The 68th BFI London Film Festival closed on Sunday 20th October with the European Premiere of Morgan Neville’s Piece by Piece (pictured above), a vibrant journey through the life of cultural icon Pharrell Williams, all told through the lens of LEGO animation. In addition to Neville and Williams, the event was attended by an exciting array of special guests from the worlds of music, fashion and sport. The Closing Night Gala took place at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, which returned as the festival’s Headline Gala and Special Presentation venue for a fourth time since its inaugural year in 2021.
Placing audiences at the heart of the festival, the winners of this year’s LFF Audience Awards, as chosen by members of the public, were announced yesterday. Darren Thornton’s funny and heartwarming comedy drama Four Mothers, about one Irish son juggling four very different mothers, took the Audience Award for Best Feature; Holloway, which follows six women who were formerly incarcerated at what was once the largest women’s prison in Europe, was the winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary; and Two Minutes won the Audience Award for Best Short Film.
The 68th edition welcomed more than 815 international and UK filmmakers, immersive art and extended reality artists and series creatives to present their work at venues across the capital. The festival kicked off with a press conference for the world premiere of Opening Night Film Blitz led by Steve McQueen. The festival’s highly anticipated series of Screen Talks included acclaimed filmmakers Andrea Arnold, Sean Baker, Mike Leigh, Denis Villeneuve, remarkable acting talents Lupita Nyong’o and Zoe Saldaña (star of Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez, pictured below), as well as the versatile Daniel Kaluuya.
The festival featured an exciting range of 252 titles (comprising features, shorts, series and immersive works) hailing from 79 countries, and featured 63 languages. All features and series screened to UK audiences for the first time, including 38 World Premieres, 12 International Premieres (6 features, 4 shorts, 2 immersive) and 21 European Premieres (17 features, 1 series, 3 shorts). Across the programme, including events for industry delegates and the immensely popular LFF for Free programme, the festival had 230,342 attendances, the highest in-person attendance in the last ten years.
Source/images: BFI
