BFI London Film Festival Announces 2026 Official Competition
The 70th BFI London Film Festival has announced the ten films competing for its Best Film Award, with the winner to be revealed on 18 October.
The Official Competition brings together an international selection of filmmakers, spanning fiction and documentary and representing ten countries.
The selection includes new work from established international directors including Hirokazu Kore-eda, Sergei Loznitsa, Carol Morley and Lili Horvát, alongside filmmakers making their mark on the festival with new features.
The Official Competition films will screen at BFI Southbank during the festival.
This year’s London film festival runs from the 8th until the 18th October : These are the Films is the main competition:
7 MILES OUT
UK | Dir. Carol Morley
Carol Morley (Dreams of a Life, The Falling) adapts her semi-autobiographical novel about adolescence in Stockport during the 1970s and ’80s. Anne struggles with the suicide of her beloved father while finding escape in the emerging punk and new-wave scene. An intimate portrait of grief, friendship, creativity and the difficult passage into adulthood.
ACT 3
Ireland/UK | Dirs. Christine Molloy & Joe Lawlor
Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s latest cinematic essay explores ageing, artistic collaboration, family history and memory. Their investigation into pioneering artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore becomes increasingly personal as parallels emerge with their own decades-long relationship.
GLAXO
Brazil/Argentina | Dir. Benjamín Naishtat
An act of betrayal sets four young friends on a dangerous course in provincial Argentina. When a retired police officer and his glamorous young wife arrive, tensions escalate against a backdrop of political instability and the arrival of two American Mormon missionaries. A taut period noir with a score by Shigeru Umebayashi.
IMPERIUM
Germany/France/Italy/Lithuania | Dir. Sergei Loznitsa
Using archival footage shot by Italian cameramen in the Soviet Union during the early 1970s, Sergei Loznitsa challenges the official Soviet image of the era. Moving from Moscow into the wider territories of the USSR, the film examines ethnicity, power, colonialism and Russia’s enduring imperial ambitions.
KETTICÈ
Italy | Dir. Giovanni Tortorici
Following Diciannove (LFF 2024), Giovanni Tortorici returns with a coming-of-age story set in early-2000s Palermo. Sixteen-year-old Giulio drifts through school and family life without enthusiasm, frustrated by expectations placed upon him. Monica Bellucci plays his exasperated mother in a film about adolescence, generational tensions and the desire to escape.
LOOK BACK
Japan | Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
Two aspiring manga artists form an unlikely friendship when talented Fujino meets the shy Kyomoto, whose admiration for her work brings them together. As their collaboration attracts attention, their relationship is tested. Kore-eda explores friendship, artistic ambition and the creative process in this tender coming-of-age story.
MY NOTES ON MARS
Hungary/Austria | Dir. Lili Horvát
A scientist disappears while hiking with her husband, only to return weeks later with no memory of her life — except her research into Mars. Lili Horvát’s suspenseful domestic drama follows the couple as they attempt to rebuild their relationship while confronting the unsettling question of how well we can ever know another person.
THE DIFFICULT BRIDE
France/Bangladesh/Portugal/Norway/Germany | Dir. Rubaiyat Hossain
As her wedding approaches, Zaineen is subjected to increasingly oppressive beauty rituals designed to make her thinner, fairer and more conventionally bridal. Her resistance manifests physically as strange changes and supernatural omens emerge. Rubaiyat Hossain turns the traditional fairytale wedding into a sharp feminist body-horror tale about patriarchy and control.
THE IDIOT(S)
UK/Poland | Dirs. Małgorzata Szumowska & Michał Englert
Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn star as Anna and Fyodor Dostoevsky in this irreverent period drama. Living in self-exile in Germany, the gambling- and alcohol-dependent writer struggles to finish his next novel. Anna battles to keep him focused and save them from destitution. A witty challenge to the myth of the male genius, and a love story about the woman behind him.
WOMAN UNKNOWN
Denmark/Latvia/Sweden | Dir. May el-Toukhy
Marie, a young nanny and housemaid, is preparing to marry her wealthy, older employer, Christian. But her hidden past threatens the respectable life she is building. During the Second World War she had an intimate relationship with a German soldier; now, in the chaos of post-war society, she will do whatever it takes to protect her new status.
BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2026