The 69th BFI London Film Festival (8–19 October) arrives with a line-up that runs from satire to spectacle to discovery. The lineup includes three films we’ve already reviewed at WhitlockAndPope: Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice, Annapurna Sriram’s Fucktoys, and Paolo Strippoli’s The Holy Boy. Together they show the range of what this year’s festival is about — savage, gleeful, and haunted.
No Other Choice
In our Venice review we wrote: “Park at his sharpest — a work of savage control that lets fury seep through the cracks.” It follows a laid-off factory worker who concludes he has no other choice but murder, and from that blunt premise Park builds a dreamlike thriller that mixes black humour with rage at a system that eats its own. Lee Byung-hun anchors the film, but it’s Park’s balance of precision and unruliness that makes it one of the year’s defining statements.
Fucktoys
At Fantasia we called it “a gleeful slice of queer bubblegum grindhouse with the spirit of John Waters imbued all the way through it.” Annapurna Sriram’s debut, shot on 16 mm, gleams with candy-coloured perversity and queer joy. It toys with bad taste but never loses its core of defiance. Destined for cult status, it’s set for a prime late-night slot at LFF.
Bugonia
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone return with this punchy remake of 2003 Korean cult gem Save The Green Planet. Jesse Plemons and Aiden Delbis play two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a medical company CEO (Stone) when Plemons becomes convinced that she’s an alien spearheading a takeover of Earth. Plemons and Stone deliver fireworks as they go at it head to head in this dark comedy about truth and faith that’s a rare remake that surpasses the original.
Rose of Nevada
The past and present overlap to unnerving effect in Rose of Nevada, which sees fishing crewmen George MacKay and Callum Turner adrift in time in Cornwall, thanks to the influence of the titular vessel. If you’re on its wavelength, and able to sink into the vibes of Mark Jenkin’s Bolex cinematography, choppy editing and post-recorded dialogue, this is like a wonderful, haunting dream about the value and dangers of community. A folk horror without the explicit horror – although perhaps the obligations of human relations, irresistible machinations of time, and economic degradation of Cornwall are all horror enough.
The Holy Boy
In our Venice coverage we described it as “a grief-stricken teacher’s discovery of dark secrets in a remote village community — a Catholic cryptid tale of confession, revelation, and the value of guilt and pain.” The film carries echoes of Ari Aster while retaining a distinctly Italian pulse, turning grief and ritual into something folkloric and chilling.
Frankenstein
Beautiful gowns. And coffins.
Other highlights on our radar
Oliver Laxe’s Sirât brings desert survival to IMAX scale, turning endurance into myth. Julia Ducournau’s Alpha presses body horror into new territory. Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind is a sly 1970s heist story led by Josh O’Connor. Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident is taut and morally charged. And Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25 skewers bureaucracy with bleak wit.
Elsewhere in the programme: Lynne Ramsay adapts Die My Love with her characteristic intensity and Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet adapts Maggie O’Farrell with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. Further discoveries we look forward to making include Calle Málaga, Resurrection, Hedda, The Ice Tower, Honey Bunch and Reflection in a Dead Diamond.
Screen Talks
The talks programme brings heavyweight names: Yorgos Lanthimos, Daniel Day-Lewis (presenting his directorial debut Anemone), Richard Linklater, Jafar Panahi, Lynne Ramsay, Tessa Thompson and Chloé Zhao. Expect rare glimpses into craft and process.
In short…
No Other Choice, Fucktoys, Bugonia, Rose of Nevada and The Holy Boy are already WhitlockAndPope-certified essentials, each tested in festival screenings and reviewed on our pages. Based on what we’re hearing, we’ll be adding Sirât for scale and wonder, It Was Just an Accident and The Mastermind for their moral bite, Kontinental ’25 for its satirical sting, Alpha for its provocations and Resurrection for its dreamlike communion with the nature of film itself. The festival may dazzle with flashy red-carpet galas, but its real charge lies in these stranger, sharper works.
See you at the festival!
The 69th BFI London Film Festival runs from 8-19 October, with tickets on sale to BFI patrons from 8 September and then to BFI members and the wider public in the days after that.
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