Tag: LFF 2026

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Features Live Action Movies

Possible Love
(Ganeunghan Sarang,
가능한 사랑)

Possible Love (L to R) Jeon Do-yeon as Mi-ok, Sul Kyung-gu as Ho-seok, Cho Yeo-jeong as Ye-ji in Possible Love Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2026

Possible Love (Ganeunghan Sarang, 가능한 사랑)

Director – Lee Chang Dong – 2026 – South Korea – Cert. 15 tbc – 164m

*****

A filmmaker working on a documentary about workers who’ve been laid off from their companies invites a worker’s wife and her husband to stay at her and her husband’s lavish coastal home – plays the London Film Festival (LFF) Sunday, 11th, Wednesday 14th, Sunday 18th October, then out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 23rd, the London Korean Film Festival on Tuesday, 3rd November, and is on Netflix from Friday, November 6th

The family of laid-off manual worker Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu from A Normal Family, Hur Jin-ho, 2023; Memoir of a Murderer, Won Shin-yeon, 2017; Peppermint Candy, Lee Chang Dong, 1999), his wife Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon from Beasts Clawing at Straws, Kim Yong-hoon, 2020; The Housemaid, Im Sang-soo, 2010) and their young son Cheol (Ha Lim) attend the funeral of one of Ho-seok’s fellow laid-off workmates. The reticent Ho-seok plans to stay in the car, but then goes in to the ceremony some time after the rest of his family and stays for the wake where, against what he’s promised his wife, he drinks, and as he starts to lose it, the pair get into an argument in public.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Ken Russell’s
The Devils

Ken Russell’s The Devils

Director – Ken Russell – 1971 – UK – Cert. 18 – 114m

*****

Restored. Remastered. Uncensored. Ken Russell’s notorious masterpiece finally reaches the big screen as he originally intended it to be seen – from the BFI London Film Festival 2026 which runs from Wednesday, October 7th to Sunday, October 18th in cinemas and on BFI Player, a new 35mm film print previews at BFI Southbank from Friday, October 23rd to Thursday 29th, and the film is out in UK and Ireland cinemas Friday, October 30th

NSFW.

To anyone who has seen the version of The Devils released theatrically in the UK with an X certificate in 1971, and put out on DVD by the BFI about ten years ago, watching this new version has about it the sensation of tasting forbidden fruit. (If you’ve never seen that version, all I can say is, start with this one: this is the version that Russell intended.) It’s perhaps instructive to look at what has changed, in other words those scenes which were considered by the BBFC and / or distributor Warner Bros. too shocking for inclusion back in the day.

Writing about the X certificate version on its DVD release, I noted that the four areas in which the film didn’t hold back were sex, religion, politics and torture.… Read the rest

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Animation Features Movies

Rogue Trooper

Rogue Trooper

Director – Duncan Jones – 2026 – UK – Cert. 15 tbc – 90m

*****

In the ongoing war between the North and the South, a small elite fighting unit is dropped onto the planet to clear the way for advancing forces – plays in the BFI London Film Festival 2026 which runs from Wednesday, October 7th to Sunday, October 18th in cinemas and on BFI Player

To the uninitiated, Rogue Trooper was one of the staple strips of groundbreaking British comic 2000 A.D. I mention this because to a critic coming in cold to the script, where main characters are confusingly named as numbers like 19 or 27, it’s a near-impossible film to synopsise.

Which is not to say that there isn’t a plot – there most definitely is one – more that it’s difficult to sort out what’s going on from the get-go. Although this is essentially science-fiction, it may also represent one of the strongest, on-the-ground portrayals of the fog of war the cinema has given us, with much of the battlefield action quite literally shrouded in a permanent haze of smoke from gunfire and explosions.

In addition, wider shots of views of the planet deliver impressive vistas which hark back to background painting effects in movies Forbidden Planet (Fred M.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Immersive Movies Shorts

Water Body

Water Body

Artists / Directors – Barney Steel, Ersin Han Ersin, Robin McNicholas – 2026 – UK – 25m

*****

A sensory experience centred around a moving image of the Thames as part of the global water network based on data sets – installation at St. Martin-in-the-Fields crypt 12:30-21:00 hours from Saturday, October 3rd to Sunday, October 18th as part of the London Film Festival’s LFF Expanded strand

A little waiting area shows a series of hand-crafted hangings by artist Elena Landinez showing various river tributaries before you enter the experience space proper. Before entering that space, you are alerted to the fact that the experience includes a total blackout section, also that there are pottery vessels handmade by ceramicist Ludmilla Balkis inside the space for you to take containing water that was cloud some two weeks ago, from which you can drink. Seating is mostly bean bags on the floor, and a single row of conventional seating at the back.

So I’m sitting on a seat at the back – or is it the back? – not really knowing what to expect. The lights go down: total blackout. All around me, sounds. (These started, I think, before the blackout, as if little rivulets of water were running somewhere.)… Read the rest