In this blog, the ICO team highlight some of their favourite titles from this year’s 67th BFI London Film Festival, including new work by some familiar faces, as well as several exciting debuts.
Nicole Davis, BFI NETWORK Talent Executive
Slow (dir. Marija Kavtaradzė)
Elena, a contemporary dancer, begins a romance with Dovydas, a sign language translator, in this sensual and sublime Lithuanian drama from writer-director Marija Kavtaradzė. But when Dovydas informs Elena he is asexual, they must figure out if removing a physical component of their relationship means that something will always be missing.
With a complex and fascinating question at its core, Slow compassionately explores how a couple creates intimacy and security within the context of their relationship, aided by the attractive pairing of Greta Grinevičiūtė and Kęstutis Cicėnas, who spark and smolder on screen. Interspersed with scenes of choreography and interpretation that seem to signal the different ways Elena and Dovydas express themselves — not always to each other — this is a rich, moving and visually luxurious piece of filmmaking, reminiscent of recent relationship dramas The Worst Person in the World and Compartment No. 6.
Slow will be released in the UK by Conic.
Tótem (dir. Lila Avilés)
Lila Avilés returned to LFF, after her precise and haunting debut The Chambermaid, with a very different offering in the form of Tótem. Where The Chambermaid was spare and austere, Tótem is a chaotic and kaleidoscopic portrait of a family in turmoil, often seen through the eyes of 7-year-old Sol. Sol’s father Tona is about to turn 27, but he is also gravely ill and likely won’t see another birthday. As the family prepares to throw him a party, Sol grapples with feelings of grief and confusion. If that sounds painfully sombre, Avilés manages to mine humour and absurdity from the occasion, as animals and children populate the frame, creating a picture of life and vitality, even in the presence of death.
Tótem will be released by New Wave Films on 1 December 2023.
Patrick Stewart, Marketing & Communications Manager
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (dir. Elene Naveriani)
Georgian-language village-life drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry features an outstanding performance from Eka Chavleishvili (who sadly was unable to join the LFF screening due to bureaucratic obstacles to getting a UK visa) as oddball shopowner Etero facing into the late middle age. Stilted by a difficult youth, lack of real opportunity and beset with judgemental neighbours, her life seems to be frozen until a memorable shock at the very start of the film acts as a catalyst for a gentle thaw that sees both new possibilities emerge and serious fears be confronted. As sharp-eyed as the titular blackbird, staunchly individual but perhaps her own worst enemy at times, it’s a beautifully told tale with more than enough twists and wryly comic moments to balance out director Elene Naveriani’s graceful but slower approach to storytelling.
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry will be released in the UK by New Wave Films.
Mikaela Smith, Film Programmer
Poor Things (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Wild, uncompromising and incredibly accomplished, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest foray into the absurd doesn’t disappoint. Emma Stone gives an unreasonably good performance as Bella Baxter, who has been re-animated after death with an infant’s brain. We see her discovering the delights and horrors of the world in real-time, with a relentless curiosity and brazen taste for absolutely everything. It’s an over-the-top Frankenstein-esque gothic horror, meets feminist fable, meets steampunk fantasy land. It’s also, oftentimes, incredibly difficult. Unafraid to challenge its audience by wading through the murkier depths of gender, agency and sexual politics. It’s sticky, willing to sit and stare at uncomfortable things for almost too long. But if you’re willing to look, it offers fruitful rewards.
Poor Things will be released by Disney on 12 January 2024.
Hoard (dir. Luna Carmoon)
I remember seeing Luna Carmoon’s short film Shagbands back in 2020. A heady, intoxicating blend of nostalgia, teenage girlhood, magical realism and then, a gut punch of horror. It thrilled me. Her vision of female adolescence — full of intrigue, curiosity, and a distinct undercurrent of threat — felt real and familiar, but was told with a potent dreamlike, fantasy quality. Hoard, in that case, is a natural follow-up. It centres on Maria in two stages of her life, firstly as a 10-year-old, living in a chaotic — equal parts charming and unsettling — home with her mother who likes to keep everything, squirrelling bits and bobs in every corner of the house. We meet Maria again years later, in her late teens, no longer living at home, dealing with the fallout of a reflectively traumatic childhood, and a messy coming-of-age. I could write more about it, but to explain it further would be to ruin it. It’s full of surprises, jolting you back and forth, never letting you settle. For a debut, it’s incredibly bold and unwieldy, enough that even when it doesn’t quite land, it’s so worth the journey. It is at once delirious, delicious, and utterly disgusting. I loved it.
Hoard will be released in the UK by Vertigo Releasing.
James Calver, Projects & Events Officer
Saltburn (dir. Emerald Fennell)
Having spent a lot of this year wandering through a selection of amazing but tough-to-watch cinema, I was ecstatic to find something that was pure joy on screen.
Saltburn marks the sophomore venture for Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell and will prove infinitely less divisive than her debut feature. Fresh off his Oscar nod for The Banshees of Inisherin, Barry Keoghan takes centre stage as Oliver, a quiet student who becomes ensnared in the aristocratic world of the charming Felix (played by Jacob Elordi).
Ultimately it boils down to a modern take on Brideshead Revisited, there is a lack of depth within this well-trodden eat-the-rich tale, but there’s so much to enjoy here that I didn’t really care. Keoghan is bonkers in all the best ways. Jacob Elordi and fictional siblings Alison Oliver and Archie Madekwe all play their spoilt-brat roles to perfection, and Rosamund Pike’s turn as a blissfully unaware aristocratic mum was joyous. Whilst it somewhat unnecessarily spoon-feeds the twists, it often does so in such a comic way you can’t help but either laugh or roll your eyes, much like the best possible dad joke.
Whilst the pacing comes to an abrupt halt towards the end of the third act, the final scene is truly something to behold and perfectly ends the film – it’s utter nonsense but you can’t stop watching. Also, if you’re a fan of Barry Keoghan, I recommend watching this on the biggest screen possible from the front row.
Saltburn will be released by Warner Bros. on 17 November 2023.
Selina Robertson, Senior Programmer, Special Projects
Baltimore (dir. Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor)
Contrary to what you might think, Baltimore is not about Maryland in the US, infamous home to the Pope of Trash John Walters. Yet it is not hard to imagine Baltimore’s Irish co-directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor (aka The Desperate Optimists) cracking a good joke on account of this mistaken identity. Molloy and Lawlor’s latest film, an intensely realised art-heist, essayistic thriller set in the 1970s, is a notable gear change in their beguiling body of work that mines ideas around identity and duality. Imogen Poots shines as real-life English aristocrat Rose Dugdale, an inquisitive, angry young woman who on encountering the Women’s Liberation Movement and Marxism whilst studying at Oxford, decides to fight for Irish republicanism, eventually seeing her join the IRA.
The story takes place over the course of a few days in Ireland in 1974, when Dugdale and three IRA comrades carry out a daring art raid in which 19 priceless masterpieces are stolen (including a Vermeer and a Goya) in an effort to support the IRA’s armed struggle. The apex of the film pivots, post raid, in a remote country cottage where three of the group hide out with the plan to continue onto Baltimore, a safe house in County Cork. It is here that Molloy and Lawlor present us with the paradoxes of liberation politics and armed struggle, its violence, righteousness and consequences, sensitively centred around Dugdale’s search for her identity and purpose. Added to the mix are discussions about art, society and ways of seeing that the critic John Berger would appreciate.
The key cast, Poots, Dermot Crowley, Jack Meade, Lewis Brophy and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor are equally outstanding, as is the percussive, dissonant film score by Stephen McKeon and Tom Comerford’s astute cinematography. There has been a recent resurgence in interest in Rose Dugdale’s life (who is still alive and living in Ireland) – a couple of published books and apparently a television series is in development. Catch Molloy and Lawlor’s penetrating and strange encounter with Dugdale now, before the complexities of her life get flattened out for a more mainstream market.
Bankside Films is handling international sales. So far, details of UK distribution have not been announced.
Occupied City (dir. Steve McQueen)
In a recent interview on his new documentary about Amsterdam and its occupation by the Nazi’s during the Second World War, Steve McQueen remarked, ‘I think that’s what [Occupied City] is about; it was a rallying cry as a warning of pending dangers of the right, but also the fact that if you don’t do anything, nothing happens. So, it is a call to arms, if anything’. Based on his wife, the Dutch author, cultural critic and filmmaker Bianca Stigter’s 2019 book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945, McQueen has given us an immense, engrossing, profoundly moving cinematic journey into Amsterdam’s haunted wartime past, told in the light of the present.
Over the course of 4 hours and 22 minutes (heads up, there is a 15-minute interval), narrator Melanie Hyams cooly relays the hidden histories of Amsterdam’s past whilst real-life 4K footage of Amsterdam during 2019 and 2022 unfolds on screen. It is the details of these experiences, the dehumanisation of people and the nature of fascism that has the most impact. For instance, hearing the figure of 60,000 Jewish people living in Amsterdam killed during the war, or learning about what happened to the city’s sex workers, to the small Chinese community or the Dutch collaborators and resistance workers. This is a painful history that, like much of the city’s buildings, as the narrator informs, has been ‘demolished’.
Yet in this forgetting, the film recuperates new histories, diverging from the mono-narrative of Anne Frank, to restore a fuller account of Amsterdam under Nazi occupation, one that might be closer aligned to Claude Lanzmann’s seminal documentary Shoah. It is a massive achievement, a screening experience that deserves a commitment, as we bear witness to a moment in Amsterdam’s history that has been kept for too long in the shadows.
Occupied City will be released in the UK by Modern Films.
Isabel Moir, Film Programmer
Gasoline Rainbow (dir. Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross)
One of my cinema highlights from the past few years was Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, which I was very lucky to see at the Berlinale International Film Festival in February 2020. Therefore I was very excited to see what the Ross brothers would do next. Set over a summer, Gasoline Rainbow follows a group of teenagers who embark on one last adventure, a road trip across America, desperately searching for the ‘Party at the End of the World’.
Following a similar filmmaking technique as their previous feature, Gasoline Rainbow is semi-improvised, creating loosely composed scenarios with a group of non-actors. This spontaneous approach captures the freewheeling nature of youthful angst and restlessness and their hunger to escape where they came from, explore their unfamiliar surroundings and gain new experiences. Along the way, they encounter a range of friendly strangers and outsiders from the fringes of the American West who open them up to new ways of navigating the world. Gasoline Rainbow beautifully observes these interactions and the friendships amongst the group with a sense of curiosity and hope as they begin the next chapter of their lives after graduating high school. Including handheld cameras and voiceovers from the young cast, the film creates a lovingly authentic portrait of American youth, at times reminding me of past releases such as War Pony and All This Panic. If marketed correctly, the film has great potential to reach young audiences.
The Match Factory is handling international sales. So far, details of UK distribution have not been announced.
Fancy Dance (dir. Erica Tremblay)
This year at LFF, audiences were very lucky to be treated to two performances by Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon and Fancy Dance. First premiering at Sundance Film Festival in January, Fancy Dance is the feature debut from filmmaker Erica Tremblay. Set on the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation in Oklahoma, we follow Jax (Lily Gladstone) who is trying to track down her missing sister whilst also protecting her niece Roky (newcomer Isabel Deroy-Olson), who is set on attending the powwow to perform the traditional Mother and daughter dance.
Brilliantly acted, the two central performances are at the heart of the film as they go on the road and attempt to navigate this desperate situation. Over the course of this journey, their search gradually turns into a deeper investigation as they find out what happened to Jax’s sister, showcasing the treatment of indigenous women and the indifference of the world beyond the reservation. Marking Erica Tremblay as a filmmaker to watch, her engaging debut feature cleverly plays with audiences expectations and elements of the crime genre as it powerfully explores community and the sisterhood bond between the two leads.
Cercamon is handling international sales. So far, details of UK distribution have not been announced.
Thanks for reading! We aim to update this article with details of UK distribution for each film as they become available. Please get in touch if you have any news regarding the distribution rights for any titles referenced here.