London Film Festival preview

 From home and abroad, ten highlights at this year’s festival.  

By David Gritten

The BFI London Film Festival has become gradually stronger in recent years under the shrewd guidance of artistic director Sandra Hebron and her team. This year’s schedule may be its best yet: a broad range of contemporary world cinema, a strong strand of new British films, and various events, on-stage interviews and discussions. In this troubled period for our film industry, the festival is a credit to the British Film Institute. Here are 10 potential highlights.

 NEVER LET ME GO

The opening film, a visually stunning adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about three pupils at an apparently idyllic English boarding school, living with the awareness that their lives will be foreshortened. With Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley; directed by Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo).

     SILENT SOULS 

This unique, droll, faintly mystical rural Russian tale tracks two men – a photographer and a bereaved factory owner – taking a road trip to bury the latter’s wife. It frequently alludes to local customs and folklore that may just be tongue-in-cheek inventions. Art-house heaven.

 SOMEWHERE

Sofia Coppola’s entertaining contemplation on fame and celebrity, which won the Golden Lion in Venice, stars Stephen Dorff as a debauched, dissolute Hollywood star finding meaning in his life through his astute, level-headed 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning). 

  

OUTSIDE THE LAW (HORS LA LOI)

  Rachid Bouchareb (Days of Glory) takes as his subject the FLN, the Algerian liberation front, and three brothers who become involved in its clandestine campaign in France. Right-wing politicians have called for this provocative thriller to be banned. 

     127 HOURS

Danny Boyle directs the festival’s closing film, a gripping story of human endurance. James Franco is a mountain climber trapped by a fallen rock, recording his thoughts as he considers his mortality over five gruelling days.


  

PORTRAIT OF THE FIGHTER AS A YOUNG MAN

A story of a struggle for national identity from director Constantin Popescu about the Romanian resistance movement in the Forties and Fifties, taking on the invading Soviet military machine. Hugely promising.

   SUBMARINE

Word of mouth is remarkably strong for this directing debut by Richard Ayaode (Moss in TV’s The IT Crowd), about a Welsh teenager (Craig Roberts) desperately trying to lose his virginity and hold his parents’ marriage together.

UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES

A must-see: Thai auteur Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winner in Cannes, about a dying farmer visited by ghosts and remembering his ancestors.



  BLACK SWAN 

  Darren Aronovsky’s taut New York psychodrama about an aspiring ballet dancer (Natalie Portman) and her predatory artistic director (Vincent Cassel) was a big favourite in Venice.

BENDA BILILI!

A terrific documentary that follows a group of disabled Congolese musicians and street kids, some of them playing improvised instruments, on their first European tour.

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