The BFI’s London Film Festival (LFF) began, as the story goes, after one Sunday Times film critic at a dinner party in the 1950s lamented the dearth of film festivals in the capital. While this is not a complaint that can be made today, as the city is now home to Queer East, BFI Flare, and SXSW London, LFF is unique in offering a huge variety of titles. From blockbusters to indie UK premieres, it scoops up the heralded titles from the big five festivals (Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance) and delivers them to Picturehouse Central. If the plentiful programme of LFF’s 69th year is overwhelming, here are a few of the most unique films in the line-up to add to your watchlist.
What to see at BFI London Film Festival 2025
Still from The Chronology of Water
There are many award-worthy titles at any given film festival, but one director who is continuously snubbed despite his streak of highly acclaimed titles is Park Chan-Wook. His latest, No Other Choice, was widely loved at both Venice and TIFF, and expectations are high. The latest from the Korean director who has triumphed over every genre he sets his sights on – whether that be violent action films (Oldboy), erotic thrillers (The Handmaiden, Stoker) or subversive noirs (Decision to Leave) – returns with a satire of the working world in which one unemployed man seeks to eradicate the opposition by any means necessary. Combining Chan-Wook’s love of slapstick violence evocative of Looney Tunes cartoons, with his longtime cinematographer Woo-hyung Kim’s breathtaking use of dissolves, the film is as devastating as it is hilarious.
Among the many notable directors returning to this year’s programme, such as Claire Denis with The Fence, Mark Jenkin with Rose of Nevada, and Lynne Ramsay with Die My Love, there are those offering up their first feature films to the festival crowds. Kristen Stewart, who has demonstrated her cinematic taste since her YA-vampiric shoot to fame by working with the likes of, among others, Olivier Assayas, Rose Glass, and Pablo Larrain, has decided to take a different position on the film set. Here, she delivers a promising adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s addiction memoir with her directorial debut, The Chronology of Water.
Still from The Chronology of Water
Another debuting film landing in London is Blue Heron, directed by Sophy Rumvaria; it has already flown from Locarno to TIFF, gaining praise along the way. The film blends docufiction and autobiography to deliver a heady recounting of Rumvaria’s dysfunctional family’s migration from Hungary to Canada, with camcorder footage incorporated to give her parents’ reflections on their shared experience as well as the director’s own.
Still from Blue Heron
Boundary-defying seems to be the trend of the LFF 2025 programme, as Rumvaria is not alone in her experimentation with form. It is something seen in Left-Handed Girl by director Tsou Shih-Ching, co-written by Sean Baker, which uses iPhone camera to deliver a multigenerational story of three women’s return to Taipei. Also pushing the envelope is the experimental Chinese Bi Gan’s fourth film, Resurrection, which tests the imaginative and critical faculties of cinephiles, as each of its six chapters is devoted to a different cinematic era.
Still from Left-Handed Girl
Still from Resurrection
The Voice of Hind Rajab is the undeniably and horrifyingly true story of the murder of a five-year-old Palestinian girl during the ongoing genocide committed by Israel in Gaza; among its violent truths, the film expands the genre of docudrama. This pertinent reminder of the atrocities committed indiscriminately against Palestinians, by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania – twice Oscar-nominated, for The Man Who Sold His Skin and Four Daughters – is filled with painful suspense, dramatising events that have long been an everyday occurrence in Palestine. Hind Rajab’s story and infanticide are no rarity, but a nightmare reality for Gaza’s citizens. If any film on the LFF line-up deserves the moniker ‘must-see’, it is certainly The Voice of Hind Rajab.
The BFI London Film Festival 2025 runs 8 to 19 October
Still from The Voice of Hind Rajab
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