Movies from 77 countries will screen at the 2021 London Film Festival, as Britain’s leading cinema showcase welcomes mass audiences back to movie theaters after a pandemic-disrupted year.
The festival program, announced Tuesday, includes 158 features, down from 225 during its last pre-pandemic edition in 2019. The 2020 festival was a curtailed collection of 58 films, most screened online.
This year, mask-wearing, full-capacity audiences will be able to attend gala screenings at London’s riverside Southbank Centre, with many of the premieres screened simultaneously at movie theaters across the UK About 37% of the features are directed by women — not yet parity, but up from a quarter four years ago and “heading in the right direction,” festival director Tricia Tuttle said.
The festival opens October 6 with the world premiere of The Harder They Fall — a Western from British director Jeymes Samuel with a Black-led cast — and closes October 17 with the European premiere of Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as Shakespeare’s murderous Scottish royals. The lineup includes 21 world premieres alongside prize-winners and headline-grabbers from the Cannes and Venice film festivals, including Jane Campion’s Montana-set Western “The Power of the Dog” and Edgar Wright’s swinging-60s horror romp Last Night in Soho, both of which premiered in Venice this month. Also on the schedule are French director Julia Ducournau’s techno-sexual thriller “Titane” — winner of Cannes’ top prize, the Palme d’Or — Paul Verhoeven’s lesbian nun drama Benedetta and Wes Anderson’s whimsical The French Dispatch, both of which also premiered at the French Riviera festival. The London festival will also feature Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Elena Ferrante adaptation The Lost Daughter; Reinaldo Marcus Green’s King Richard, which stars Will Smith as the father of Venus and Serena Williams; Kenneth Branagh’s homage to his home town, Belfast; Jacques Audiard’s Paris, 13th District and Todd Haynes music documentary The Velvet Underground and others. (AP)
