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Cinema

London Film Festival 2023: line-up, dates, tickets

By Euan Franklin on 1/9/2023

The capital city’s best cinema event of the year is back for another round!

The London Film Festival returns to screens across the big smoke, concentrated at the Southbank Centre and extending to the BFI Southbank, the BFI IMAX, Curzon Soho, Curzon Mayfair, the Prince Charles Cinema, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), the Vue West End and the Bargehouse at Oxo Tower Wharf. Screenings will also take place in Bristol, Belfast, Cardiff, Nottingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow.

This year’s selection contains 252 films (88 more than last year), including 29 world premieres and 30 European premieres, 39% of which are made by female and non-binary filmmakers.

LFF 2023 runs between Wednesday 4 and Sunday 15 October. Ticket bookings vary on your level of membership to the BFI. BFI Patrons can book from Monday 4 September, Champions from Tuesday 5 September, and Members from Wednesday 6 September. If you’re not a member in any form, you have to wait until Tuesday 12 September to book anything. For some screenings, extra tickets will be released on Thursday 28 September.

The BFI have announced the festival's full programme. Here are 16 titles we can't wait to see…

Saltburn, dir. Emerald Fennell (Opening Night Gala)

Saltburn, dir. Emerald Fennell (Opening Night Gala)

Actor-turned-director Emerald Fennell debuted with Promising Young Woman, an Oscar-winning castration of toxic masculinity and male violence for a post-MeToo era. For her second film Saltburn, Fennell returns to English shores – exploring a large country house populated by uni students. What could possibly go wrong?


Rising star Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin, Chernobyl, Killing of a Sacred Deer) takes the lead as Oliver, a student with a humble background who struggles to fit in with the Oxford University elite. He befriends wealthy colleague Felix (Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi) and the latter invites him to a palatial estate. Oliver accepts, and he’s thrust into a strange, aristocratic world. Also stars Rosamund Pike (I Care A Lot), Richard E Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), Carey Mulligan (She Said), Alison Oliver (Conversations With Friends) and Archie Madekwe (Midsommar).


Book tickets


Photo: Amazon

WHEN
Wednesday 4 October, 7pm / Thursday 5 October, 2:45pm / Sunday 8 October, 12:20pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre / Prince Charles Cinema
The Kitchen, dir. Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares (Closing Gala)

The Kitchen, dir. Daniel Kaluuya and Kibwe Tavares (Closing Gala)

Daniel Kaluuya is one of our greatest acting exports. Beginning in very British properties like Skins and Harry and Paul, he was seared into everyone’s memory after he starred in Jordan Peele's Get Out. Since then, he’s become a bankable star – appearing in Black Panther, Widows, Judas and the Black Messiah before returning into Peele’s arms for Nope. Now, he turns to directing – at least, partially. Kaluuya and co-director Kibwe Tavares helm The Kitchen, a dystopian drama about the social perils of gentrification that's receiving its world premiere at the London Film Festival.


The Kitchen takes place in 2040s London when social housing has been bulldozed in favour of luxury penthouses. The estate known as ‘The Kitchen’ is all that remains. Izi (Top Boy’s Kano) is contained within this rough district, working hard to materialise his dream to leave for good. But that proves difficult after meeting 12-year-old Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman), the son of his deceased ex-girlfriend.


Book tickets


Photo: Film4

WHEN
Sunday 15 October, 7:15pm / Sunday 15 October, 9pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Curzon Soho
One Life, dir. James Hawes (American Express Gala)

One Life, dir. James Hawes (American Express Gala)

2023 has produced many dramas and documentaries centred around the Holocaust, especially on television with A Small Light (Disney+) and The US and the Holocaust (BBC). And further down this list, The Zone of Interest – Jonathan Glazer’s first film in 10 years – takes place in Auschwitz. Black Mirror and Slow Horses director James Hawes joins them with his new biopic of stockbroker Nicholas Winton, who saved the lives of 669 children from Czechoslovakia before Germany invaded in 1939.


In One Life, Johnny Flynn and Anthony Hopkins play Nicholas at different ages. The retired Nicholas (Hopkins) ponders whether he’s made a difference in the world. That is, until he pores over forgotten documents detailing his efforts to save as many children as possible in Prague on the eve of World War II. With help from his mother, various volunteers and the British public, Nicholas (Flynn) undertakes the ambitious mission.


Book tickets


Photo: See-Saw Films / Warner Bros. Pictures

WHEN
Thursday 12 October, 6pm / Friday 13 October, 11am / Sunday 15 October, 12:30pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre / Curzon Mayfair
All of Us Strangers, dir. Andrew Haigh (Headline Gala)

All of Us Strangers, dir. Andrew Haigh (Headline Gala)

BBC Three fans, rejoice! Connell from Normal People and the Hot Priest from Fleabag are getting together… well, sort of. Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott star as lovers in Andrew Haigh’s new, dreamy drama All of Us Strangers, which treks through trauma, loneliness and ghosts of a familiar past.


Scott plays the 40-something screenwriter Adam, who’s trying to work on a script drawn from his own life. Procrastinating alone in a high-rise building outside London, he meets his neighbour Harry (Mescal) and they form an intimate relationship. Adam revisits his family home in Croydon, where he finds his mum (Claire Foy) and dad (Jamie Bell). But what makes it unsettling? Adam’s parents died in a car crash when he was a kid.


Book tickets


Photo: Searchlight Pictures

WHEN
Sunday 8 October, 6pm / Monday 9 October, 3pm / Tuesday 10 October, 9:15pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre / Curzon Soho
Maestro, dir. Bradley Cooper (Headline Gala)

Maestro, dir. Bradley Cooper (Headline Gala)

Maestro examines the life of legendary West Side Story composer Leonard Bernstein, as well as his relationship with Chilean-American actor Felicia Montealegre. Their 30-year marriage wasn’t perfect, as Bernstein was divided in his sexuality, but Montealegre accepted that fact and they held a deep connection as artists.


This is the sophomore feature by actor-turned-director Bradley Cooper, following his Oscar-winning debut A Star is Born. He also portrays Leonard alongside Carey Mulligan as Felicia and Maya Hawke as the couple's daughter Jamie.


Book tickets


Photo: Netflix

WHEN
Monday 9 October, 6pm / Tuesday 10 October, 11:30am / Saturday 14 October, 3:15pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre / Vue West End
Poor Things, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos (Headline Gala)

Poor Things, dir. Yorgos Lanthimos (Headline Gala)

Director Yorgos Lanthimos was birthed out of the Greek Weird Wave, a surrealist film movement engendered from economic upheaval. His English-language films The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer gained a cult following, and he received wider notoriety for his historical drama The Favourite with Olivia Colman and Emma Stone.


For Lanthimos’s new film Poor Things, he reunites with Stone and co-writer Tony McNamara for a Frankensteinian fairytale. The young and formerly deceased Bella Baxter (Stone) is resurrected by the unconventional scientist Dr Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Desperate to learn about the world, she escapes across continents with debauched lawyer Duncan (Mark Ruffalo) to seek her own sense of equality and liberation.


Book tickets


Photo: Searchlight Pictures

WHEN
Saturday 14 October, 5:30pm / Sunday 15 October, 10:30am / Sunday 15 October, 7:50pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre / BFI Southbank
Killers of the Flower Moon, dir. Martin Scorsese (Headline Gala)

Killers of the Flower Moon, dir. Martin Scorsese (Headline Gala)

Melding the theatrics of Sergio Leone, the oil-drenched capitalism of There Will Be Blood and the Native American antagonism of Hostiles, Martin Scorsese’s first Western looks to provide a scathing, bullet-ridden experience.


Stretching to three-and-a-half hours, Killers of the Flower Moon is based on the non-fiction book by David Grann – investigating a series of murders in Osage County, Oklahoma in the 1920s. After the local Native Americans become rich from the oil they’ve found in the area, white interlopers swarm in to take advantage. The film also reunites Scorsese with his classic leading man Robert De Niro (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Irishman) as well as his more recent star Leonardo DiCaprio (The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street).


Book tickets


Photo: Apple

WHEN
Saturday 7 October, 5pm / Sunday 8 October, 10:30am / Tuesday 10 October, 12:30pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre / BFI Southbank
The Killer, dir. David Fincher (Headline Gala)

The Killer, dir. David Fincher (Headline Gala)

Throughout his bleak and bloody back catalogue (Se7en, Fight Club, Gone Girl), David Fincher has taken lighter diversions before returning to the dark. Following his curious Citizen Kane biopic Mank, he comes back to the psychologically macabre with The Killer.


The Netflix logline sounds like a vague, if thrilling, premise: ‘After a fateful near-miss, an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn't personal’. The Killer stars Michael Fassbender as the titular hitman, alongside Tilda Swinton in an unspecified role.


Book tickets


Photo: Netflix

WHEN
Thursday 5 October, 6pm / Saturday 7 October, 1:45pm / Thursday 12 October 11:50am
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre / BFI Southbank
Priscilla, dir. Sofia Coppola (Special Presentation)

Priscilla, dir. Sofia Coppola (Special Presentation)

After Baz Luhrmann’s bombastic and overly long biopic Elvis last year, you’d think there’s little more to tell about the King of rock 'n' roll. Not as far as Sofia Coppola is concerned. Her own film takes a more female perspective: that of Elvis’s queen, Priscilla Presley. Based on the latter's memoir, Priscilla traces their relationship from its morally dubious beginnings (when he was 24, and she was 14) to a tempestuous marriage at the height of his fame.


Mare of Easttown actor Cailee Spaeny plays Priscilla, with Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi tackling the King himself.


Book tickets


Photo: Apple

WHEN
Monday 9 October, 9:10pm / Tuesday 10 October, 2:45pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre
The Zone of Interest, dir. Jonathan Glazer (Special Presentation)

The Zone of Interest, dir. Jonathan Glazer (Special Presentation)

In a critics’ poll of the greatest British films made in the 21st century, the 2013 sci-fi drama Under the Skin (starring Scarlett Johansson) ranked first. Its director Jonathan Glazer hadn’t directed a feature film since… until now. A favourite at the Cannes Film Festival, Glazer's new film The Zone of Interest – based on the late Martin Amis’ 2014 holocaust novel – plunges into a dark, genocidal past.


Taking place in the Auschwitz concentration camp, the film follows Nazi officer Angelus Thomsen and his emerging love for the commandant’s wife Hannah Doll – both of whom grow disenchanted by the regime.


Book tickets


Photo: A24

WHEN
Thursday 12 October, 9pm / Friday 13 October, 2:15pm
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre
Foe, dir. Garth Davis (Special Presentation)

Foe, dir. Garth Davis (Special Presentation)

Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, together at last. They’re an ideal Irish pairing, a dream cast for Lion director Garth Davis’s latest project. A claustrophobic adaptation of the novel by Iain Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things), Foe follows a disrupted marriage in a dystopian future.


In 2065, the mysterious G-man Terrance (Aaron Pierre) visits a secluded farmland belonging to married couple Junior (Mescal) and Henrietta (Ronan). He's armed with a divisive proposal: offering Junior the chance to join a new space program, the purpose of which is to ease the transition away from a dying Earth. The film squeezes into the couple's conversations around whether Junior should leave behind his family farm with the hope of finding some kind of future.


Book tickets


Photo: Amazon Studios

WHEN
Tuesday 10 October, 9pm / Wednesday 11 October, 11:30am
WHERE
Southbank Centre / Southbank Centre
Grime Kids, created by Theresa Ikoko (Series Special Presentation)

Grime Kids, created by Theresa Ikoko (Series Special Presentation)

Writer Theresa Ikoko was a major part of the small but mighty Hackney-based film Rocks. She contributed to a genuine, diverse and cosmopolitan vision of modern London, as seen through the eyes of Gen Z teens. She’s an ideal presence, then, for a new series about the birth of Grime music in the early 2000s – loosely based on the book by DJ Target.


Grime Kids follows a group of young adults wanting to make their lives and voices heard via music, examining the cultures and communities that inspired the Grime movement. This isn’t a collective biopic of Wiley and Dizzee Rascal, but a fictionalised take on the rise of the London-based genre and the kids who created it.


Book tickets


Photo: BBC/Mammoth Screen

WHEN
Friday 13 October, 9pm
WHERE
Vue West End
Occupied City, dir. Steve McQueen (Documentary Special Presentation)

Occupied City, dir. Steve McQueen (Documentary Special Presentation)

Steve McQueen’s projects always encapsulate the politically and psychologically intense. He kicked off his career with his Bobby Sands debut Hunger (for which he won the Camera d’Or in 2008) before making devastating portraits of sex addiction (Shame), American slavery (12 Years A Slave), and British racism (Small Axe). He even made an evocative film about Grenfell, exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery.


Considering this back catalogue, his new documentary Occupied City will be no less thought-provoking. Written by his wife Bianca Stigter (Three Minutes: A Lengthening), the film examines the city of Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation between 1940 and 1945.


Book tickets


Photo: A24

WHEN
Thursday 5 October, 1:45pm / Monday 9 October, 6:20pm
WHERE
BFI Southbank / BFI Southbank
Evil Does Not Exist, dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Official Competition)

Evil Does Not Exist, dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Official Competition)

Japanese director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi surprised global cinema with the success of his three-hour, grief-stricken epic Drive My Car, winning the Best International Film Oscar in 2022. (It was also Culture Whisper’s favourite film of 2021.) But whereas that film is psychologically eerie and concerned with the mysteries of human beings, Hamaguchi’s latest work Evil Does Not Exist grazes on the political.


Takumi and his daughter Hana live modestly amid nature in a village near Tokyo. Local residents become aware of corporate plans to change their long-existing environment, turning an area near Takumi’s home into a glamping site for city-dwellers. This project threatens the village's water supply and its ecological balance.


Book tickets


Photo: Modern Films

WHEN
Tuesday 10 October, 6pm / Wednesday 11 October, 6:10pm
WHERE
BFI Southbank / Prince Charles Cinema
Monster, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda (Love Strand)

Monster, dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda (Love Strand)

It’s already been a busy year for the Palme d’Or-winning director Hirokazu Kore-eda. His surrogate family drama Broker was released in February, proving to be one of the best films of 2023. And he slipped into television, almost under the radar, with his culinary coming-of-age Netflix series The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House.


Swiftly, Hirokazu returns with a darker project. Monster follows a verbal and physical incident between a student and a teacher with differing perspectives, the film adopting a fractured, Rashomon-like narrative.


Book tickets


Photo: Picturehouse Entertainment. Hirokazu Kore-eda on the set of Broker.

WHEN
Wednesday 4 October, 8:30pm / Saturday 14 October, 4:55pm
WHERE
BFI Southbank / Curzon Mayfair
How to Have Sex, dir. Molly Manning Walker (Journey Strand)

How to Have Sex, dir. Molly Manning Walker (Journey Strand)

Shortly after shooting Charlotte Regan’s brilliant British film Scrapper, cinematographer Molly Manning Walker now upgrades to directing. Blessed with a decent opening at this year's Cannes Film Festival, her feature debut How to Have Sex won the Un Certain Regard award.


Treading that dark and vulnerable threshold of virginity and its loss as a young woman, the film shows a gaggle of teenage girls diving into clubs, parties and youthful hedonism in the Mediterranean. Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) aims to lose her virginity on this trip, but her complete lack of experience enhances the pressure. The journey spirals into deep questions about sexual consent, societal expectations and female friendships.


Book tickets


Photo: MUBI

WHEN
Tuesday 10 October, 8:45pm / Thursday 12 October, 6:10pm
WHERE
BFI Southbank / Vue West End
Share:

London Film Festival 2023

LFF 2023

Saltburn

Emerald Fennell

Barry Keoghan

Jacob Elordi

The Kitchen

Daniel Kaluuya

One Life

Anthony Hopkins

All of Us Strangers

Andrew Scott

Paul Mescal

Maestro

Bradley Cooper

Carey Mulligan

Leonard Bernstein

Poor Things

Emma Stone

Mark Ruffalo

Yorgos Lanthimos

Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese

Leonardo DiCaprio

Robert De Niro

The Killer

David Fincher

Michael Fassbender

Priscilla

Sofia Coppola

The Zone of Interest

Martin Amis

Jonathan Glazer

Occupied City

Steve McQueen

Evil Does Not Exist

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Monster

Hirokazu Koreeda

How to Have Sex

Molly Manning Walker

TV

Cinema

2023
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