Malian musicians, a young artist coming of age in Johannesburg, Steve Jobs’ origin story, and so much more – here are some of the most exciting movies showing at the 2015 BFI London Film Festival, which starts on 7 October.
Suffragette
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne-Marie Duff, Meryl Streep
Directed by: Sarah Gavron
Gavron's second big feature film (she also directed 2007's adaptation of Monica Ali's Brick Lane) is shored up by a script from Abi Morgan (Shame, The Iron Lady) and the acting talents of a very strong and largely female cast, including Queen Meryl as Emmeline Pankhurst. It's a very British story, focusing on the members of the UK suffrage movement at the end of the 19th century, and the trailer shows it weaving in a lot of the pivotal historical moments we've come to know via textbooks: acts of civil disobedience, Emily Davison at the Epsom Derby, the efforts by the establishment to crush the movement, etc. Considering such subject matter and its glittering, talented cast, it's also prime Oscar-bait.
Steffan Hill
Steve Jobs
Starring: Danny Boyle
Directed by: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen
The buzz has been overwhelmingly positive, and expectations – for both box office and critical awards – is very high. Aaron Sorkin, who so expertly wove a tale around the people involved in the birth of Facebook in 2010's The Social Network, wrote the screenplay based on Walter Isaacson's bestselling biography, and it has exactly what you would want: the meshing of messy private and high-stakes public life, in the centre of a digital revolution. The match of Boyle's energy with a cast of such heavyweights as Winslet and Jeff Daniels should make for one of 2015's cinematic treats.
A Bigger Splash
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes, Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Is not this the role Tilda Swinton was born to play? A rock star of immense magnetism, on impossibly glamorous hiatus from her impossibly glamorous life, recuperating post-surgery and taking it easy with her filmmaker lover (Schoenaerts), on a windswept Sicilian island? Their peaceful idyll is shattered by the arrival of a music producer (Fiennes) with a newly discovered daughter (Johnson) in tow. This is a remake of the 1969 French film La Piscine and reunites Guadagnino with Swinton (see 2009's I Am Love) for what should be an elegant, sensual, and no doubt sharp drama.
Frenesy Film Company/ Courtesy of BFI London Film Festival
The Lobster
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Colin Farrell, John C. Reilly, Olivia Colman, Ben Whishaw
Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos
Colin Farrell displayed his gift for absurd and dark comedy in In Bruges and he does so again in this dystopian film in which singledom has been outlawed and the unpaired have 45 days in which to find a mate or be transformed into an animal of their own choosing. Unpaired, David (Farrell) sets off into the forest to take his chances with a band of fellow fugitives where he meets Weisz's character. The result looks like a lot of fun, with Lanthimos's signature preoccupation with questioning the ways we choose to live our lives threaded right through.
Despina Spyrou
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