Kristy Matheson is preparing for the 68th BFI London Film Festival (LFF), her second time as BFI Film Festival director.
The Australian, which curated the Edinburgh Film Festival, and her team have selected a total of 255 films from 80 countries, including highlights of this year’s film festival such as Sean Baker winning the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. AnoraJacques Audiard emilia perezPablo Larrain MariaMike Leigh’s cruel factMarielle Heller’s night bitchAli Abbasi apprentice and Edward Berger’s secret meetingwith 40 world premieres.
These include TV series about World War II blitzkriegStarring Saoirse Ronan, Harris Dickinson and more, this is London-born Steve McQueen’s third London Film Festival opener The movie, which kicks off on October 9th, is a movie by Ben Taylor joystarring Thomasin Mackenzie, James Norton and Bill Nighy, tells the story of the team that invented IVF, and Netflix animation that christmasDirected by Simon Otto, it stars Brian Cox as the voice of Santa Claus, alongside Jodie Whittaker, Fiona Shaw and Bill Nighy.
Pharrell Williams Lego biopic little by little The 68th International Film Festival will end on October 20.
Matheson, who succeeds Tricia Tuttle, the new Berlin Film Festival president, said in an interview hollywood reporter On the making of her second edition, the new countries represented and the importance of star power.
LFF 2024 will screen 255 films from 79 countries, including 16 world premieres. What are some important world premieres?
Being able to open the festival with Steve McQueen Blitzkrieg It’s fantastic, and to have it as a world premiere is just the icing on the cake. There were other great world premieres, such as a film called four mothers [from director Darren Thornton]very touching, very comedic, and beautifully acted. This is one of those movies that truly has broad appeal. You don’t want people to overlook it because it’s a very enjoyable movie.
In competition we have another film called Extraordinary flower ladyfrom Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, who produced 20,000 days on eartha Nick Cave documentary. Once again they are bringing this intense creativity to telling the story of someone’s life through documentary.
We don’t have a formal market at the London Film Festival, but London itself is a great place for people to showcase their film platform, not only in preparation for the awards ceremony, but also for film teams and distributors to find a way to really test the film in front of audiences, because London There is such a strong and adventurous audience. It’s also a very efficient place for people to come and do business because a lot can be done without having to travel long distances.
We are an audience-oriented festival. So when we put the program together, we’re thinking about the entire program. We’re certainly honored and excited to bring the film to the world. But that’s not the only metric we want to consider. We really want this show to appeal to a lot of different audiences, so that can guide our decisions.
Are there any themes or genres that work particularly well in the LFF series?
Animation is unprecedented this year. We’ve been lucky enough to watch many great animated films, but not all of them are aimed at younger audiences. We do have some great films for young audiences and families such as that christmas and wild robot. So animation is knocking it out of the park.
We also have many different types of animations, from Adam Elliot’s beautiful Champions of Annecy, Memoirs of a Snailwhich is gorgeous hand-crafted clay animation, all the way to the incredibly complex LEGO 3D you see in our closing night movie, little by little. There is a wonderful movie from the Dominican Republic called Olivia and the cloudswhich is a different type of animation style. So, those who like animation will find a lot.
Another thing that fascinates us throughout the lineup is the animals, and we have a wide variety of animals on our show this year. There are so many great animal performers, stars, and heroes in movies. As we walked we kept saying, “Oh, look, it’s another animal movie.” We had great movies, Pepe [about a hippo once owned by Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar]. We all wonder who our favorite animals are, and Pepe is definitely one of them. To me, this is our favorite hippopotamus.
Many of these films explore our connection to the world and how humans and animals coexist. How do we enrich each other’s lives? But some of these films are also more concerned with the philosophical relationship between animals and the human world. Some look at things from a greener perspective, such as animation flowwhich features an entirely animal cast. It looks at how we need to connect in a cross-species way and looks at what we need to do to survive.
Are there any other important philosophical themes or focus issues in the LFF lineup?
I would say motherhood comes in many forms. We have a great movie called motherboardA wonderful documentary from the UK about a woman [Victoria Mapplebeck] She documents her life as a mother, but also her children, and it’s a very moving and funny look at it. We also have items from Marielle Heller night bitch With Amy Adams, it’s another look at motherhood, but one that I think most parents of young children or people with memories of this can really relate to.
Another thing that’s been really nice to see this year is seeing several movies that feature disability, but don’t necessarily have it as a theme. There is a French movie called my everythingstarring Anne-Sophie Bailly as Laure Calamy, and an Australian comedy called Audrey [by director Natalie Bailey]. Both films have characters with disabilities who are just part of the fabric of the film. In them we see disabled professional actors playing these roles. These two movies really help normalize disability. It’s not about people making points, it’s just that these are great performers who do wonderful work in it.
How is this year’s LFF speaker lineup different from other events?
It’s very exciting that we have an even stronger line-up for Screen Talk, which means this year we have even more opportunities for people to meet, enjoy more intimate moments and hear someone talk about their career.
is an even stronger line-up of speakers, including Zoe Saldaña and more, Daniel Kaluuya, And Lupita Nyong’o, because last year’s strike was so difficult?
Of course, in terms of incoming talent, we’re very proud of our impressive and eclectic lineup. But obviously due to last year’s strike there wasn’t a chance to hear the talent in front of the camera so it’s great to be able to have the performers come back and speak to the audience. Lupita Nyong’o is a voice actress wild robotit’s just a completely different dimension and a different type of performance that we’ll be discussing with her throughout her career. The same goes for Zoe Saldaña and Jacques Audiard Emilia Perez. If you’ve been following her career, you might not think of this film as the next natural step. So we were excited to hear about her career.
Which countries’ films are participating in the London Film Festival for the first time?
This is not the first time, but we have a movie from Indonesia called crocodile tearsit’s a great first feature film, even if it’s not the first time we’ve screened an Indonesian film. It’s a very interesting story about mother and son, and another movie about motherhood, but with a very different strategy. This movie plays with genre in a very interesting way.
This year, it’s not the first time Singapore has joined LFF, but it’s also not a country we’ve seen a lot of movies from, we also have a fantastic movie that just came out in Venice called stranger’s eyesa slow-burn thriller [about a young couple dealing with the sudden disappearance of their baby daughter and looking for clues about the kidnapper].
And then there is a movie, late night early morning From Daniel Xu [which the LFF website describes as “a somber chamber piece that implores us to find connections between divergent acts of political dissidence across history]. So I think Southeast Asia as a whole is doing well this year. Vietnam has some great films, and this year we’ve seen a lot of great films from Southeast Asia and East Asia, and Southeast Asia in particular feels exciting.
The Dominican Republic also performed strongly. We have a wonderful movie called sugar island [directed by Johanné Gómez Terrero and about the complex past, present and future lives of Afro-Dominican people in the Dominican Republic], Pepe [from Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias]and animation olivia and clouds. They’re not all the same type of film: animation, more experimental films, drama. It’s great to see the diversity of filmmaking styles.
Brazil also had a great year. Again, they’re both very different in terms of their filmmaking styles and the themes they tackle. [They include Brazil’s Oscar contender by director Walter Salles, I’m Still Here, Julia de Simone’s Formosa Beach, Marcelo Caetano’s Baby, Juliana Rojas’ Cidade; Campo, and Marco Dutra’s Bury Your Dead].
[On Oct. 11, the London fest will even put on “DJ Night: Ritmos do Brasil,” described as “a night of the very best Brazilian music to complement the breadth of Brazilian films in this year’s festival.”]
Tell me a little about the thematic strands the festival is using to engage audiences in new ways and build the LFF lineup. They range from love, debate and laughter to thrills, cults, families, experiments and more.
These clues were really helpful to us when we were planning the festival because it meant we had to check in with ourselves. We might indulge ourselves and say, “Oh, this is another sad, moody movie.” Or we might indulge ourselves and say we just want to watch a lot of funny comedy movies. So that’s good for us.
It can provide some guidance to help viewers try and interpret such a large program based on their own and friends’ tastes and moods. I think stimulation is a good example. In this section we have everything from very traditional thrillers to slow burn films like stranger’s eyes. You could put that movie in a lot of different places. For example, it could also be placed in Dare because it is quite bold in form. It can stay in the debate because it raises a lot of questions. But for us, these clues are a way to get the audience to try something they don’t know they know. Someone might say “Oh, I love thrillers.” or “I’m going to a film festival with friends and they really like these kinds of movies.” So we hope these clues can provide some guidance to help navigate the festival.
Some of the strands are quite broad…
Yes, like love. I mean, a lot of movies are about love. We all love love in movies. But you know, this year we showed the Alex Ross Perry movie sidewalk Love, this seems like a weird place to be. It could easily go into “Creation” because it’s about the process of creation and the people who create things. But what really struck us when we watched the film was that it truly is a love letter to fans. We all participate in fandom in different ways and on different levels, but this film is a complete love letter to Pavement. So, yes, we’re doing things that are broad enough to try to appeal to a lot of different tastes and stop us from being too indulgent.
