The BFI 70th London Film Festival Line Up

The British Film Institute has officially unveiled the line-up for its 70th London Film Festival, due to run this October across several locations, including the BFI Southbank, BFI IMAX, Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Prince Charles Cinema, the Royal Festival Hall, Vue West End and Curzon Soho.

“This year, the blockbusters, the indie breakouts and the debuts have drawn audiences to cinemas in record numbers. A reminder that discovering a new film in a room of fellow fans is a thrill like nothing else,” BFI chief executive, Ben Roberts, shared. “As our anticipation builds for LFF, we’re grateful to everyone who helps us fill screens across the UK: to our brilliant audiences, Members and Patrons; the visionary filmmakers and film teams who bring their work; our generous funders, sponsors and industry partners; and, of course, the excellent teams at the BFI.”

The festival is scheduled to open with Simon Stone’s biographical drama, Elsinore, charting the final performance of Scottish actor Ian Charleson, when he took on the role of Hamlet at the National Theatre while battling AIDS. The film, penned by Stephen Beresford, stars Andrew Scott in the central role, with Oliva Coleman appearing as Charleson’s doctor, Margaret Johnson, and additional stars including Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn as director Richard Eyre, Luke Thompson, Monica Dolan, Juliet Stevenson, Joe Locke and Adeel Akhtar, among others.

It’s been reported that Stone grew and anchored his cast around people who worked with Charleson, had connections with the subject or had previously collaborated with Stone or Bereford. Elsinore is the director’s third feature, following 2015’s The Daughter and 2021’s The Dig.

It was recently announced that maestro of the lavish and erotic, Luca Guadagnino, will debut his eleventh feature, Artificial, at the festival’s gala. The biographical comedy drama, written by Simon Rich as his second film script after Brandon Trost’s An American Pickle, stars Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, during the controversial period when he was fired and rehired at the company.  Monica Barbaro, Yura Borisov, Mark Rylance, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schwartzman, Zosia Mamet, Cooper Hoffman, Chris O’Dowd, Cooper Koch, and Billie Lourd balance out Artificial’s ensemble cast.

Brit Pop royalty Damon Albarn, the lead singer of Blur, has composed the film’s score and written original songs.

Read more film festival coverage here

Meanwhile, actor-turned-director Jesse Eisenberg will unveil his junior-directed feature, The Debut, to close the LFF. The film is a musical comedy hybrid, starring Julianna Moore as a shy, reserved woman who finds herself forced to step out of her meek comfort zone when she is cast in a local production of a musical. Under the direction of a powerful, tenacious director played by Paul Giamatti, the woman slips further from her identity as she immerses herself in the musical’s illusion.

Eisenberg also appears on screen in The Debut alongside fellow cast members Halle Bailey, Cara Buono, Craig Bierko, Eldar Isgandarov, and Bernadette Peters.

The festival will be accompanied by Screen Talks, featuring the following film figures.

• John Malkovich– American actor
• Mahershala Ali– American actor
• Naomi Ackie– English actress
• Sofia Coppola– American filmmaker and former actress
• Danny Boyle– English director and producer
• Andrew Scott– Irish actor
• Ava DuVernay– American filmmaker
• Brad Bird-American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor
• Cynthia Erivo– British actress and singer
• James Gray– American filmmaker, producer, and screenwriter
• Jesse Eisenberg– American actor, playwright, and filmmaker

The 2026 London Film Festival Line-up

Gala

• Elsinore (Simon Stone, UK)
• Behemoth! (Tony Gilroy, USA)
• Being Heumann (Siân Heder, USA)
• The Beloved (Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Spain)
• La Bola Negra (Federico García Lorca, Spain and France)
• Bunker (Florian Zeller, UK)
• Club Kid (Jordan Firstman, USA)
• Fatherland (Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland, Germany, Italy and France)
• Fjord (Cristian Mungui, Romania, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland)
• I Love Boosters (Boots Riley, USA)
• Ink (Danny Boyle, UK)
• Klara and the Sun (Taika Waititi, New Zealand)
• A Long Winter (Andrew Haigh, Canada and UK)
• Minotaur (Andrey Zvyagintsev, France, Germany and Latvia)
• Paper Tiger (James Gray, USA)
• Possible Love (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea)
• Prima Facie (Susanna White, UK and Australia)
• Ray Gunn (Brad Bird, USA)
• Tender Loving Care (Mike Leigh, UK)
• Wild Horse Nine (Martin McDonagh, USA, UK and Chile)
• Wildwood (Travis Knight, USA)
• Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (Bassam Tariq, USA and UK)
• Artificial (Luca Guadagnino, UK, USA and Italy)
• The Debut (Jesse Eisenberg, USA)

Special Presentations

• 14th (Ava DuVernay, USA)
• Gone to Earth (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, UK)
• Shab-Nameh: Women of Iran’s Forgotten Left (Maryam Tafakory, UK and Iran)
• Sweet Milk Lane (Harvey Zielinski, Australia)
• The Trip to the Northern Lights (Michael Winterbottom, UK)
• Water Body (Marshmallow Laser Feast – Barnaby Steel, Ersin Han Ersin and Robin McNicholas, UK

Shorts

• Mon Taxi (Meriem Sakrouhi, Morocco and USA)
• Bundle (Caro Milillo, UK)
• To the North (Amer Nasser, Palestine)
• (Failing to Make) a Documentary about My Sudanese Family (Sid Elbadawi, UK and Sudan)
• Stjålne Minner (Anders Davidsen, Norway and Sweden)
• Forgotten Spaceman (Elham Ehsas, UK and Afghanistan)
• White Musk (Fatima Wardy, Sudan and USA)
• FarEye (Hayden Mclean, UK)
• Agnes (Leah Vlemmiks, UK and Canada)
• How to Hide It (Ramla Ali and Richard A. Moore, UK)
• Sweet Bitter Sweet (Nicolee Tsin, UK)
• Laundreams (Amber Gadd and Evie Ward-Drummond, UK)
• Micro Bands (Iris Breward, UK)
• A Twist of Hate (Maddy Shenai, UK)
• Date Night (Tanya Reynolds, UK)
• The Devil is in Me (Tia Salisbury, UK)
• A Kind of Purity (Theo Shivdasani, UK)

The Official Competition Line-Up

• 7 Miles Out (Carol Morley, UK)
• Act 3 (Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, Ireland and UK)
• Glaxo (Benjamín Naishtat, Brazil and Argentina)
• Imperium (Sergei Loznitsa, Germany, France, Italy and Lithuania)
• Ketticè (Giovanni Tortorici, Italy)
• Look Back/ルックバック (Hirokazu Koreeda, Japan)
• My Notes on Mars (Lili Horvát, Hungary and Austria)
• The Difficult Bride (Rubaiyat Hossain, France, Bangladesh, Portugal, Norway and Germany)
• The Idiot(s) (Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert, UK and Poland)
• Woman Unknown/Kvinde ukendt (May el-Toukhy, Denmark, Latvia and Sweden)

The 70th BFI London Film Festival runs from 7th October to 18th October 2026. 

About the Author

Ros Tibbs

Editor

Ros is a film and lit graduate writing news and reviews at The People's Magazine. She also writes long-form film theory, film history, analytical or curated recommendations pieces on other platforms.

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