By Greg Dolgopolov
The 61st BFI London Film Festival concluded over the weekend with the announcement of the competition winners. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless picked up another award for the best film following on from success with the Jury Prize at Cannes and Best International Film at The Munich Film Festival.
Zvyagintsev won the award for best film at London Film Festival for the second time, having triumphed in 2014 with Leviathan. Released in Russia in June and having already played at a number of international film festivals as well as being nominated in September as Russia’s entry for the foreign-language Oscars, the film enjoyed two sold out screenings in London. Loveless is about a current Russian affliction – the lovelessness in many families that has been learnt over many decades. Zvyagintsev’s film is about a boy who vanishes while his parents undergo an acrimonious divorce – it is a story that telescopes out from one family to stand for a much larger social grief and a source of enormous sadness. It is a film that must be seen and discussed.
The Wound by South African John Trengove won the accolades for the director of the most original and imaginative first feature at LFF. It will be South Africa’s entry into the Foreign language Oscars. The Wound is a queer coming-of-age film set in rural South Africa that explores repressed sexuality within a secretive Xhosa rite of passage.
UK director, Lucy Cohen won the best documentary for The Kingdom of Us and Patrick Bresnan’s Rabbit Hunt (U.S.) won the award for best short film.
There was a solid increase in audience attendance up 8% to 208,900 UK-wide and 180,900 attendees in London. A massive achievement of the festival was that there were more than 900 international and British filmmakers invited to present their work and discuss it in Q&As and artists’ talks from across the LFF.
Directors in attendance included Noah Baumbach, Zhou Chen, Guillermo del Toro, David Fincher, Greta Gerwig, Alex Gibney, Terry Gilliam, Todd Haynes, Isaac Julien, Yorgos Lanthimos, Richard Linklater, Majid Majidi, Samuel Maoz, Martin McDonagh, Takashi Miike, François Ozon, Alexander Payne, Jennifer Peedom, Sally Potter, Lynne Ramsay, Dee Rees, Julian Rosefeldt, Barbet Schroeder, Andy Serkis, Warwick Thornton, John Trengove, Joachim Trier, Nora Twomey, Frederick Wiseman and Andrey Zvyagintsev.
The stars in attendance included Eric Bana, Annette Bening, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, Peter Dinklage, Colin Farrell, Martin Freeman, Bruno Ganz, Andrew Garfield, Jake Gyllenhaal, Woody Harrelson, Dustin Hoffman, Mathieu Kassovitz, Nicole Kidman, Frances McDormand, Cillian Murphy, Robert Pattinson, Joaquin Phoenix, Sam Rockwell, Adam Sandler, Kristin Scott Thomas, Timothy Spall, Emma Stone, Emma Thompson, Vince Vaughn and Christoph Waltz.
This level of engagement and glamour should not be lost on London despite the absolute overabundance of other events going on at the same time. The 61st edition was a successful event for both industry engagement and audience attendance and especially its impact on the future of the British film industry.
