The BFI today announced the full programme for this year’s 55th BFI London Film Festival, which takes place between 12-27 October. The undoubted highlights of the 300-strong list of features and shorts were the world premieres of Fernando Meirelles’ 360, Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea, as well as UK premieres for George Clooney’s The Ides of March, Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method and Lynne Ramsey’s We Need to Talk about Kevin.
Announced by the festival’s artistic director Sandra Hebron – for whom this year’s LFF will be her last in the role – the 2011 BFI London Film Festival looks to have struck the perfect blend between showcasing both emerging and established British film talent and drawing in some of contemporary cinema’s biggest names. Hollywood megastar George Clooney is included in this year’s programme as both actor actor and director, for his consequent starring role in Alexander Payne’s tragic comedy The Descendants and his self-directed political drama The Ides of March, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival.
John C. Reilly will appear in no less than three films, starring alongside Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller in dark family drama We Need to Talk about Kevin, as a sympathetic vice-principal in Azazel Jacob comedy Terri and as a middle class father in Roman Polanski’s wonderfully uncomfortable satire Carnage. British acting talent will also feature prominently, with Michael Fassbender taking centre stage as Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method and as a sex-driven Irishman working in New York for Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008) follow-up, Shame, alongside fellow Brit Carey Mulligan.
More leftfield efforts are also plentiful, and come in the form of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up to the exceptional Dogtooth (2009), Alps (Alpeis), Aleksandr Sukurov’s Faust and Nick Broomfield’s inflammatory new doc, Sarah Palin – You Betcha!, to name but a few.
Below is a list of our top ten most anticipated films at this year’s BFI London Film Festival:
1. We Need to Talk About Kevin, dir. Lynne Ramsey
2. A Dangerous Method, dir. David Cronenberg
3. The Artist, dir. Michael Hazanavicius
4. Shame, dir. Steve McQueen
5. Coriolanus, dir. Ralph Fiennes
6. Carnage, dir. Roman Polanski
7. Alps, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
8. Sarah Palin – You Betcha!, dir. Nick Broomfield
9. Snowtown, dir. Justin Kurzel
10. Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, dir. Takashi Miike
CineVue will be bringing you all the latest news, reviews and interviews from this year’s BFI London Film Festival.
For more info and a full programme of all this year’s featured films, visit bfi.org.uk/lff.
Daniel Green
