BFI London Film Festival

The programme has been announced, the statistics digested, and now the good stuff starts, the chance to see and discuss the films in the Festival. Forty percent of the films in the LFF may have female directors, but who are all these women and what have they made?

An exciting trend across the Festival is the high number of feature films from first- and second-time directors, which gives the whole programme an energy, even more so when considering the bold directions this filmmaking is taking. Exemplifying this crop, Mirrah Foulkes’ extraordinary debut Judy & Punch slides feminist separatist politics into a thrilling fairytale romp, Mati Diop’s hotly anticipated Atlantics pushes forward genre to electrifying effect, and Rose Glass’s Scarborough-set saviour-complex stunner Saint Maud is set to make your jaw drop.

• Buy tickets for Judy & Punch
• Buy tickets for Atlantics
• Buy tickets for Saint Maud

These firestarters join established talents such as Haifaa Al-Mansour, Jessica Hausner, Marielle Heller, Agnieszka Holland, Kasi Lemmons, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Rebecca Zlotowski, who have each built a body of work that defies convention. And we are chuffed that visionaries Kim Longinotto and Céline Sciamma will be surveying their careers in dedicated Screen Talk events, while Nina Menkes, in town to present the restoration of underground classic Queen of Diamonds, will be giving a free performance of her barn-storming lecture ‘Sex & Power: The Visual Language of Oppression’.

• Buy tickets for the Screen Talk with Kim Longinotto
• Buy tickets for the Screen Talk with Céline Sciamma

Internationally, South Korea sees a particularly strong year for female-directed work, with four films in the Festival which consider the lives of girls and women in wildly divergent ways: House of Hummingbird, Heart, Maggie, and The House of Us. And looking beyond the auteurist fixation on directors, French cinematographers Hélène Louvart and Claire Mathon delight with two films apiece, while an especially exciting DoP talent to watch is Anna Valdez-Hanks who lenses both Hope Gap in bold inviting tones and Experimenta/Short Film Competition sci-fi In Vitro in stunning monochrome framing. While Rocks sees an abundance of female talent, including many heads of department, and an approach to collaborative screenwriting that puts the film’s charismatic Hackney schoolgirls at its core.

• Buy tickets for Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Buy tickets for Hope Gap
• Buy tickets for In Vitro
• Buy tickets for Rocks

The Treasures section includes the restoration world premiere of Unheimlich II: Astarti, which is a monumental 2k restoration of Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki’s Super8 opus, and in a break with our own tradition of only screening new restorations, the Treasures strand is screening a new print of Wanda Tuchok’s Finishing School – because really, who could resist a pre-Code girls’ school romp with Ginger Rogers, condemned by the Legion of Decency?

• Buy tickets for Unheimlich II: Astarti
• Buy tickets for Finishing School

And so below we present every film in the Festival with a female director. Many of these films have tickets still available, and there is a Discovery Pass for Female Filmmakers if you would like to try three films for £30. We hope you enjoy experiencing a multitude of perspectives over the 12 days of the Festival.

#21xoxo / short / Sine Ozbilge and Imge Ozbilge

37 Seconds / feature / Hikari

A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood / feature / Marielle Heller

A Family Affair / short / Florence Keith-Roach

A Line Was Drawn / short / Mairead McClean

A Love / short / Anne-Marie Copestake

A Thief’s Daughter / feature / Belén Funes

Abominable / feature / Jill Culton

Again Once Again / feature / Romina Paula

Algo-rhythm / short / Manu Luksch

An Easy Girl / feature / Rebecca Zlotowski

Antarctic Traces / short / Michaela Grill

Apart / short / Diana / Van Nguyen

Arab Blues / feature / Manele Labidi

Atlantics / feature / Mati Diop

Babyteeth / feature / Shannon Murphy

Be Still My Beating Heart / short / Ruth Paxton

Big Toast / short / Sacha Beeley

Black Bus Stop / short / Claudrena N. Harold and Kevin Jerome Everson

Bombay Rose / feature / Gitanjali Rao

Breast Friends / short / Caitlin Young

Child / short / Talia Zucker

Chlorine / short / Melissa Anastasi

Circus of Books / feature / Rachel Mason

Clemency / feature / Chinonye Chukwu

Cloudberries / short / Ruth Maclennan

Cunningham / feature / Alla Kovgan

Dawn in the Dark / short / Runyararo Mapfumo

Dawn of a New Gay / short / Rosie Gaunt-Mathieson

The Deathless Woman / feature / Roz Mortimer

Desrances / feature / Apolline Traoré

Duck Daze / short / Alison Piper

Duerrenwaid 8 / short / Kirsten Ines Geißer and Carina Ines Geißer

Eastern State / short / Talena Sanders

Entre / short / Ana Bárbara / Marinho Carolina Santos

Exchange Student / short / Natalie Nourigat

Eyes on the Road / short / Stefanie Kolk

The Father / feature / Kristina Grozeva and Peter Valchanov

Fi Dem II / short / Zinzi Minott

The Finishing School / feature / Wanda Tuchock and George Nichols Jr

The Friend / feature / Gabriela Cowperthwaite

Ghost Dance / short / Emilia Izquierdo

Good Heart / short / Evgeniya Jirkova

Grandad Was a Romantic / short / Maryam Mohajer

Harriet / feature / Kasi Lemmons

Heart / feature / Ga-young Jeong

Home Sweet Home / short / Maria Robertson

Honey Boy / feature / Alma Har’el

Hope Frozen / feature / Pailin Wedel

Hot and Tasty / short / Laura Hodkin

House of Hummingbird / feature / Bora Kim

The House of Us / feature / Ga-eun Yoon

Humblebrag / short / Sinéad O’Shea

I Am Mackenzie / short / Artemis Anastasiadou

I Am (Not) a Monster / feature / Nelly Ben Hayoun

I Die of Sadness Crying for You / feature / Nina Danino

If You Knew / short / Stroma Cairns

In Vitro / short / Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind

Instinct / feature / Halina Reijn

Instructions on How to Make a Film / short / Nazli Dincel

Jericho / short / Sarah Andrews and Aaron Hopwood

Judy & Punch / feature / Mirrah Foulkes

The Juniper Tree / feature / Nietzchka Keene

The Kingmaker / feature / Lauren Greenfield

Kitchen Beets / short / Bea Haut

Krabi, 2562 / feature / Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers

The Lamb / short / Nina Violić

Lingua Franca / feature / Isabel Sandoval

Little Joe / feature / Jessica Hausner

The Lodge / feature / Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala

Losing Pace / short / Naomi Soneye-Thomas

Lost Tune / short / Shahnaz Sattar

Love Me Tender / feature / Klaudia Reynicke

Love the Sinner / short / Jennifer Sheridan

Lucky Grandma / feature / Sasie Sealy

Made in Bangladesh / feature / Rubaiyat Hossain

Maggie / feature / Yi Ok-seop

Mahalia Melts in the Rain / short / Emilie Mannering and Carmine Pierre-Dufour

Make Up / feature / Claire Oakley

Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound / feature / Midge Costin

Maternal / feature / Maura Delpero

Mensch Maschine or Putting Parts Together / short / Adina Camhy

Miller & Son / short / Asher Jelinsky

Mother of Fire / short / Farah Al Qasimi

Mr. Jones / feature / Agnieszka Holland

Muybridge’s Disobedient Horses / short / Anna Vasof

Nest / short / Sonja Rohleder

Nocturnal / feature / Nathalie Biancheri

Noura’s Dream / feature / Hinde Boujemaa

Oh My Homeland / short / Stephanie Barber

Olla / short / Ariane Labed

Ordinary Love / feature / Lisa Barros and Glenn Leyburn

The Orphanage / feature / Shahrbanoo Sadat

The Other Lamb / feature / Malgorzata Szumowska

Our Sister / short / Rosie Westhoff

Overseas / feature / Sung-A Yoon

Pattaki / short / Everlane Moraes

Pelourinho: They Don’t Really Care about Us / short / Akosua Owusu

The Perfect Candidate / feature / Haifaa Al-Mansour

Perfect 10 / feature / Eva Riley

Portrait of a Lady on Fire / feature / Celine Sciamma

Queen of Diamonds / feature / Nina Menkes

Rain, Rain, Run Away / short / Clémentine Carrié

Rare Beasts / feature / Billie Piper

Rehearsal / short / Courtney Thérond

Relativity / feature / Mariko Minoguchi

Rocks / feature / Sarah Gavron

Roots / short / Hussina Raja

Rose Plays Julie / feature / Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor

Ruptures / feature / Brad Butler and Noor Afshan Mirza

Saint Maud / feature / Rose Glass

The Sasha / short / Maria Molina Peiró

Scales / feature / Shahad Ameen

The Sharks / feature / Lucía Garibaldi

Shooting the Mafia / feature / Kim Longinotto

Sister / feature / Svetla Tsotsorkova

The Sky Is Pink / feature / Shonali Bose

Sojourner / short / Cauleen Smith

Something in the Closet / short / Nosa Eke

Staff Only / feature / Neus Ballus

Stand Still / short / Isabella Wing-Davey

The Stroker / short / Pilvi Takala

Suicide by Sunlight / short / Nikyatu Jusu

System Crasher / feature / Nora Fingscheidt

Tertiary Sound / short / Solomia Dzhurovska and Luca Struijk

That Which Is to Come Is Just a Promise / short / Flatform

They / short / Louisa Rechenbach

Transnistra / feature / Anna Eborn

The Trap / short / Lena Headey

Trouble / feature / Mariah Garnett

Under Covers / short / Michaela Olsen

Unheimlich II: Astarti / feature / Katerina Maria and Klonaris Thomadaki

Us Among the Stones / feature / Dictynna Hood

Video Home System / short / Sharlene Bamboat

Walking with Shadows / feature / Aoife O’Kelly

Watermelon Juice / short / Irene Moray

What Do You Know about the Water and the Moon / short / Jian Luo

White Girl / short / Nadia Latif

White Riot / feature / Rubika Shah