Films by Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Yorgos Lanthimos and Hayao Miyazaki are heading for the UK as part of the mammoth lineup announced by the London film festival on Thursday.
Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon – which has already received rave reviews for its portrayal of the real-life murders of Osage people in the 1920s over oil claims – will screen alongside Poor Things, Lanthimos’ surreal fantasy romance adapted from Alasdair Gray’s novel. Fincher’s hitman thriller The Killer, which stars Michael Fassbender, and Miyazaki’s much anticipated The Boy and the Heron, reputedly the master animator’s final film, will also be shown.
They join a raft of high profile films at the festival, including The Book of Clarence, Jeymes Samuel’s biblical satire starring LaKeith Stanfield; Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro; Todd Haynes’ age-gap relationship drama May December with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore; and the world premiere of the latest feature from Aardman Animations, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.
More than 200 films will be screened at the 12-day event, with other world premieres including the festival’s closing film The Kitchen, a near-future drama about a housing estate directed by Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya; rural folk-horror Starve Acre from Apostasy director Daniel Kokotajlo; and Julia Jackman’s mid-noughties romcom Bonus Track.
British audiences will also get their first look at new films by homegrown heroes including Molly Manning Walker’s Cannes hit How to Have Sex; Jonathan Glazer’s Martin Amis adaptation The Zone of Interest; and the festival’s already-announced opening film Saltburn, written and directed by Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell.
The festival’s archive screenings always attract considerable interest, and this year include a restored print of Michael Powell’s controversial 1960 horror film Peeping Tom; Horace Ové’s pioneering Black British drama Pressure from 1975; and The Black Pirate, the silent 1926 Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler.
The London film festival starts on 4 October and runs until 15 October.
