What’s On: Highlights from the BFI London Film Festival 2025

The lights may already have dimmed and the main feature underway as speak, but you can still immerse yourself in the cinematic at this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Autumn seems to have appeared quite suddenly (at least in my view) and yet, here we are already at the start of the 2025 BFI London Film Festival. How did that happen, I wonder? Possibly in my case, a reluctance to let go of Summer, but having been caught on the hop, all thoughts of sunny days are now banished and with the Festival already in full swing, a brief rundown is a must.

The event is always a highlight in the capital’s arts calendar, never failing to give us grounds for cinematic hope, despite budgets being squeezed and distribution deals for independent features increasingly hard to come by.

As Festival Director, Kristy Matheson, says in her programme intro, “We move through spaces drawn from the imaginations and lived experiences of filmmakers and artists from around the globe.  Each encounter elicits new ideas, challenges preconceived notions and brings forth a raft of emotions.

I hope that you find countless reasons to be as buoyed as we are by the incredible state of cinema in 2025 – brimming with formal innovations and countless roadmaps for navigating contemporary society.”

Good to hear that the film world is not giving up so easily, whatever the political landscape. And for some expert help with navigation, I spoke to festival programmer, Grace Barber-Plentie, who was happy to point me in the right direction.

Are there any recurring themes you’ve noticed this year?

I guess a kind of theme that’s popped up this year, which people might notice, is Shakespeare. We have a new adaptation of Hamlet by Aneil Karia. It’s really interesting, like a modern retelling of the play, and very much a London film. It features Riz Ahmed, Morfydd Clark, Joe Alwyn and Art Malik. 

We’ve also got Hamnet, the film version of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. It’s directed by Nomadland’s Chloé Zhao and is an exploration of the grief of the playwright and his wife on the death of their son and the influence that had on the creation of the play Hamlet.

And then there’s Ariel, a reimagining of The Tempest, directed by Lois Patiño, director of Samsara, a feature people absolutely fell in love with a few years ago. So, we’re really excited to have this filmmaker back.  It’s about an actor who goes to an island to take part in a play and then ends up encountering some very mysterious people. Everyone is kind of playing a role based on a Shakespearean character, but are they acting a part or is this actually who they think they are?

So yeah, it’s a really fun theme to have this year and not something that we had any idea of when we started programming the festival.

What are your personal picks for this year?

A film I think is really special and which was at Sundance this year is Blknws: Terms and Conditions, the official feature debut of Kahlil Joseph, with Shaunette Renée Wilson, Kaneza Shaal and Peter Jay Fernandez. It’s kind of in an interesting space because the director is a visual artist who’s worked in music videos and short films. This is an exploration of creation in the black diaspora over an extended period of time. I think it’s hard to describe but a really unique film.

Blue Heron is another debut, actually. I think many of the films I’m speaking about probably are debuts! It’s by a Canadian-Hungarian filmmaker called Sophy Romvari – she’s become quite well known over the last few years for her short films and has exhibited at a lot of film festivals.  I don’t want to give away too many spoilers about this.  It’s a coming-of-age film, set in the 90s in Canada, an exploration of the struggle of looking back at yourself at a younger age and not being able to see your family as real people. 

Another film that I really loved and didn’t really know what I was going into when I watched it, is an Italian film called The Holy Boy (La Valle dei Sorrisi), directed by Paolo Stippoli.  I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s about a small Italian village where everyone is mysteriously happy despite a terrible tragedy there years ago; it explores religious obsession and suppression of grief. You just have to go with it, there’s so many twists and turns.  It’s very, very bold, a horror movie really.

What else do we need to know about this year’s festival?

The Royal Festival Hall is always going to have the glitzy films with the stars, like opening night’s Knives Out movie – Wake Up Dead Man, with Daniel Craig and directed by Rian Johnson. Closing night this year is something different though – 100 Knights of Hero, the second feature from Julia Jackman. We had her first film Bonus Track in the festival a couple of years ago, and we’ve also shown her short films previously, so it’s a filmmaker that we’ve been supporting down the years. She’s working on a much bigger scale with this film. It’s based on a graphic novel and it’s kind of a reinterpretation of the classic folklore 1,001 Nights. It features Emma Corrin, Charlie XCX and Richard E. Grant, to name but a few.  

How about tickets, there must be high demand this year?

Even though a lot of films are sold out there is still a chance to get tickets. People can go to the BFI website and our social media is #LFF BFI London Film Festival. Tickets get added every morning, so if there’s something that you think is sold out, there’s always a chance to grab a last minute ticket online. We also have rush queues at all of our venues so you can join the standby line and maybe nab a ticket on the day as well. And even if you can’t go to the film screenings, that’s not the whole festival. There’s so much more. We have LFF for free, which is a series of free talks and workshops. There are club nights, we have our expanded programme of VR and immersive art, plus games. I think even if you’re not coming down to see films, there’s still very much a way to be part of the festival.

So, there you have it, it’s never too late, plenty to see and do.  For anyone who, like me, has been a bit slow off the mark, it’s good to know there’s still a chance to access cinema’s finest over the next couple of weeks.

See you in the queue…

The 69th BFI London Film Festival is taking place from 8th to 19th October 2025. Visit whatson.bfi.org.uk for tickets.

Written by Gillian Smith

Share your thoughts in the comment box below!

More from the blog:

Get social with us – follow and tag us! @mysohotimes #MySohoTimes