The ICO team shares some of their highlights from this year’s BFI London Film Festival, including new work from Lucrecia Martel, Vincho Nchogu, Park Chan-wook, Carla Simón and more.
Check back for further announcements of UK distributors and release dates.
Contents:
Exit 8 (dir. Genki Kawamura)
Straight Circle (dir. Oscar Hudson)
The Son and the Sea (dir. Stroma Cairns)
One Woman One Bra (dir. Vincho Nchogu)
Landmarks (Nuestra Tierra) (dir. Lucretia Martel)
Romeíra (dir. Carla Simón)
Fucktoys (dir. Annapurna Sriram)
No Other Choice (dir. Park Chan-wook)
Lurker (dir. Alex Russell)
Heather Bradshaw, Assistant Film Programmer
Exit 8 (dir. Genki Kawamura)
Based on the cult Japanese video game, Genki Kawamura’s live-action adaptation is an aptly tense and minimalist horror that surpasses its origins to offer a compelling social commentary, alongside an immersive, liminal environment of filmic paranoia. Kawamura’s Exit 8 is a masterclass in game adaptation, perfectly capturing the tension of its source text while turning a simple concept into a seamless critique of corporate Japan.
Beginning in a game-like first-person perspective, the film follows a man attempting to leave an endless subway passage to reach his pregnant ex-girlfriend. As he nears the edge of “Exit 8”, he discovers that this unassuming corridor is, in fact, a purgatory of his own making. The aim of the game, as it were, is to notice any variations in the space that differ from its original form—subtle “anomalies” that signal when the player should turn back to progress to the next level. These distortions can be anything from a slightly altered poster font to an infestation of rats with human facial features, ensuring the pacing is always tight and the audience perpetually on edge.
The game’s original focus on detecting inconsistencies in one’s surroundings is taken one step further in Kawamura’s satirical adaptation, where breaking through the confines of rise-and-grind culture becomes both the narrative goal and the film’s central act of rebellion. Through this extended emotional depth, Exit 8 sustains a palpable sense of dread while remaining true to the eerie stillness of the source material, crafting an intangible purgatory that mirrors the endless, suffocating loops of modern life.
Considering its source matter, it’s definitely a film tailored to fans of the original game, or indeed the wider gaming community, though its textural nuances help it appeal to a more arthouse-leaning horror audience, crossing over into psychological thriller and absurdism. It’s a film best suited to the packed, big screen experience and is sure to find its place in independent cinema programming.
Exit 8 will be released in the UK by Vertigo Releasing
Duncan Carson, Projects and Business Manager
Straight Circle (dir. Oscar Hudson)
This brilliant absurdist black comedy pushes itself significantly above the expectations of a British debut, showing visual flair and imaginative reach. A bravura opening sequence sets the scene: two nations are engaged in a pitched, unblinking ceasefire. Across a featureless expanse of flat desert, they each announce an offering of peace, loudly competing to herald their own magnamity. Two soldiers from either nation will man a shared border outpost.
We then cut to the scenario that will make up the majority of the film: Arthur and Warne (real-life identical twins Luke and Elliott Tittensor) must hold the line in a literal sense. Arthur is fanatical, greeting the dawn with a baroque salute, moisturising his perfectly smoothed head against the blistering noonday sun and finishing each day with a tuna can ration (which makes him compulsively gag). Warne is his opposite: content to work on his tan, let his flowing locks down and take the assignment for the meaningless symbolic grunt work it is. But the needlessly high stakes for Arthur start to unravel when a nomadic shepherd (Neil Maskell) turns up to flout the line in the sand they’re defending.
Straight Circle is a film that feels uncomfortably pertinent to an era in which war – and its mortal absurdities – is a daily presence for us all. Although inspired by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it has resonances that apply more broadly. To its credit, the abstraction and humour never trivialises the real-life stakes. Hudson trusts that there are better ways to get at truth than mere reality, putting him in a long line of deadpan existential filmmakers such as Elia Suleiman, Roy Andersson or Aki Kaurismäki. A visual feast – the dynamic use of split screen, as well as some evocative dream sequences means it will stand out for audiences in trailering – Hudson employs a mobile camera (honed in many years of producing skate videos) as well as the deliberate blocking audiences associate with Wes Anderson. People who enjoyed Ben Sharrock’s Limbo (which takes a similarly arch approach to topics that others approach with liberal piety) will enjoy, and an ambitious UK distributor should look closely at the audience opportunity it presents.
Straight Circle is awaiting UK distribution, and is currently with sales agent Film Constellation
The Son and the Sea (dir. Stroma Cairns)
Another British first-timer that left an impression was Stroma Cairns’ impressively unforced coming-of-age tale. Co-produced and co-written with her mother and starring her real-life brother, it’s a portrait of male friendship that is refreshingly convinced of the value of well-rounded characters over plot. Taking a Withnail & I ‘holiday by mistake’ when London becomes too hot for them, friends Jonah (Jonah West) and Lee (Stanley Brock) head up to his great aunt’s cabin in Aberdeenshire. There, they hook up with a pair of Deaf twins and their circle. While the friends’ connection frays, exposing truths that a change of location can’t hide, the gap across the linguistic and cultural barriers between Deaf and hearing cultures is shortened.
I’ve been doing a fair bit of thinking lately – while we distribute Uncommon Voices – about how we show working class life in this country. What hits home with this film is that it refuses to contrive false jeopardy from these characters’ situation, to paint these men as anything less than deeply bonded and occasionally very vulnerable. Cairns (and family!) were compelling advocates for the film at the Q&A, and while a significant chunk of business for the film would be north of the border, venues who put energy behind Urchin, Hoard and Name Me Lawand will find a compelling and honest portrait of working class lives. It’s also a good audience development opportunity with Deaf audiences, as it’s a rare film that treats BSL users as integrated into wider society.
The Son and the Sea is awaiting UK distribution, and is currently with sales agent MMM Film Sales
James Corr, Projects and Events Officer
One Woman One Bra (dir. Vincho Nchogu)
Set amidst the stunning countryside of southern Kenya, director Vincho Nchogu’s debut feature follows a crucial moment in the life of Star, an unmarried woman who risks losing her home due to her lack of kinship ties. She has no knowledge of her parents, having been taken in as an orphan at a young age. However, as land within her village is being sold, uncovering her lineage becomes her sole mission. Through this story, Nchogu simultaneously explores land rights, identity, and white saviourism, all within a brisk 78-minute runtime.
What resonates most across these themes is the fundamental desire for communities and individuals to tell their own stories. A particular scene highlights the audacity of a white cultural coloniser, who refuses to help Star and laments her efforts to find her true parents, despite having been shown photographs he had taken of them years earlier. Whether Star can uncover the mystery of her kinship becomes secondary to her pursuit of defining her own identity and story, free from the interference of a domineering power.
One Woman One Bra, much like its title, is provocative and hilarious, whilst also packing some gut-wrenching moments. The remarkable feat of fitting this array of emotions and themes into such a short runtime, with a cast and crew predominantly from the local community, is impressively executed. It was no surprise to see it win the Sutherland Award for best debut at the festival.
One Woman One Bra is awaiting UK distribution. Contact Kilastory for more details.
Selina Robertson, Film Programmer
Landmarks (Nuestra Tierra) (dir. Lucrecia Martel)
Argentinian auteur Lucrecia Martel’s highly anticipated, very impressive new film is one that she has been working on for over 15 years. In fact, during this time, Martel ambitiously directed Zama and spent, in her words, ‘two years in bed’ due to ill health. Landmarks stands as a departure from the rest of her filmography; technically, it is her first nonfiction work, but thematically, it shares much with her earlier projects. The film speaks to her political commitment and ongoing concerns with Argentina’s colonial past and its discontents.
In 2009, community leader and activist Javier Chocobar, a member of the indigenous Chuschagasta community, was shot in cold blood. Martel’s film chronicles the trial for his murder (which was filmed and uploaded to YouTube) by a white landowner and two former policemen. As ever, Martel’s interest lies on the periphery. To document, bear witness to the minutiae and absurdity of state-sanctioned colonial violence of a courtroom trial, whilst charting a history, through archival photographs and sounds, of the Chuschuagastas (notably the women) and their struggles against land dispossession. Martel’s use of a drone camera to capture the ‘land marks’ in dispute, is unique. Her drone, a technology of surveillance and war, becomes a spirit animal or talismanic technology of memory for the community, their collective memory and living histories. Winner of the Best Film Award at this LFF, once the film finds its UK distributor (which is imminent), a double bill with The Hour of the Furnaces is an absolute must!
Landmarks is awaiting UK distribution, and is currently with sales agent The Match Factory.
Romeíra (dir. Carla Simón)
Spanish writer/director Carla Simón gifts us the third in her trilogy of films that fearlessly interrogate her own family’s hidden histories. In the 1980s, Simón’s parents died when she was very young from AIDS, as a result of their drug use. Romeíra is a story about a family’s secrecy and shame; it’s about duty, class, identity, and the ghosts of the past. Set in 2004, 18-year-old orphan Marina, armed with a backpack and camcorder, sets off to meet her father’s wealthy family to get to the truth. “This film is a way of creating my own story”, Simón says, “and about being able to talk about where I come from”.
With her first two features, Summer 1993 and Alcarras, Simón again shows herself to be an exceptionally gifted naturalistic storyteller, particularly capturing the interior and exterior worlds of children and young people, as well as the unspoken, painful dynamics of families. With a shift away from her home in the Catalonian countryside, Simón focuses on her father’s family’s Galician roots, specifically the industrial city of Vigo, where her parents met and fell in love. Vigo, the Atlantic, and its people and cultures are beautifully captured by cinematographer Hélène Louvart. This is an intelligent, delicate tale of becoming and of a young woman finding her voice.
Romeíra will be distributed in the UK by Curzon.
Ella Marsh, Assistant Film Programmer
Fucktoys (dir. Annapurna Sriram)
Setting out to rid herself of a black magic curse, director and writer Annapurna Sriram also stars as AP, a sex worker traversing the always sunny, dystopian city of Trashtown with her non-binary old flame, Danni, on a spree of sex, mishaps, excess and even some soul searching. This intoxicating debut originally premiered at SXSW 2025 and won the Special Jury Award for a Multi-Hyphenate.
Sriram’s bold narrative is set against an alluringly crafted bubblegum aesthetic, successfully crafting a light-hearted yet measured, honest foray into the world of sex work and sexploitation. Through these characters’ up-and-downs, the risks sex workers take are brought to the forefront, but so too is the liberating, beautiful nature of it all, with AP and Danni always, ultimately, in control. On their search for the $1,000 and sacrificial lamb needed to break her curse, AP also continuously visits fortune tellers, even when spirituality comes at a price. As time goes on, the pair grow more desperate as they ping-pong between parties, clients, and debt, the film making an assured statement that capitalism is the real curse in a world that caters to the upper class. AP and Danni’s anxiety leads them down an increasingly treacherous path, but their unending hope and determination keep them anchored to their cause.
As a mixed-race woman, Sriram has attested to firsthand experiences of being stereotyped and fetishised within the film industry, and uses her debut to explore and break down prejudices. The film is also technically sumptuous, shot in mesmeric 16mm and played out against a beautiful globe-hopping soundtrack, sourced from old records, which marry together to invite us all to Trashtown. With echoes of John Waters, Jim Jarmusch, and the rebellious energy of the French New Wave, this is a hilarious, sad, and beautiful exploration of friendship, queer love, and mayhem that reimagines the classic tarot concept of a Fool’s Journey.
Fucktoys is awaiting UK distribution. Contact Trashtown Pictures for more details.
David Williams, Film Hub South East Officer
No Other Choice (dir. Park Chan-wook)
No Other Choice is the new film from Park Chan-wook, a legend of Korean cinema best known as the director of the modern classic revenge thriller Oldboy. Here, Park reteams with Lee Byung-hun, the star of his incredible 2000 breakout film Joint Security Area (who will also be familiar to audiences as the villain from Netflix’s hit show Squid Game).
In No Other Choice, Lee plays a man who has it all – a wife, two kids, two dogs, and his dream home – only to have his idyllic life jeopardised when he’s axed from his job in the paper industry. Determined not to lose everything he’s worked so hard for, he decides he’s going to aggressively pursue his next job opportunity – by taking out any and all rivals for the position. Hijinks ensue! One particular scene, set to the song ‘Red Dragonfly’ by Cho Yong Pil, absolutely refuses to leave my brain. A socially-conscious and darkly-comic thriller in the vein of Parasite, No Other Choice is an instant classic that will please fans of the auteur.
No Other Choice will be released in the UK by MUBI
Lurker (dir. Alex Russell)
Lurker is the debut feature from director Alex Russell, who’s made his way to the big screen by way of television’s The Bear, Beef and Dave. Set in LA’s music scene, Lurker features Archie Madekwe as a pop sensation from the UK who welcomes someone new into his entourage, unwittingly introducing a lot of drama. The new affiliate, played with an incredible soft menace by Théodore Pellerin, is secretly a superfan, and when his parasocial relationship becomes a real one, his intense obsession and desire for recognition spiral out of control. Shot on 16mm film, the movie looks great and, soundtracked by noteworthy Hip-Hop producer Kenny Beats, it sounds pretty great too. The director has said he wanted to make something akin to Nightcrawler, and you can definitely feel that film’s DNA. An interesting take on stan culture that young audiences will enjoy.
Lurker will be released in the UK by Universal
We aim to update this article with details of UK distribution for each film when they become available. Please get in touch if you have any news regarding the UK distribution rights for any titles referenced here.