Festival serves up movie treats

MOVIE fans are in for a well-deserved treat at the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival.

Even though it is a quarter of its normal size, director Tricia Tuttle and her team have assembled a brilliant array of titles to show at the event, which will feature a mix of live and virtual screenings, from October 7-18.

Kicking things off is Steve McQueen’s film Mangrove, featuring Shaun Parkes, Letitia Wright and Malachi Kirby as members of the Mangrove Nine: activists acquitted in a landmark case of inciting a riot in London in 1970. And bringing it to a conclusion will be Ammonite, directed by Francis Lee (God’s Own Country), starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan (on general release early 2021).

There will be screenings at the BFI Southbank complex and 12 independent cinemas in London and across the UK. ‘It’s about getting audiences back into cinemas!’ Tuttle said. Titles getting cinema showings include Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, about an underclass of Americans living in vans out West, starring Frances McDormand; Phyllida Lloyd’s Herself, about a battered motherof-two who decides to build her own home; and Mogul Mowgli, starring Riz Ahmed as a rapper.

Cinemagoers can also catch Spike Lee’s film of David Byrne’s Broadway show American Utopia; Joanna Scanlan rediscovering life after her husband’s death in Aleem Khan’s After Love; Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth in Supernova; Elisabeth Moss in Shirley and Pixar’s latest, Soul, voiced by Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Angela Bassett and Daveed Diggs.

Those and more than 50 other titles will also be shown virtually via BFIPlayer.

FOR a complete list of films, and how to see them, visit bfi.org.uk/london-film-festival.