Bookmarking the BFI London Film Festival
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The 69th edition of the UK’s biggest celebration of film offers an exciting programme of some 250 features, shorts, series and immersive works, giving audiences a first look at new films by the world’s leading creators. Covering every genre, featuring new talent alongside established names, there really is something for everyone. With a host of recent bestsellers and established classics heading for the screen, here’s our round-up of eye-catching adaptations to look out for across the programme, which runs from Wednesday 8 to Sunday 19 October 2025.
This year’s BFI Patrons’ Gala presentation is H IS FOR HAWK, Philippa Lowthorpe’s emotionally charged interpretation of Helen Macdonald’s award-winning memoir, co-written with Emma Donaghue. When Cambridge academic Helen’s father dies, the grief sends her spiralling into an abyss. In an effort to process her loss, she retreats from the human world to train a stubborn goshawk named Mabel. Claire Foy and Brendan Gleeson play daughter and father.
The Mayor of London’s Gala is HAMNET. Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel, produced by Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes, features mesmerising performances by Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. As William Shakespeare’s wife Agnes struggles to come to terms with the loss of their only son, grief drives a wedge between the couple, but Shakespeare finds a way to channel the tragedy and his sorrow into his work.
This year’s Series Special Presentation is Episodes 1 and 2 of THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO. Isabella Eklöf and Matt Smith star in this TV reworking of Nick Cave’s acclaimed novel. Following his wife’s suicide, sex-addicted cosmetics salesman Bunny escapes with his nine-year-old son on a chaotic road trip across southern England. A vivid study of bad behaviour, human frailty and the indispensability of love.
Benedict Cumberbatch gives a magnificent performance in THE THING WITH FEATHERS, Dylan Southern’s adaptation of Max Porter’s award-winning novella. A mother dies, leaving two primary school-aged children and ‘Sad Dad’. Before long, ‘Crow’ emerges from the pages of the book the father is writing about Ted Hughes, to peck at open wounds and guide them through their grief.
& SONS is Argentinian Pablo Trapero’s English-language debut, a taut family drama adapted by Sarah Polley from David Gilbert’s novel. When reclusive novelist A.N. Dyer summons his two middle-aged sons to his secluded home, the consequences lead to a startling revelation. Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton and Dominic West lead an impressive ensemble cast.
Adapted from Bernard-Marie Koltès’ play Black Battles with Dogs, Claire Denis’ THE FENCE simmers with dark secrets and emotional tensions in its portrait of a community suffocating from the relentless grip of colonialism in West Africa. Matt Dillon and Isaach de Bankolé star, supported by Mia McKenna-Bruce and Tom Blyth.
FRANKENSTEIN sees Guillermo Del Toro breathe new life into the horror classic in imaginative and elemental fashion. His take on Mary Shelley’s masterpiece movingly captures the sense of isolation and yearning, while creating a fugue of dread and horror. Mia Goth is Elizabeth Frankenstein, Oscar Isaac is Victor and Jacob Elordi inhabits The Creature.
In director-screenwriter Kei Ishikawa’s A PALE VIEW OF HILLS, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1982 novel makes a transition to the screen in a poignant tale of loss and exile under the shadow of the Nagasaki bomb. Suzu Hirose, Fumi Nikaidô and Yoh Yoshida star.
THE STRANGER is François Ozon’s striking monochrome adaptation of Albert Camus’ landmark novel; a gripping account of colonial ennui and existential absurdity in 1930s French Algeria. Benjamin Voisin takes up the mantle of the detached and indifferent Mersault.
TRAIN DREAMS is Clint Bentley’s haunting take on Denis Johnson’s acclaimed novella, featuring Joel Edgerton as a logger and railroad worker shaped by love, loss and the tumult of a disappearing world.
In ORWELL: 2+2=5, narrated by Damian Lewis, Raoul Peck channels the clarity and urgency of George Orwell’s prose into a sharp and unsettling vision of our fractured present. A clarion call for a critical examination of the mechanics of power, propaganda and systemic violence.
Over a decade in the making, director Andy Serkis and writer Nicholas Stoller’s animation of Orwell’s timeless ANIMAL FARM casts Seth Rogen, Kieran Culkin and Gaten Matarazzo as prominent pigs Napoleon, Squealer and Lucky, with support from Steve Buscemi, Woody Harrelson, Glenn Close Kathleen Turner and Serkis himself.
Amélie Nothomb’s autobiographical novel The Character of Rain is the source for Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han’s charming LITTLE AMÉLIE. Set in late 1960s Japan, it presents a toddler’s shifting understanding of the world as she approaches her third birthday.
The Festival closes with the UK premiere of Julia Jackman’s 100 NIGHTS OF HERO, based on Isabel Greenberg’s graphic novel. Featuring an all-star cast including Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, Maika Monroe, Amir El-Masry, Richard E. Grant and Charli XCX, it is both a hilarious send-up of classic folk tales and a strident reminder of the power of rebellion in storytelling.
Elsewhere, writer-director Nia DaCosta reimagines Henrik Ibsen’s renowned play in HEDDA, relocating Hedda Gabler to mid-century England. Tessa Thompson is supported by Imogen Poots and Nina Hoss in a stylish and inventive study of feminine desire and power, in which Hedda’s yearning to defy convention strains every relationship around her.
There’s more Shakespeare as Riz Ahmed and director Aneil Karia reunite after their Academy Award-winning collaboration The Long Goodbye, for a bold adaptation of HAMLET set in contemporary London; while Luis Patiño’s ARIEL, an entrancing reimagining of The Tempest, is a beguiling work of metafiction in which Agustina Muñoz, playing herself, travels to the Azores to perform the role of Ariel with a local theatre company.
Based on writer and educator Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER is an uncompromising depiction of trauma, desire and artistic self-expression, in which the young Yuknavitch (Imogen Poots) experiences and processes childhood abuse, first love, addiction and grief.
In THE ASSISTANT, celebrated Polish visual artists and filmmaking duo Wilhelm and Anna Sasnal adapt Robert Walser’s novel about an unskilled clerk serving a disgraced inventor.
BALLAD OF A SMALL PLAYER is Conclave director Edward Berger’s hypnotic adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s thrilling Macau-set gambling caper, featuring mesmerising turns by Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton in a blend of ghost story and psychological thriller.
In LOVE ME TENDER, Anna Cazenave Cambet (Gold for Dogs) adapts Constance Debré’s bestselling autofiction about breaking out of a stale marriage to explore her creativity and sexuality. Vicky Krieps stars in a luminous and radical commentary on motherhood, desire and self-discovery.
Based on Don DeLillo’s one-act play The Word for Snow, Ben Rivers’ MARE’S NEST takes us on a playful and visually arresting journey into a dreamlike world populated only by children.
Finally, a digital restoration of the 1978 LFF Film of the Year, Sumitra Peries’ THE GIRLS, adapted from Karunasena Jayalath’s novel, tells the story of young Sri Lankan villager Kusum, who falls in love with her wealthy cousin Nimal. Hindered by social conventions and the ambitions of Nimal’s mother, their relationship drives Kusum towards loneliness and renunciation.
About the festival
With its central base at BFI Southbank and gala presentations at the Royal Festival Hall, screenings and events also run in cinemas and venues across central London plus partner cinemas in Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.
The programme runs from Wednesday 8 to Sunday 19 October 2025
Tickets from £10/£6 under 25s are on general sale. Check the LFF homepage after 10am each day during the festival to see new ticket releases and standby queues.
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Mark Reynolds and Farhana Gani are founding editors of Bookanista.
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