programme was announced on Thursday.
She Said, about two New York Times reporters who broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s abuse and misconduct, is one of the key galas at this year’s festival, as is Women Talking, Sarah Polley’s drama in which women in an isolated religious colony struggle to reconcile with their faith after a series of sexual assaults.
The mayor’s gala, meanwhile, is Till, Chinonye Chukwu’s account of the pursuit of justice by Mamie Till-Mobley after the lynching in 1955 of her 14-year-old son, Emmett – a murder which hasted the end of segregation laws in the US.
Meanwhile, My Imaginary Country tracks the role of women in the Chilean protests against social inequality in 2019, while Hidden Letters champions the Chinese female activists seeking to preserve a dying language used by women to secretly communicate.
Around 41% of the programme is from female and non-binary directors and creators, with 34% made by ethnically diverse directors or creators.
Other European premieres include Empire of Light, Sam Mendes’s romance set around a seaside cinema in the 1980s, starring Olivia Colman, The Banshees of Inisherin, which reunites writer-director Martin McDonagh with In Bruges stars Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, as well as new films by Alejandro G Iñárritu, Joanna Hogg, Darren Aronofsky and Noah Baumbach.
Most of these titles will have already enjoyed a world premiere in Venice, Telluride or Toronto – the trio of festivals in early September which serve as awards launchpads for prestige titles vying for an Oscar the following year.
By contrast London focuses on a breadth of programming, with 10 venues nationwide offering simultaneous screenings to widen the reach, as well as a virtual festival on the BFI player. The programme is organised thematically to help members of the public navigate the more than 160 films.
“We’re not prepared to sacrifice quality to get the world premieres,” says Tricia Tuttle, who has served as the festival’s artistic director since 2019. The 23 world premieres London has secured include the opening night film, Matthew Warchus’s big screen version of his stage show Matilda, adapted from the book by Roald Dahl and starring Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull, and Guillermo del Toro’s take on Pinocchio.
“We’re still in a process of transition,” says Tuttle. “Audiences are not willing to go back to cinemas for really adventurous small international titles. Things have shifted a lot.”
The effects of the pandemic have also been positive, she said: “I love the disruption of canon, so everyone has got their own idea of what makes a great film. I love not seeing that consensus coming out of festivals; there’s a lot of really healthy disagreement.”
Tuttle cites Triangle of Sadness, the super-rich satire which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year as an example of a film with “both passionate advocates and passionate detractors”.
She also senses a new freedom among auteur film-makers to throw caution to the wind and embrace creative ambition. Films such as Iñárritu’s Bardo, White Noise, Baumbach’s Don DeLillo adaptation and Todd Field’s comeback, Tár, starring Cate Blanchett as the classical renowned conductor Lydia Tár, exhibit a new stylistic intellect.
“These are really ambitious films that reach for new types of cinematic language and say something about the complexity of the world we live in now,” says Tuttle. “We’re in a sort of post-truth universe and film-makers want to make work that responds to that.”
This year’s festival runs between 5-16 October. The closing night film is Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, which sees a return for Daniel Craig’s idiosyncratic detective Benoit Blanc.
