 |
| Manchester By The Sea is one of the festival's headline galas |
Sundance hits Birth Of A Nation - which sold for a record sum at the festival - and Manchester By The Sea, will screen alongside titles from Venice, including Snowden and La La Land.
Other anticpated titles include JA Bayona's A Monster Calls - hot from Toronto and San Sebastian - Lone Scherfig's Their Finest, Mira Nair's Queen Of Katwe and Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals. As previously announced, the festival will open with Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom and close with Ben Wheatley's Free Fire. The archive gala will be Arthur Robison's The Informer (1929).
Nate Parker's Birth Of A Nation is likely to arrive on the winds of controversy since Parker has recently faced a media storm in the US over a rape allegation from 1999. The star - who had a scheduled Q&A at the American Film Institute cancelled as a result of the revelations - was acquitted of the rape charge in 2001. It has emerged in the US that the woman who accused him commited suicide in 2012.
Hopefully the controversy won't overshadow the festival's symposium event heralding the BFI’s ambitious Black Star project, the UK’s biggest ever season of film and television dedicated to celebrating the range, versatility and power of black actors coming in late October. The festival press release states: "Films within the festival programme will amplify the season, while the symposium will ask searching questions about the continued under-representation of black actors on screen, probing why opportunities for black actors in the US and the UK remain limited and aiming to drive forward a progressive agenda by spotlighting and exploring key issues for the film industry."
LFF will screen a total of 193 fiction and 52 documentary features, including 18 world Premieres, eight international premieres, 39 European premieres. There will also be screenings of 144 short films.
The official competition line-up is below:
Here is the London Film Festival official competition line-up:
Brimstone, directed by Martin Koolhoven
Certain Women, directed by Kelly Reichardt
Clash, directed by Mohamed Diab
Elle, directed by Paul Verhoeven
Frantz, directed by Francois Ozon
Goldstone, directed by Ivan Sen
Layla M., directed by Mijke De Jong
Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins
Neruda, directed by Pablo Larrain
A Quiet Passion, directed by Terence Davies
Una, directed by Benedict Andrews
Your Name, directed by Makoto Shinkai
