Competition films announced for BFI London Film Festival 2023
Anticipation is growing for the next iteration of the London Film Festival, which will begin on Wednesday, October 4th and run until Sunday, October 15th, in the English capital.
The films that are taking place in this year’s official competitions at the festival have just been announced with 11 movies that “showcase inspiring, inventive and distinctive international filmmaking” competing for the Best Film Award.
The newly announced movies include Christine Molloy’s Baltimore, Sudabeh Mortezai’s Europa, Evil Does Not Exist from the director of 2021’s Drive My Car Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Christos Nikou’s Fingernails and other features by the likes of Bill Ross, Kitty Green, Daniel Kokotajlo and Lukas Moodysson.
Meanwhile, 11 films will compete for the First Feature prize, including Black Dog by George Jaques, Earth Mama by Savanah Leaf and Hoard by Luna Carmoon. Eight films will challenge one another in the documentary competition, and a further ten will also be judged in the short film category.
In a statement, the BFI LFF director Kristy Matheson said, “The films represented in each of these competitive strands offer audiences an exciting array of UK and global filmmaking voices and cinematic forms”.
Matheson added, “We’re so proud to be showcasing each of these films and thank all the filmmaking teams in competition for sharing their films with us”.
Check out the full competition lineup for the BFI London Film Festival 2023 below.
Official Competition
· Baltimore (Christine Molloy, Joe Lawlor)
· Dear Jassi (Tarsem Singh Dhandwar)
· Europa (Sudabeh Mortezai)
· Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
· Fingernails (Christos Nikou)
· Gasoline Rainbow (Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross)
· I Am Sirat (Deepa Mehta, Sirat Taneja)
· The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green)
· Self Portrait: 47 KM 2020 (Zhang Mengqi)
· Starve Acre (Daniel Kokotajlo)
· Together 99 (Lukas Moodysson)
First Feature Competition
· Black Dog (George Jaques)
· Earth Mama (Savanah Leaf)
· Hoard (Luna Carmoon)
· In Camera (Naqqash Khalid)
· Mambar Pierrette (Rosine Mbakam)
· Paradise is Burning (Mika Gustafson)
· Penal Cordillera (Felipe Carmona)
· The Queen of My Dreams (Fawzia Mirza)
· Sky Peals (Moin Hussain)
· Tiger Stripes (Amanda Nell Eu)
· Tuesday (Daina O. Pusić)
Documentary Competition
· Bye Bye Tiberias (Lina Soualem)
· Celluloid Underground (Ehsan Khoshbakht)
· Chasing Chasing Amy (Sav Rodgers)
· A Common Sequence (Mary Helena Clark, Mike Gibisser)
· Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano (Cyril Aris)
· The Klezmer Project (Leandro Koch, Paloma Schachmann)
· Queendom (Agniia Galdanova)
· The Taste of Mango (Chloe Abrahams)
Short Film Competition
· The Archive: Queer Nigerians (Simisolaoluwa Akande)
· Area Boy (Iggy London)
· Boat People (Thao Lam, Kjell Boersma)
· Essex Girls (Yero Timi-Biu)
· The Goose’s Excuse (Mahdy Abo Bahat, Abdo Zin Eldin)
· Khabur (Nafis Fathollahzadeh)
· Onset (Anna Engelhardt, Mark Cinkevich)
· The Singer (Cora Bissett)
· The Walk (Michael Jobling)
· Wells of Despair (Sata Taas)
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