It’s October, so it can only mean two things: it’s spooky season and the London Film Festival is raring to go.
The 69th annual film programme returns to the capital, opening with the Knives Out sequel Wake Up Dead Man on Wednesday 8 October and closing with Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero on Sunday 19 October, which I’m especially excited for. In between, LFF will show a host of world, European and UK premieres, and there are several that you should have your eye on.
Lynne Ramsay is back. Eight years after the release of You Were Never Really Here, the Scottish auteur serves up an explosively visceral depiction of post-partum depression and psychosis with Die, My Love. Based on Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 novel of the same name, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson clock in as a couple whose marriage ignites with turbulence after the birth of their first child, both giving fiery, career-best performances.
Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet continues this fragile domestic theme, but here the couple is William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes, played by Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, respectively. The film, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, centres on their relationship after the death of their eponymous son and has been praised by critics for Zhao’s delicate contemplation of grief and nature.
The long-awaited return to the screen for Daniel Day-Lewis comes via Anemone, a family affair on and off the screen, as it was co-written by the actor and his son Ronan Day-Lewis, who also makes his feature directorial debut. Co-starring Sean Bean and Samantha Morton, the drama is being described as moodily atmospheric, with Day-Lewis’s ‘magnetic’ performance standing out. No surprise there, then.
Where Anemone deals with distant brothers, Joachim Trier’s comedy-drama Sentimental Value zones in on a pair of sisters reconnecting with their absent father after the death of their mother. The film reunites Trier with his The Worst Person in the World lead Renate Reinsve, and won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for its poignant meditation on generational trauma, and the power of art and cinema to heal.
Sure to earn some audience giggles is Harry Lighton’s feature debut, Pillion, a romantic-comedy about Colin (Harry Melling), a young gay man who embarks on a BDSM relationship with biker gang leader Ray (Alexander Skarsgård). Blending aggressive kink with soft sweetness, Lighton’s deft direction of this darkly humorous coming-of-age story has made him one to watch, and it sounds like Pillion is one, too.
And if, like me, you’re a die-hard fan of the Boss, then Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere ranks highly on your ‘must-watch’ list. Written and directed by Scott Cooper, and based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 non-fiction book Deliver Me from Nowhere, the biopic focuses on a young Bruce Springsteen as he conceives and creates the 1982 album Nebraska, a slow, acoustic album he followed up with after the monumental success of The River album. If you haven’t read his 2016 memoir Born to Run, or got around to watching Springsteen on Broadway, then this film will help you understand the rock star’s complicated relationship with his father and how he used his music to excavate those heightened feelings. With Jeremy Allen White playing the Boss and Stephen Graham as his dad in flashbacks, Deliver Me From Nowhere will no doubt deliver some fine performances and tear-jerking moments.
If you can’t get down to the London Film Festival, keep an eye on the Electric Cinema schedule so you can be seated for this array of exciting new releases in the coming months.