The British elements of this year’s festival seem typically strong: Nick Hornby wrote the script for ’60s teen romance ‘An Education’, while Ben Whishaw stars as romantic poet John Keats in Jane Campion’s lush period biopic ‘Bright Star’. British filmmakers head abroad for documentaries like ‘American: The Bill Hicks Story’ and ‘Mugabe and the White African’, while foreign directors head over here for diverse fictions such as the award-winning ‘She, a Chinese’, a tale of immigrant life in London, and ‘Valhalla Rising’, a brutal tale of Viking warriors on the rampage.
Two Cannes successes will doubtless prove to be hot tickets: ‘A Prophet’ was the word-of-mouth success on the Croisette this year and Palme d’Or winner ‘The White Ribbon’, the latest from ‘Hidden’ director Michael Haneke. Of the preview clips shown at yesterdays launch, a few other films certainly caught the attention: Robert Connolly’s ‘Balibo’, about an Australian film crew caught in the crossfire during the East Timor conflict, looked intense and powerful, while Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Informant!’ promises to be a comic, Coen-ish take on the classic corporate espionage tale. Of the films we’ve already caught at earlier festivals, among the best are Bong Joon-Ho’s radical genre work ‘Mother’, Todd Solondz’s disturbing sequel to his own early success ‘Happiness’, entitled ‘Life During Wartime’, and Ang Lee’s laidback and likeable ‘Taking Woodstock’.
Tickets for this year’s London Film Festival will be on sale from Saturday September 26th, both online from the BFI website and by phone on 0207 928 3232.
via TimeOutLondon
