What to Watch at the 2025 BFI London Film Festival

The 69th London Film Festival returns from 8 to 19 October. It’s the UK’s largest celebration of cinema and visual arts, presenting over 170 features, more than 60 shorts, a wide array of VR and AR projects, a series of talks and discussions, and the largest programme of free events.

It’s not just the films featured in the various programme strands that draw such large audiences, but the filmmakers, stars and practitioners present to introduce them. And this year, the festival appears to have shaken off the various trials of the last few years, delivering an incredible programme and an impressive roster of guests. The final list of attendees has yet to be firmed up, but expect to see the likes of Julia Roberts, Daniel Craig, George Clooney, Josh O’Connor, Kristen Stewart, Jennifer Lawrence, Colin Farrell, Ethan Hawke, Emma Stone, Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Laura Dern, Bradley Cooper, Saoirse Ronan and many more on the red carpet.

The galas and special presentations make the loudest noise at any festival and this year’s LFF features a round-up of the best films from the world’s leading festivals, as well as a number of premieres. It’s previously been announced that Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero are the Opening and Closing Night gala screenings. 

Other galas include Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt, a provocative and timely drama starring Julia Roberts as a Yale academic drawn into a controversy surrounding a colleague’s actions. Richard Linklater appears with two films in the festival: the chamber comedy drama Blue Moon, focusing on songsmith Lorentz Hard, and Nouvelle Vague, a joyous homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. Yorgos Lanthimos follows up Poor Things (2023) and Kinds of Kindness (2024) with the pitch-black corporate environmental satire Bugonia, featuring regular star Emma Stone, while Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson play a couple in crisis in Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love.

Maggie O’Farrell worked with Nomadland Oscar winner Chloé Zhao in adapting her novel Hamnet, a searing drama about William Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife Agnes following the death of their child, which features awards-worthy performances by Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. Another awards contender is Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, starring Oscar Isaac. Mia Goth and Jacob Elordi. Then there’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, a biting critique of oppressive regimes. While the vicissitudes of fame is wittily explored by Noah Baumbach in Jay Kelly, starring George Clooney, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern.

Suffice to say, there’s more to recommend than we have space to include here. The full programme is now available here. In the meantime, check out 25 of the top films to see at Curzon Soho and Mayfair over the course of the festival, including eight of our own releases.

Bad Apples

Surely a potential awards contender, Jonatan Etzler’s satire stars Saoirse Ronan as a schoolteacher who is forced to extreme measures to deal with an unruly pupil, but whose actions soon ripple out across the local community. Timely and undeniably provocative, Bad Apples has the potential to be one of the year’s great water-cooler films.

Alpha

One of contemporary cinema’s most acclaimed provocateurs, Julia Ducournau, returns with a drama centred on a girl whose life is upended by a mysterious virus. Striking cinematography, plus stunning performances from Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani and relative newcomer Mélissa Boros, drive this uncompromising drama by the director of Raw and previous Cannes Palme d’Or winner Titane.

Below the Clouds

The documentaries of Gianfranco Rosi (Sacro GRA, 2013; Fire at Sea, 2016; Notturno, 2020) are often visually ravishing, even when probing the harshest of subjects. In his latest, he presents a moving monochrome portrait of life around Vesuvius, the volcano that destroyed Pompeii. Shot over three years – and interspersed with archival footage – Below the Clouds records the daily activities of a people living in the shadow of a powerful natural force.

Sentimental Value

Following the breakout success of 2021's The Worst Person the World, Joachim Trier returns with another film that delighted audiences and critics at Cannes earlier this year. Stellan Skarsgård plays a filmmaker trying to repair the relationship with his daughter, while sensing in it potential material for a new film. Worst Person star Renate Reinsve is once again outstanding, while Trier balances emotional restraint with the tension of an increasingly uneasy relationship.

Hedda

After her success with a spirited remake of Candyman in 2021 (and before she returns to the horror genre next year with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple), Nia DaCosta takes on Ibsen’s celebrated play Hedda Gabler. The action has been relocated to mid-20th-century England, with a superb Tessa Thompson in the title role. It’s a jazzy, opulent and zippy take on a literary classic.

The Stranger

French-cinema mainstay François Ozon’s 24th feature dares to take on Albert Camus’ existentialist character study and succeeds, shooting it in striking black and white. The writer-director rarely strays from the original text, creating a tense, claustrophobic portrait of disaffection.

Train Dreams

Adapted from Denis Johnson’s acclaimed 2011 novella, Clint Bentley’s drama stars Joel Edgerton – at his best – as Robert Grainier, a logger and railroad worker looking for work among the vast and verdant landscapes of early-20th-century North America. There are echoes of Terrence Malick here, but the film also fits within a strain of recent cinematic portraits of Americana that range from Old Joy (2006) to the recent Good One (2024).

H is for Hawk

When Helen Macdonald’s father died, the overwhelming sense of grief she felt pushed her to an unconventional act – training a Eurasian Goshawk. That year was movingly chronicled in her 2014 memoir, which has now been faithfully adapted by Philipa Lowthorpe. Claire Foy plays Macdonald, and the film heartbreakingly pivots between the raw emotion of unfettered grief and a sense of wonder for one of nature’s most majestic creatures. 

Enzo

The Class (2008) director Laurent Cantet passed away before completing his last film, which was taken on by his regular co-writer, and director of 120 BPM (2017) and Red Island (2024), Robin Campillo. It sees young Enzo drop out from his studies to work on a building site, where he finds himself drawn to a Ukrainian co-worker. An insightful and driven study of class, cultural difference and desire, it is a fitting epitaph to a great filmmaker.

Palestine 36 

The director of Wajib (2017) and When I Saw You (2012) once again chronicles everyday life in the Middle East. The title refers to a pivotal moment in Palestine’s history, but rather than focus on the grand narrative that would come to define the region, Annemarie Jacir trains her camera on the people whose lives are set to be irrevocably transformed. 

The Chronology of Water

Kristen Stewart’s much-anticipated directorial debut, an adaptation of American writer and educator Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, stars Imogen Poots as a woman escaping the shadow of childhood abuse, who is drawn into addiction and drained by grief. Poots’ unfiltered performance is matched by the actor-turned-filmmaker’s admirable unwillingness to turn away from the thorniest of topics.

The President’s Cake 

At the height of the first Gulf War, a young girl from a rural village in Iraq has been chosen by her school to bake a cake to celebrate President Saddam Hussein’s birthday. From this simple premise, debut director Hasan Hadi forges a remarkable portrait of a society suffocating under the yolk of a dictator, where everyday life is increasingly fragile through the attacks of a foreign ‘liberating’ force.

& Sons 

The first English-language feature from Argentine director Pablo Trapero (The Clan, 2015; Carancho, 2010) stars Bill Nighy as a novelist who summons his two sons to his rural home to impart some information that will change their lives. Adapted by Sarah Polley from David Gilbert’s 2014 novel, Trapero’s film is an eloquent exploration of father-son relationships and the erosion of emotional bonds.

Two Prosecutors 

One of the outstanding films playing in competition at Cannes this year, Sergei Loznitsa’s unbearably tense drama is set in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s political purges. A young prosecutor is rooting out corruption, but quickly finds the tables turned when he faces a body that would rather he look past its actions. Both a conspiracy thriller and Kafkaesque nightmare of administrative malfeasance, Two Prosecutors is arguably the finest work to date from the director of In the Fog (2012), Maidan (2014) and State Funeral (2019). 

A Private Life

Previous films have shown Jodie Foster to be fluent in French. But Rebecca Zlotowski’s immensely entertaining psychological thriller finds the actor fully embracing her second language. She’s a psychoanalyst who believes there is more to the recent suicide of a patient. It’s the juiciest of roles for Foster and she brings no small amount of charisma to it, in a film with strong echoes of Alfred Hitchcock.

Miroirs No 3

Both a festival and Curzon favourite, Christian Petzold (Afire, 2023; Transit, 2018; Phoenix, 2014) returns with the story of Laura (played by Petzold regular Paula Beer), who survives a car crash but whose memory loss is used by Betty (Barbara Auer), the woman who rescues her, to ensure she remains in her care. It’s a compelling, unsettlingly offbeat tale – perfect material for this singular filmmaker.

Calle Málaga

Pedro Almodóvar regular Carmen Maura is outstanding as María, a Moroccan-born Spaniard who finds her home under threat when she is visited by her daughter. But as director Maryam Touzani gleefully details, María has more than a trick or two up her sleeve to ensure she maintains the way of life she so thoroughly enjoys.

Anemone

Daniel Day-Lewis’ return to the screen, even if it is only for this film, was always going to be something of an event. His son Ronan Day-Lewis’ drama charts the relationship between two brothers (Day-Lewis and Sean Bean) whose military past sees them emotionally disconnected from the world. The cast, which also includes Samantha Morton, is roundly excellent, and the film is an incisive study of masculinity and trauma.

Left–Handed Girl

Shih-Ching Tsou was a producer on five Sean Baker features, including Tangerine (2015) and The Florida Project (2017), before turning her hand to direction with this impressive debut. Co-scripted with Baker, it tells the story of a woman and her two girls who return to Taipei to start a new life. Tsou skilfully draws us into their world, but it’s the way she captures the cadences of the city’s streets that mark her out as a filmmaker to watch.

Cover-Up

Seymour M. Hersh is one of the legends of American journalism. He exposed the My Lai massacre, was involved in the Watergate investigations that toppled the Nixon administration and brought to light the use of torture at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. Mark Obenhaus and Laura Poitras’ portrait of Hersh is both complex and unvarnished. Hersh proves to be an uneasy yet fascinating figure at the heart of this excellent documentary.

The Love That Remains

Featuring a marked change of tone and scope for the director of the acclaimed Godland (2023), Hlynur Pálmason’s fourth feature charts a year in the life of a family whose parents are in the throes of separation. But rather than focus on any bitterness or recrimination, the filmmaker paints a bittersweet and frequently witty portrait of a family experiencing moments together for the last time. 

Sound of Falling

Another standout film from this year’s Cannes Film Festival was Mascha Schilinski’s ambitious second feature, charting the lives of four girls across different generations and 100 years on the same area of farmland in Germany. It’s an incredible achievement, not only in its scale, but in how every scene is focused on the intimate experiences of the characters, building towards a damning indictment of misogyny.

Maspalomas

Elder queer desire is approached with refreshing frankness in Aitor Arregi and José María Goenaga’s involving drama. Vincente (José Ramón Soroiz) has left his lover and enjoys life in Gran Canaria. But a sudden stroke leaves him reflecting on his decisions and the pain they caused. Arregi and Goenaga never let the pace flag, forging an entertaining drama and a piercingly acute portrait of a character whose flaws are never hidden. 

The Voice of Hind Rajab

The director of Four Daughters (2023) once again blurs the line between documentary and drama with the retelling of a tragic incident that took place in Gaza in 2024. At its heart is a young girl who makes a call to the emergency services, who soon find themselves constrained by the strictures of laws that prevent easy access to their destination. Kaouther Ben Hania’s moving film emphasises the human cost of conflict.

Romería

Carla Simón’s informal sequel to her rhapsodic 2017 feature debut Summer 1993 sees her main protagonist, now a young woman, travelling to Galicia to visit her father’s extended family. He future depends on accessing his will, but strained relations threaten it. Simón's visually rich film draws a potent portrait of familial bonds riven by emotional undercurrents.

CHECK OUT THE LFF PROGRAMME