70th BFI London Film Festival: 10 films at Southbank in October

The 70th BFI London Film Festival runs from Wednesday 7 October to Sunday 18 October 2026, with BFI Southbank hosting all 10 Official Competition titles. The venue is at Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XT, and the programme is aimed at film enthusiasts and general audiences interested in distinctive international filmmaking.

Tickets go on general sale on 17 September, while BFI Members can book earlier. The British Film Institute has not yet published screening times or ticket prices in its announcement, so visitors will need the full programme before finalising individual bookings.

Ten films competing for the Best Film Award

The Official Competition spans fiction, documentary, period drama, noir, body horror and coming-of-age stories. The BFI says filmmakers from 10 countries are represented, with established directors appearing alongside filmmakers entering the London competition for the first time.

Carol Morley’s 7 Miles Out draws on her semi-autobiographical novel about adolescence in Stockport during the 1970s and 1980s. Its central character, Ann, turns to friendship, creativity and the emerging new-wave punk movement while grieving her father’s death.

Irish-UK filmmaking duo Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor return with Act 3, a cinematic essay about ageing, memory and artistic partnerships. Their examination of artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore also finds parallels in the directors’ own relationship.

Benjamín Naishtat’s Glaxo is a period-noir thriller set in the Argentine city of Chivilcoy, where betrayal, political tension and the arrival of a retired police officer unsettle a group of friends. Sergei Loznitsa takes a documentary route in Imperium, using footage shot by Italian cameramen in the Soviet Union during the early 1970s to examine imperial power relations.

Set in early-2000s Palermo, Giovanni Tortorici’s Ketticè follows a dissatisfied 16-year-old facing family expectations and uncertainty about his future. Monica Bellucci plays his frustrated mother.

Hirokazu Koreeda’s Look Back follows two girls whose shared ambition to become manga artists develops into a creative partnership tested by recognition and difficult choices. My Notes on Mars, directed by Lili Horvát, centres on a missing scientist who returns home remembering only her research, forcing her and her husband to reconstruct their relationship.

Rubaiyat Hossain brings feminist body horror to the competition with The Difficult Bride, in which a Bangladeshi bride-to-be resists beauty rituals and social restrictions as supernatural changes take hold. Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s The Idiot(s) casts Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn as Anna and Fyodor Dostoevsky, presenting the writer’s gambling, drinking and procrastination through an acerbic period love story.

Completing the selection is May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown. Set amid post-war instability, it follows a young housemaid preparing to marry her wealthy employer while trying to conceal a relationship she had with a German soldier during the Second World War.

A competition with four confirmed milestones

Created in 2009, the Best Film Award recognises inventive and distinctive filmmaking. Previous recipients include Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, while the three most recent winners were Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist in 2023, Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail in 2024 and Lucrecia Martel’s Landmarks in 2025.

Festival director Kristy Matheson described the 2026 selection as an array of filmmaking styles, noting that the field includes both returning festival alumni and directors making their first appearance. The Best Film winner will be announced on Sunday 18 October.

Separate shortlists for the Grierson Award for Best Documentary, the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature and the Short Film Award are due in September. Jury members will also be announced later, while the festival’s Audience Awards return for 2026.

Programme reveal and ticket-sale dates

The complete festival programme will be released on Wednesday 2 September 2026. That announcement should provide the individual screening schedule needed to plan a visit to BFI Southbank.

General ticket sales begin on 17 September, with BFI Members receiving earlier booking access. The final competitive result follows on 18 October, the closing Sunday of the festival.

Source: British Film Institute News