The first edition to be widely accessible wherever you are in the UK, with a whole host of LGBTQI viewing
BY SOPHIE GRIFFITHS, IMAGES VIA IMAGENET
In the most accessible version of the festival to UK audiences yet, this year at the BFI London Film Festival (LFF), film lovers will be given an opportunity to connect for a unique and innovative festival experience, enjoying both live and digital screenings across the 12 days.
Adapting to the challenges of 2020, LFF will deliver up to 50 Virtual Festival Premieres in a programme that offers audiences the opportunity to see the best new cinema from around the world and with that same texture LFF’s audiences love, including fiction, documentary, animation, artists’ moving image, and restored classics from the world’s archives
In another new innovation, 12 highly anticipated new films from the programme will screen in previews across the UK, in partnership with UK-wide cinemas networks that deliver great independent and cultural films for audiences all year long, including London’s BFI Southbank.
Speaking exclusively with Festival Director Tricia Tuttle, she told DIVA: “It’s always hugely important to the team to find and champion LGBTQI+ filmmakers. We also run BFI Flare each March and we adore screening queer films for queer audiences, but LFF also allows us to introduce wider audiences to queer filmmaking and stories.”
“Two particularly cherished examples from last year were seeing Isabel Sandoval’s incredible Lingua Franca, about an undocumented Filipina transwoman in NYC, screen in Official Competition to passionate reception from Festival audiences. And also seeing Claire Oakley’s Make Up, about a young woman discovering her sexuality, compete for the Sutherland Award and get picked up for UK distribution. These discoveries are there every year within the LFF for eager film fans.”
Check out some of our top LGBTQI picks from the festival below.
LGBTQI FEATURES
🎥 AMMONITE
1840s England, acclaimed but overlooked fossil hunter Mary Anning and a young woman sent to convalesce by the sea develop an intense relationship, altering both of their lives forever
🎥 DAYS
Kang lives alone in a big house, Not in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.
🎥 IF IT WERE LOVE
They are 15 young dancers of various origins and horizons. They are touring Crowd, Gisèle Vienne’s dance piece on the 90s rave scene. Following them from theatre to theatre, If It Were Love documents their work as well as their strange, intimate relationships. For the line becomes blurry. The stage seems to contaminate real life – unless the opposite is happening. From a dance documentary, the film thus grows into a troubling journey into our nights, our parties, our loves.
🎥 CICADA
New York City, 2013. A young bisexual man enters an interracial relationship. In the midst of the Sandusky trial, against the backdrop of a cicada summer, he comes to terms with his own childhood trauma.
🎥 KAJILLIONAIRE
A woman’s life is turned upside down when her criminal parents invite an outsider to join them on a major heist they’re planning.
🎥 SHIRLEY
As renowned for her morose nature as she is for her horror fiction, writer Shirley Jackson (Elizabeth Moss) is crafting yet another masterpiece when the arrival of newlyweds Fred and Rose disrupt her creative process and marriage to literary critic – and philandering professor – Stanley Hyman (Michael Stuhlbarg).
🎥 SUPERNOVA
Sam and Tusker partners of 20 years, who are traveling across England in their old RV visiting friends, family and places from their past. Since Tusker was diagnosed with early-onset dementia two years ago, their time together is the most important thing they have.
SHORT FILMS
PANTHERS
A powerful LGBTQI coming-of-age drama with stellar performances from the young leads who play two friends acting provocatively in front of their schoolmates.
THE NAME OF THE SON
A quiet and thoughtful Argentinean short about a young trans boy who goes on a trip to the sea with his dad and younger sister. He’s trying to be recognised as a young man then gets his first period…
DUNGAREES
Dungarees is an incredibly love story between transgender Blake and cisgender Cane. They hang out, play video games and grapple with their insecurities.
STRAY DOGS COME OUT AT NIGHT
Iqbal, a migrant sex worker in Karachi takes on a day trip to the beach with his uncle, desperate for respite.
Click here to get tickets to any of the films you fancy or to join in on the virtual LFF fun this year from 7 – 18 October.
