The 53rd London Film Festival begins on 14 October. Among the hundred-plus films drawn from around the world are the latest Coen brothers comedy, a biopic of the poet John Keats and not one, but two, films starring George Clooney. Over the coming weeks, the NS culture team will bravely attend as many screenings as possible and blog about it here. In the meantime, here is our pick of ten highlights to whet your appetite:
Fantastic Mr Fox (dir: Wes Anderson)
Anderson, director of quirky comedies such as The Royal Tenenbaums, makes his first foray into animation with this adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s story.
The White Ribbon (dir: Michael Haneke)
The Austrian-born Haneke has long been known for his punishing films, but his last, Funny Games, proved a little too much for our own Ryan Gilbey. Will this tale of malice and spite in early-20th-century Germany fare any better?
Bluebeard (dir: Catherine Breillat)
Famously retold by Angela Carter in her story collection The Bloody Chamber, this fairy tale gets a low-budget treatment from the provocative Breillat.
Tales from the Golden Age (dir: Cristian Mungiu)
The 20th anniversary of the fall of communism is being marked by various arts projects. Here, the acclaimed Romanian director Mungiu presents a series of vignettes of life under Ceausescu. You can read the NS review of his previous film, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, here.
Oil City Confidental (dir: Julien Temple)
After giving us documentaries on the Sex Pistols and the Glastonbury Festival, Temple turns his attention to Britain’s much-maligned pub rock scene.
She, a Chinese (dir: Xiaolu Guo)
Guo is better known for her novels (the most recent of which we reviewed here), but she is also an accomplished film-maker. She, a Chinese tells the story of a young immigrant in Britain and features a score by John Parish, the PJ Harvey collaborator.
Hadewijch (dir: Bruno Dumont)
With a visual style that has more in common with the painters of his native Flanders than any of his contemporaries, Dumont cuts something of an outsider figure in French cinema. Hadewijch is tipped to be his best work yet — while you wait for it, read this 2007 NS interview with the director.
Journey to the Moon (dir: Kutluğ Ataman)
Ataman, who was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004, may be better known to NS readers as a video artist — Fisun Güner wrote about him in April. Journey to the Moon reconstructs an incident from 1950s Turkey.
Perestroika (dir: Sarah Turner)
Structured around a journey on the Trans-Siberian Express, this exploration of amnesia is a promising highlight of the festival’s experimental film strand.
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (dir: Werner Herzog)
Herzog, the visionary German director who has been making films since the 1960s, is enjoying a late surge in popularity. This remake of a 1992 Abel Ferrara crime drama, starring Nicholas Cage, is a departure from his recent run of documentaries. You can read our Q+A with the director here.
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