London Film Festival Director Kristy Matheson on ‘Saltburn,’ ‘Chicken Run 2’ and Mission to ‘Elevate U.K. Work to the Rest of the World’

Ellise Shafer Daniel Kaluuya world premiered his feature directorial debut, “The Kitchen,” at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday night, calling it “one of the best days of my life.” Kaluuya was on hand alongside his co-director Kibwe Tavares, producer Daniel Emmerson and several of the film’s actors, including “Top Boy” star Kane Robinson and newcomer Jedaiah Bannerman. Set in a dystopian London where all social housing has been banned, the film follows the residents of a community called the Kitchen who must fight to save their home. Speaking before the premiere, Kaluuya and Tavares explained that it’s taken nearly a decade to bring the Netflix film to the screen.

Ellise Shafer Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist” was named the best film in the official competition at this year’s BFI London Film Festival Awards. “Paradise Is Burning” by Mika Gustafson received the Sutherland Award in the first feature competition, while Lina Soualem’s “Bye Bye Tiberias” took home the Grierson Award in the documentary competition and “The Archive: Queer Nigerians” directed by Simisolaoluwa Akande won the short film competition. The jury presidents for this year’s awards included Amat Escalante (official competition), Raine Allen-Miller (first feature competition), Rubika Shah (documentary competition) and Charlotte Regan (short film competition).

Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi has clinched the best film award in the main official competition of the 67th London Film Festival with his latest feature, Evil Does Not Exist. 

EXCLUSIVE: The BFI London Film Festival closes Sunday with the world premiere of The Kitchen, a movie set in a dystopian London where an impoverished community is forced to fend for themselves in ramshackle apartment blocks. It marks the feature directorial debut of Oscar- winning actor Daniel Kaluuya and architect-turned-filmmaker Kibwe Tavares.

Kit Connor is enjoying a movie screening in London!

By any metric, 23 years is a long time to wait for a sequel to Chicken Run, even when you factor in the fiendishly slow gestation of Aardman Animations’ meticulous stop-motion process. Surprisingly, it still feels fresh, not just because of the spring-clean of the core voice cast — Mel Gibson being the highest-profile casualty, lopped off as the “lone free-ranger” Rocky — but because, in the hands of director Sam Fell and his writing team, Dawn of The Nugget delivers a cleverly modern kind of family entertainment that, while it works to a formula, never feels written by committee.

The Wrestler, directed by Bangladeshi-Canadian filmmaker Iqbal H. Chowdhury, and September 1923, from Japan’s Tatsuya Mori, picked up the New Currents Awards as Busan International Film Festival wrapped a busy 28th edition on October 13. 

Todd Haynes tells me that May December, his gripping melodrama starring Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore, “aggressively disturbs our moral moorings.”

The Libertines have returned with new single ‘Run Run Run’, as well as announcing details of their long-awaited fourth album ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ and some intimate Margate shows.Arriving on March 8, ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ is the long-mooted follow-up to 2015’s ‘Anthems For Doomed Youth’, with the first taster arriving in the form of launch single ‘Run Run Run’ – a classic yet subtly raucous Libs indie dancefloor anthem that sees them reflect on their standing after more than two decades, as Carl Barat begins: “It’s the lifelong project of a life on the lash”.“It’s about being trapped, and trying to escape your dismal life, a bit like the man in Bukowski’s Post Office,” said Barat of the track. “The worst thing for The Libertines would be to get stuck in a ‘Run-run-run’ rut – constantly trying to relive our past.”As well as sharing a name with Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel, the album’s title is in honour of the band’s Margate hotel, studio, restaurant and bar, The Albion Rooms – which is also depicted on the sleeve with a dramatic cast of characters from the world of faded seaside glamour.Consisting of 11 new tracks with songwriting credits shared among all four of the band, ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ was produced by Dimitri Tikovoï (The Horrors/Charli XCX/Becky Hill) and recorded at The Albion Rooms in just four weeks back in February and March of 2023, before being finished over a wee at La Ferme de Gestein Studios in Normandy.

It’s not every day that a filmmaker will rise up during an interview and recite Old Testament tales and sing out their favorite hymn. Well, hallelujah, brother Jeymes Samuel for spreading the gospel’s good news.

Cailee Spaeny dazzles while promoting her new film Priscilla at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival on Monday (October 9).

Dear Jassi arrives with echoes of Madonna’s 1989 hit “Dear Jessie” and its sugary promise of pink elephants and lemonade, but none of that turns out to be forthcoming in Tarsem Singh Dhandwar’s beautiful and brutal sixth feature. Instead, we have perhaps the most disturbing bait-and-switch since George Sluizer’s original iteration of The Vanishing, a Punjabi Juliet-meets-Romeo story that’s much harsher that any so-far-filmed version of West Side Story and a whole lot funnier. This dissonance takes a while to reveal itself, but when it does, the shock is visceral. The fact that almost everything is true is the killer blow, and the shockwave of that reverberates through the poignant final credits, a static shot that forces the audience, or maybe just simply dares them, to think about what they’ve just seen.  

The first week of the British Film Institute’s (BFI) London Film Festival wrapped this evening with a rapturous onstage Q&A session with writer-director Greta Gerwig.

Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall irrupted into a flurry of cheers this afternoon as filmmaker Martin Scorsese strolled on stage to take part in a career Q&A at the London Film Festival. 

Marta Balaga Warsaw Film Festival sets out to spotlight a slew of new local releases, from “Anxiety” by Sławomir Fabicki – Oscar-nominated for his short “A Man Thing” – to this year’s opener “Song of Goats” by Andrzej Jakimowski. The latter, featuring “EO” star Mateusz Kościukiewicz and set in Greece, will show characters living close to an active volcano, exploring the question of how “each of us is responsible for maintaining our fragile heritage,” says the director.

Jennifer Lee, Chief Creative Officer at Disney Animation, confirmed this afternoon that work has quietly begun on a third edition in the company’s Frozen film franchise during a keynote session at the London Film Festival (LFF). 

“Theatres and streamers need to coexist,” Bill Kramer, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts, concluded during a keynote this morning in London when quizzed on his opinions about the future of cinema.   

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-winning writer-director Emerald Fennell says that “if you’re prodding at something uncomfortable, that’s what movies are for.”

Sharareh Drury Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival GEMS has announced the full lineup for its 2023 festival, which will run from Nov. 2-5. The 10th edition of the fest will feature 26 films from 14 countries, all taking place at MDC’s Koubek Center and Silverspot Cinema.

Todd Haynes, who has appeared on behalf of his latest directing outing, May December, since its splashy debut in Cannes, turned to a new collaborator when promoting it at the New York Film Festival.