Held under the motto “God Save the United Kingdom of Cinema”, the event showcases some seventy films, both the finest achievements of British cinema of the past decades and its interesting latest developments.
The festival’s programming is arranged around several thematic sections. They include a High Season section comprising the most interesting films of the 2024/25 season, such as The Outrun directed by Nora Fingscheidt, Jay Roach’s The Roses and Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later.
The festival’s First Things First section will include pre-release movies, such as Urchin, which won director Harris Dickinson the Fipresci Award at this year’s Cannes Festival, Nocholas Hytner’s The Choral and Babak Anvari’s Hallow Road.
The Mind the Gap section focuses on social realism movies with Ken Loach’s iconic Kes and Bill Douglas’ My Childhood, while the Five O’clock section is devoted to the so-called heritage cinema, represented by such films as David Lean’s Great Expectations and Ken Russell’s Women in Love.
The festival’s director retrospective is dedicated to Sally Potter, whose 1993 cult classic Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf’s novel, received British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and European Film Academy awards.
Dorota Reksińska, festival programmer, described Potter as “an artist who constantly redefines the meaning of auteur cinema and sets new boundaries for creative freedom, […] her unique style and cinematic language are tools she uses to reflect on the meaning of time, sexuality, feminism, and the search for human identity.” Potter, who is also a composer and singer, will meet with Polish cinema lovers after the screenings of her films. A joint listening session of her solo album “Anatomy” is also on the programme.
Another highlight of the event is the retrospective of the late Dame Maggie Smith, an extraordinary actress and iconic figure in British theatre and film of the past few decades.
The British Film Festival, now in its second edition, runs until November 16.
(mk/jh)