The 70th BFI London Film Festival runs from 7–18 October 2026, bringing an unusually expansive range of international cinema, UK independent work, festival discoveries and screen-industry conversations - here are the titles that we're excited to see!

14th

Ava DuVernay’s investigation into citizenship, civil rights and the political structures that continue to determine whose freedoms are treated as negotiable.

Two people face each other across a polished office desk, one leaning forward and the other seated gesturing, with a U.S. flag behind them.
Still from 14th. Courtesy of BFI London Film Festival.

ANIMOL

Ashley Walters’ feature directorial debut, set in a young offenders institute and built around survival, connection and redemption.

Close-up of a young Black man in a rust-brown sweatshirt looking down pensively against a blurred teal background.
Still from ANIMOL. Courtesy of BFI London Film Festival.

Spilled Milk

A chilling UK-premiere horror short from Jared Leaf, executive produced by Jordan Peele.

Film still from Spilled Milk showing a man in a cream beanie and blue plaid overshirt facing someone in a muted indoor setting.
Still from Spilled Milk. Courtesy of the official Spilled Milk website.

Echoes

Alex Lanipekun’s film about male friendship, mental health and childhood trauma, starring Ashley Walters and Nathalie Emmanuel.

Two people face each other closely in a warm, dimly lit scene from Echoes.
Production still from Echoes, via Deadline.

An Ode to Joy

Ashleigh Ashley’s world-premiere short about mature love, family and grief, starring Rudolph Walker.

Festival artwork for An Ode to Joy showing an older Black man in a plaid shirt.
Festival artwork for An Ode to Joy. Courtesy of South London Film Festival.

Fatherland — Paweł Pawlikowski

Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cannes Best Director-winning Fatherland, starring Sandra Hüller, returns to post-war Germany through Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika. It is a road film, a family story and a confrontation with exile, memory and national fracture — the sort of historical cinema that asks difficult questions without treating history as a museum piece.

Black-and-white still of an older man smoking a cigar and a smiling woman seated at a round table in a dim, vintage room.
Still from Fatherland. Courtesy of MUBI.

Making Marie Antoinette — Eleanor Coppola

Edited from Eleanor Coppola’s unseen behind-the-scenes footage of Sofia Coppola making Marie Antoinette, this documentary offers a rare perspective on craft, female authorship, costume, working process and the relationship between a filmmaker and the person filming her. Twenty years on from the original film, it is also an invitation to revisit the work without flattening it into a nostalgia object.

Sofia Coppola stands between two Marie Antoinette actors in ornate eighteenth-century costumes on blue fleur-de-lis steps.
Still from Making Marie Antoinette. Courtesy of MUBI.

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