CAPITAL GAINS
Terry Gilliam, Ansel Elgort and Peter Strickland deliver sci-fi at this year’s
BFI London Film Festival
“Genre storytelling is a hugely important part of the LFF programme,” BFI London Film Festival Film Programmer Michael Blyth tells Red Alert. “Particularly in the Cult Strand, our main home for all things strange and unusual.” Those are two words you’ll definitely associate with a lot of the genre stuff showing at this year’s festival, which includes the premiere of Terry Gilliam’s long-in-gestation The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and Peter Strickland’s In Fabric.
In fact, this year’s LFF is packed with some of 2018’s most exciting sci-fi delicacies. “Bill Oliver’s futuristic think-piece Duplicate stars Ansel Elgort as two identical young men linked in a very unexpected manner,” reveals Blyth. “While techno-horror Cam tells the story of an erotic web performer who finds herself faced with an online doppelgänger. These aren’t necessarily films one would instantly label sci-fi, but both of them demonstrate the ways in which filmmakers can take inspiration from the genre, playing with familiar traits to subvert and challenge our expectations.”
Also showing are French mystery thriller School’s Out; emotional Japanese animation Mirai (about a literally magical family tree); horror comedy Make Me Up from Scottish artist Rachel Maclean; and Ladyworld, directed by Amanda Kramer and set in the canyons, in which eight teenage girls are trapped at a birthday party after a massive ecological event. “It’s easy to go to your local multiplex and see the latest summer sci-fi blockbuster, but the festival gives genre enthusiasts a chance to see those films which might otherwise pass them by,” says Blyth. “I think the most exciting thing about the sci-fi work in this year’s line-up is not what links them, but what sets them all apart. There really aren’t two films that are alike, and it is this diversity and originality that makes the LFF so exciting, and so essential for genre fans.” JWi
Tickets for the 2018 BFI London Film Festival will be available to purchase from 13 September at www.bfi.org.uk