BFI London Film Festival Director Tricia Tuttle to Step Down After 2022 Edition

The 66th London Film Festival closed Sunday with a lively screening of Rian Johnson’s murder mystery sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.  

Director Asif Kapadia makes slick work of Akram Khan’s ballet in Creature, which world premiered at the BFI London Film Festival. Based on Khan’s original concept and choreography, the English National Ballet Production is produced by Uzma Hasan for Little House Productions, and brings an intense cinematic sensibility to the bleak story exploring power, nature, connection and more. 

Mani Haghighi is the latest film director who has been impacted by Iran’s ongoing restraint on filmmakers.

Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi will no longer attend the London Film Festival premiere of his latest film Subtraction after authorities stopped him from boarding a flight to London. 

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi had his passport confiscated at the airport as he was about to board a flight to attend the BFI London Film Festival. Haghighi was expected to present there the U.K. premiere of his latest film, “Subtraction.”  A BFI London Film Festival spokesperson confirmed the news to Variety and issued the following statement: “The Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi was due to travel to London today to support the UK premiere of his film Subtraction which is screening tomorrow at the BFI London Film Festival, but has been prevented from boarding his flight to the UK.  He was turned away by authorities in Iran and has his passport confiscated.  He has returned to his home in Tehran. We understand that no reason has been given to Mani Haghighi for the confiscation. The BFI London Film Festival supports Haghighi and all filmmakers in their freedom to make their films and present them around the world.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. Persol aviators are practically synonymous with Steve McQueen, who made the specs one of the most coveted luxury products in the world after wearing them in 1968’s “The Thomas Crown Affair.”Even if you aren’t behind the wheel of sports cars or riding first-class on high-flying planes, you can still achieve that Old Hollywood flare yourself, for only a fraction of the price, thanks to Amazon’s unbeatable Persol deals for Prime’s Early Access Sale. The Po0714 Aviator Sunglasses are currently 49% off on Amazon, bringing down the price of the designer sunnies to only $199 — cheaper than we’ve ever seen them (including June’s Prime Day event). 

Manori Ravindran International Editor New York’s South Asian International Film Festival has appointed Chayan Sarkar as its new president. A filmmaker, entrepreneur and festival director, Sarkar is also the founder of the Indian International Film Festival of Queensland in Australia. He takes over from SAIFF founder Shilen Amin, who will step down as president, but will remain a member of the festival’s board of directors. Sarkar joins SAIFF as the festival enters its 19th year as a leading film festival in the U.S. for new cinema from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal, and within the Indian diaspora. In recent years, SAIFF has become increasingly influential as a platform for South Asian cinema, both in the U.S. and internationally. Fourteen of India’s submissions for the international feature film Oscar have had their North American premieres at the festival.

Naman Ramachandran Oscar and Venice-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour,” “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”) and fellow filmmakers Georgia Oakley (“Blue Jean”), Roberto Minervini (“What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?”) and Ondi Timoner (“Last Flight Home”) were among those who protested against the imprisonment of Iranian filmmakers and other incarcerated artists around the world, and to demonstrate support for the tenacious women of Iran who are challenging for their freedom at the BFI London Film Festival on Monday. They joined festival director Tricia Tuttle, producer Madeleine Molyneaux (“Gospel Hill”); actors Aurélia Petit (“Saint Omer”) and Taki Mumladze (“A Room of My Own”); actor and writer Mariam Khundadze (“To Batumi and every single memory”); writer Morgan M. Page (“Framing Agnes”); industry leaders Tabitha Jackson, Clare Binns and Jason Wood; and other festival delegates in a moment of solidarity and reflection.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Musicals aren’t for everyone, but “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical” seemed to be right on tune for the BFI London Film Festival. The Netflix movie adaptation of the stage musical, which debuted in the West End in 2012, opened the 66th edition of the festival on Wednesday night, where despite starting 45 minutes late, it found an appreciative audience in the Royal Festival Hall crowd, which included a number of revolting children. The Netflix and TriStar Pictures pic stars Emma Thompson as psychotic headmistress Miss Trunchbull, Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey, Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough as Matilda’s parents and Sindhu Vee as confidante Mrs. Phelps.

There are stories so good they can withstand any amount of retelling. Matilda began life as Roald Dahl’s rollicking tale of an outrageously spirited, clever little girl who defeats the bullying headmistress whose vocation is to make children miserable. The Royal Shakespeare Company turned it into a Christmas musical that burst the banks of the festive season, running for years and winning seven Olivier Awards in 2012 in London, then five Tonys the following year in New York. Now, director Matthew Warchus, along with writer Dennis Kelly and songwriter Tim Minchin, has directed the London Film Festival opener Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical for the screen. And once again, it is an absolute blast.

Emma Thompson, Stephen Graham, and Lashana Lynch passed through the London Film Festival on Wednesday, where they discussed their new film Matilda The Musical, directed by Matthew Warchus.

Naman Ramachandran The life and work of Hans Zimmer, the Oscar-winning composer of “The Lion King” and “Dune: Part One,” will be celebrated in BBC Two documentary “Hans Zimmer – Hollywood Rebel.” The 60-minute film looks back at Zimmer’s 40-year journey from post-war Germany to Hollywood royalty. It will seek to reveal the musical secrets of Zimmer over a career that includes scores for films “Rain Man,” “Pirates of The Caribbean,” “Gladiator,” “No Time To Die,” “The Dark Knight,” “Batman Begins” and “The Thin Red Line” plus the music he created for BBC Studios Natural History films, including “Planet Earth II,” “Blue Planet II” and “Frozen Planet II.”

Tricia Tuttle will step down as BFI Festivals Director following this year’s London Film Festival, the BFI announced today. She will remain in post through to early 2023 while the BFI recruits a replacement. 

Guy Lodge Film Critic A total of 164 feature films will play at this year’s London Film Festival, alongside an abundance of shorts, TV series and an expanded program of XR (extended reality) works — and that’s in a comparatively slimmed-down era of curation for a public-facing festival that has long aimed to bring the best of the global festival circuit to non-traveling cinephiles. What has definitely grown is the LFF’s national reach: In what fest director Tricia Tuttle terms the festival’s “new normal” format after a few years of structural shifts and COVID-era adjustments, the capital-centered event will also be hosting screenings in 10 other cities around the U.K., from Manchester to Edinburgh to Belfast — sealing its status as the country’s preeminent film festival. A digital program of up to 20 titles will also be made available for online viewing, while short films and screen talks will be free to stream on the BFI Player platform: “It’s really important to us to get to those places we can’t reach with our venue partnerships,” says Tuttle, adding that their priority is “to give new audiences a taste of what the festival is like.”

Manori Ravindran International Editor With a week to go before kicking off the London Film Festival, the British Film Institute gathered the U.K.’s titans of cinema to toast the return of moviegoing and celebrate the next generation of filmmakers. The BFI’s Luminous gala took place at the swanky Londoner hotel in Leicester Square on Thursday evening (Sept. 29), where Variety had exclusive access. The event, which also featured the BFI and Chanel’s inaugural Filmmaker Awards, used to be a biannual bash, but was the first of its kind since the pandemic. The starry dinner convened around 400 guests, including actors Daisy Ridley, Ncuti Gatwa, Morfydd Clark, Rebel Wilson, Lily James, Malachi Kirby, Dame Joan Collins and Eddie Redmayne; directors Edgar Wright, Gurinder Chadha, Steve McQueen and Terry Gilliam; and producers including Working Title co-founder Eric Fellner, screenwriter Jemima Khan, and former BBC drama commissioner-turned-A24 international boss Piers Wenger.

won the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service in 2018 for breaking the story of Harvey Weinstein’s decades of sexual abuse allegations in their explosive reporting with the New York Times.Mulligan will play the role of Twohey in the upcoming “She Said” alongside Zoe Kazan, who will play Kantor. First breaking out in “An Education,” the twice Oscar-nominated Mulligan has starred in “Promising Young Woman” and “Spaceman,” and has been involved in initiatives like the Alzheimer’s Society, the Society’s Dementia Awareness Week and serves as an ambassador for War Child, an organization that aids children affected by conflict.

Brendan Fraser will be honored at this year’s Santa Barbara International Film Festival for his decades’ worth of contributions to American cinema. Going into the 38th annual festival, he is the 2023 recipient of its American Riviera Award. Fraser will attend the event on Feb.

Gearing up for phase two of the Oscar season even before we have even scratched the surfaces of phase one, the Santa Barbara Film Festival said Tuesday that The Whale star Brendan Fraser will be the recipient of its American Riviera Award on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2023.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Documentary festival IDFA will host the international premieres of Martin Scorsese and David Tedeschi’s music film “Personality Crisis: One Night Only” and Barbara Kopple’s “Gumbo Coalition” as part of its Masters program, as well as the world premiere of Coco Schrijber’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” The selection includes the work of several renowned directors who have reinvented their cinematic language. Patricio Guzmán breaks from his poetic approach to adopt a more direct, political form of filmmaking with “My Imaginary Country,” centering on the October 2019 protests in Santiago. Gianfranco Rosi directs his first archive-based film “In viaggio,” which sees Pope Francis’ journeys as a map of the human condition. Jørgen Leth and Andreas Koefoed co-direct a film together for the first time with “Music for Black Pigeons,” a reflection on aging through jazz music, and Ruth Beckermann’s “Mutzenbacher” takes a look at a controversial erotic novel through an elaborate casting call.

The BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its full industry lineup, which will include keynote conversations with the Italian producer and CEO of Apartment Pictures Lorenzo Mieli and Fionnuala Jamison of MK2 Films.