65th BFI London Film Festival, 6th - 17th October 2021
The BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express has today announced a new structure for this year's edition. Alongside flagship venue BFI Southbank, a new partnership with the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall will make London's Southbank the heart of the film festival experience, with this iconic cultural neighbour hosting red carpet gala premieres. Other London venue partners will return with the West End remaining a key hub for the Festival's film programme. This year's LFF will bring back some of the most popular elements of 2020’s hugely successful hybrid edition that made it the most accessible Festival ever, with a selected programme available at UK-wide cinema partners and a broad range of films from the programme screening on BFI Player alongside the in-cinema premieres. Again in 2021, special events and Screen Talks will be available digitally to audiences internationally.
In 2020, LFF announced an expansion of public programming to include artists working across different forms - from Series television to VR - with a successful first edition of our LFF Expanded strand of XR and Immersive Art delivered digitally for the hybrid LFF 2020. LFF Expanded will once again be available across the UK and internationally via our virtual exhibition space, The Expanse, with the details of a major physical exhibition in London to be announced soon.
Following the high profile inclusion in 2020 of two works from Steve McQueen's historic Small Axe series for BBC, the full LFF Series programme will be launched this year with 8-10 brand new international series receiving premieres at the Festival, and including a high profile red carpet event for a major new show. Programming will spotlight the diversity of episodic filmmaking, from high end television to indie web series.
Submissions for film and expanded platform works for considerations are open until Thursday 17 June 2021, 17.00 BST via the link above.
