The films I got tickets for – BFI London Film Festival 2017

Welcome to our article on the BFI London Film Festival 2017! We are excited to share our picks of the must-see films at this prestigious event. This year’s festival promises to showcase a wide range of films from around the world, including exciting new releases and classic masterpieces. Whether you are a seasoned film enthusiast or a casual movie-goer, there is something for everyone at this festival. So sit back, relax, and let us guide you through the highlights of this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

Here is the line up

Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time

An urgent and powerful documentary, shot in a detention centre where asylum seekers trying to reach Australian shores are indefinitely detained. Secretly shot on a mobile phone by Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani while detained on Manus, in Papua New Guinea, the film is a collaboration with Dutch-Iranian filmmaker Arash Kamali Sarvestani. Boochani recounts, via the testimonies of fellow inmates, the abuse and violence inflicted and the precarious state of limbo they find themselves in. Chauka, the name of the dreaded solitary confinement unit within the detention centre, was originally the name of a beautiful bird and symbol of the Manus Island.

Mutafukaz

Loser pizza-delivery boy Angelino and his flaming-headed buddy Vinz live in a Californian ghetto called Dark Meat City. It’s a cockroach-infested hell hole but it’s home and orphan Angelino survives by keeping his big round head down. However, after clocking a mysterious girl Angelino starts seeing odd things about certain people on the street. And this They Live-style revelation sends him on the run from some shadowy square-jawed men in black. Pop culture references abound, from Batman and Ren and Stimpy to Grand Theft Auto. But nothing comes close to the high levels of WTF-ness on display here.

Blade Of The Immortal

Blade of the Immortal is a film directed by the renowned Japanese filmmaker, Miike Takashi. It marks a significant milestone in his career as his 100th movie. The film is an adaptation of the popular manga series by Hiroaki Samura, which has a large following in Japan and around the world.

The story revolves around a skilled samurai named Manji, who is cursed with eternal life. Manji has seen many years of violence and bloodshed, and has grown tired of living with the burden of his immortality. However, his life takes an unexpected turn when he meets a young girl named Rin, who seeks revenge for the murder of her parents at the hands of a group of ruthless warriors.

Let the Corpses Tan

The directors of neo-giallo classics Amer and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears turn to Jean-Patrick Manchette’s crime novel Laissez Bronzer les Cadavres! for their latest inspiration. Beneath the unforgiving heat of the blazing Mediterranean sun, a woman residing in a remote villa seeks artistic inspiration. Her solitude is shattered when a gang of criminals in possession of 250kg of stolen gold arrive in search of a hideout, with the cops in hot pursuit.

Dead the Ends

Trailer – Dead the Ends (2017) from Benedict Seymour on Vimeo.

Bookended by the 2011 London riots, Seymour’s dramatically, politically urgent new film, making its world premiere at the LFF, retells the story of Chris Marker’s La Jetée. A man has been sent back into the past as a way of rescuing the future, his tale told by way of the Narrator who riffs on familiar film dialogue and contemporary references – unpicking the political implications of his journey and our retro obsessions. A collage, narrative, essay film hybrid, Dead the Ends, plunders some fifty years of cinema – including dystopian sci-fi – and uses emojis and gifs as ways of exploring the undercurrents of historical and current visual language, as well as present entrenched, systemic inequality.

The Florida Project

That The Little Rascals is an inspiration for Sean Baker’s magical, magnificent and madcap follow-up to Tangerine (LFF2015) makes perfect sense when you see this story of childhood, set against the backdrop of America’s failed economy. Six-year-old Moonee (the astonishingly good Brooklynn Kimberly Prince) lives with her mother and other castaways from the American dream in a candy-floss-coloured roadside motel in Orlando. Disney World is just up the road, but their budget dayglow home is no plush hotel resort. Halley, Moonee’s mother, is only just an adult herself. More of an incorrigible older sister than a parent, she gets a kick out of juvenile hijinks, with utter disregard for their consequences.

I’m soooooo looking forward to this