By Ben Travis | Posted 30 Aug 2018

Summer blockbuster season has come to an end, and awards season is beckoning – but before the BAFTAs and Oscars come around, London will play host to the film industry’s most exciting filmmakers and their upcoming features. The BFI London Film Festival returns to the capital this October, now with a confirmed line-up of hotly anticipated pictures.

As previously announced, the festival will open on 10 October with Steve McQueen’s crime thriller Widows – his first film since the Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave – and will round off with the world premiere of Laurel and Hardy biopic Stan & Ollie on 21 October. In between those opening and closing galas, the festival will include headline screenings of some hugely exciting upcoming films – Yorgos Lanthimos’ darkly comic period drama The Favourite; the Coen Brothers’ Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet’s heartbreaking family drug drama Beautiful Boy; Marielle Heller’s art forgery comedy-drama Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Wash Westmoreland’s Still Alice follow-up Colette; Jason Reitman’s political scandal biopic The Front Runner; Dan Fogelman’s generation-spanning familial love story Life Itself; David Mackenzie’s Robert the Bruce epic Outlaw King; the Rosamund Pike-starring Marie Colvin biopic A Private War; and Luca Guadagnino’s highly-anticipated Dario Argento adaptation Suspiria. And breathe.

That’s not all – as part of the Festival and Strand Galas line-up, Empire presents the UK premiere of Terry Gilliam’s long-long-long awaited comedy adventure The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, starring Adam Driver, Jonathan Pryce and Stellan Skarsgård. Elsewhere, the festival will see screenings of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk; Alfonso Cuarón’s personal epic Roma; Mike Leigh’s Peterloo; Michael Moore’s Trump documentary Fahrenheit 11/9; Peter Jackson’s First World War documentary They Shall Not Grow Old; David Lowery’s The Old Man & The Gun; Ben Wheatley’s Happy New Year, Colin Burstead; Peter Strickland’s In Fabric; Paul Dano’s directorial debut Wildlife; and the opening two episodes of Park Chan-Wook’s serialised John Le Carré adaptation The Little Drummer Girl.

It’s a tantalising list of films worth getting very, very excited about – take a good look at the full programme below.

Opening Gala

Widows – Steve McQueen

Closing Gala

Stan & Ollie – Jon S. Baird

Headline Galas

The Favourite – Yorgos Lanthimos

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – The Coen Brothers

Beautiful Boy – Felix van Groeningen

Can You Ever Forgive Me? – Marielle Heller

Colette – Wash Westmoreland

The Front Runner – Jason Reitman

Life Itself – Dan Fogelman

Outlaw King – David Mackenzie

A Private War – Matthew Heineman

Suspiria – Luca Guadagnino

Festival and Strand Galas

Wild Rose – Tom Harper

Assassination Nation – Sam Levinson

Border – Ali Abbasi

Burning – Lee Chang-dong

Capernaum – Nadine Labaki

The Great Victorian Moving Picture Show – Various

If Beale Street Could Talk – Barry Jenkins

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote – Terry Gilliam

Mirai – Mamoru Hosoda

Roma – Alfonso Cuarón

The White Crow – Ralph Fiennes

Special Presentations

Been So Long – Tinge Krishnan

Fahrenheit 11/9 – Michael Moore

The Hate U Give – George Tillman Jr.

The Little Drummer Girl (episodes 1 and 2) – Park Chan-wook

Out Of Blue – Carol Morley

Peterloo – Mike Leigh

They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson

Aquarela – Viktor Kossakovsky

Make Me Up – Rachel Maclean

Rafiki – Wanuri Kahiu

Official Competition

Birds of Passage – Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra

Destroyer – Karyn Kusama

Happy New Year, Colin Burstead – Ben Wheatley

Happy As Lazzaro – Alice Rohrwacher

In Fabric – Peter Strickland

Joy – Sudabeh Mortezai

The Old Man & The Gun – David Lowery

Shadow – Zhang Yimou

Sunset – László Nemes

Too Late To Die Young – Dominga Sotomayor

First Feature Competition – Sutherland Award

The Chambermaid – Lila Avilés

The Day I Lost My Shadow – Soudade Kaadan

Dead Pigs – Cathy Yan

Girl – Lukas Dhont

Holiday – Isabella Eklöf

Journey To A Mother’s Room – Celia Rico Clavellino

Only You – Harry Wootliff

Ray & Liz – Richard Billingham

Soni – Ivan Ayr

Wildlife – Paul Dano

Documentary Competition – Grierson Award

Bisbee ’17 – Robert Greene

Dream Away – Marouan Omara and Johanna Domke

Evelyn – Orlando von Einsiedel

John McEnroe: In The Realm of Perfection – Julien Farau

The Plan That Came From The Bottom Up – Steve Sprung

Putin’s Witnesses – Vitaly Mansky

The Raft – Marcus Lindeen

Theatre of War – Lola Arias

What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire? – Robert Minervini

Young and Alive – Mattieu Bareyre

Short Film Award

Another Decade – Morgan Quaintaince

De Natura – Lucile Hadžihalilovic

The Field (Le Champ De Mais) – Sandhya Suri

Hello, Rain – C J ‘Fiery’ Obassi

Lasting Marks – Charlie Lyne

Leash – Harry Lighton

Monelle – Diego Marcon

Salam – Claire Fowler

Solar Walk – Réka Bucsi

Veslemøy’s Song – Sofia Bohdanowicz

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