The 64th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) in partnership with American Express closed this weekend with the Virtual LFF Audience Awards Ceremony and Francis Lee's highly anticipated biopic AMMONITE. The film, which is a fictionalised account of 19th century paleontologist Mary Anning starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, was preceded by a virtual introduction from Lee and the key cast. Through the Festival's partnership with distributor Lionsgate, AMMONITE went out to over 350 participating cinemas including BFI Southbank on Saturday 17th October and was the UK’s number one film that day with nearly 14k admissions.
The Festival opened with Steve McQueen's MANGROVE screening for free in 13 cinemas across the UK, and as a surprise late addition, also presented LOVERS ROCK at BFI Southbank on Sunday 18th October. Both films are from McQueen's Small Axe anthology for BBC1.
Over 12 days, this edition of the Festival was more accessible to audiences around the UK than ever, with 54 virtual premieres and 17 in-cinema premieres at BFI Southbank and 12 partner cinemas across the country. The Festival achieved audiences of over 141,253 for both physical and virtual screenings and XR programme attendances across public, education and press and industry screenings. The entire events and talks programme was delivered digitally for the first time ever and achieved over 174,285 engagements, with highlights including over 8K views of Tsai Ming-liang's Screen Talk, nearly 9K views of the Female Horror panel and 11K views of Riz Ahmed's Screen Talk across all platforms. All events were closed captioned and most included BSL interpretation. The Festival was also accessed virtually across the UK with over 40% coming from outside of London and from key cities with Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester seeing the biggest audiences.
