The 67thBFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express is delighted to announce the line-up and competition categories for this year’s LFF Awards, celebrating the most innovative new films premiering this year and an incredible range of talent from across the world.
Eleven films will screen in Official Competition, competing for the Best Film Award, which showcases inspiring, inventive and distinctive international filmmaking, while 11 films will also screen in the First Feature Competition, competing for the Sutherland Award, which recognises the most original and imaginative directorial debut.
The Grierson Award will acknowledge the feature-length documentaries with integrity, originality and social or cultural significance; 8 films will screen in the Documentary Competition. The Short Film Award will recognise short-form works with a unique cinematic voice, with 10 films selected in this category.
The winners of these four competitive awards will be chosen by LFF Awards juries, the members of which will be announced in the coming weeks, and will be revealed on the final day of the festival – 15 October – with surprise screenings of the winning features also taking place that night.
The ever-popular Audience Awards will also return for 2023, with audiences being able to vote for their favourite work they saw at this year’s festival, be it fiction, documentary, short or immersive work. Four awards for Best Feature, Best Documentary, Best British Film or Work and Best XR will be awarded; 2022 winners of LFF Audience Awards include Blue Bag Life (Best Feature) and Drop Out (Best Short).
Kristy Matheson, BFI London Film Festival director, said: “The films represented in each of these competitive strands offer audiences an exciting array of UK and global filmmaking voices and cinematic forms. We’re so proud to be showcasing each of these films and thank all the filmmaking teams in competition for sharing their films with us.”
The films screening in Official Competition this year showcase a remarkable range of filmmaking talent from across the world, with 11 countries represented across the selection, which include a mixture of established directors and sophomore films. From a provocative sci-fi romance and an urgent, exceptionally crafted thriller to a haunting British folk horror and a sweeping love story that explores modern day relationship dynamics in Punjab, India, the films selected for Official Competition celebrate passionate and inspired global filmmaking.
The 11 films screening in Official Competition are:
- Baltimore (Ireland-UK, dir-scr. Christine Molloy, Joe Lawlor)
- Dear Jassi (India, dir. Tarsem Singh Dhandwar)
- Europa (Austria-UK, dir-scr. Sudabeh Mortezai)
- Evil Does Not Exist (Japan, dir-scr. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
- Fingernails (USA, dir-scr. Christos Nikou)
- Gasoline Rainbow (USA, dir-scr. Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross)
- I Am Sirat (Canada, dir. a collaboration between Deepa Mehta and Sirat Taneja)
- The Royal Hotel (Australia, dir-scr. Kitty Green)
- Self Portrait: 47 Km 2020 (China, dir. Zhang Mengqi)
- Starve Acre (UK, dir-scr. Daniel Kokotajlo)
- Together 99 (Sweden-Denmark, dir-scr. Lukas Moodysson)
The 2022 winner was Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage.
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