Oscar-tipped Hamnet to premiere at BFI London Film Festival

The eagerly anticipated big-screen adaptation of Hamnet – as well as films starring Jennifer Lawrence, Daniel Day-Lewis, Julia Roberts and singer Charli XCX – are all on the line-up the BFI London Film Festival.

The film version of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel about William Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, who died at the age of 11 in 1596, and his parents’ subsequent grief, will have its European premiere at the festival.

Directed by Oscar winner Chloe Zhao, the film stars Normal People actor Paul Mescal and Chernobyl’s Jessie Buckley, and is already tipped for a slew of awards nominations following its unveiling at the Telluride Film Festival.

Other notable titles to have premieres at the London festival include Die My Love, starring Lawrence as a postpartum mother battling psychosis, and After The Hunt, starring Julia Roberts as a college professor embroiled in a Me Too scandal.

Additional star-studded films include Anemone, which marks the return of Day-Lewis from his retirement from acting, in a film directed by and co-written with his son Ronan.

It will be his first film since 2017’s Phantom Thread and also stars Sean Bean and Samantha Morton.

Also on the line-up are Ballad Of A Small Player, starring Colin Farrell; Bugonia, starring Emma Stone; The Choral, starring Ralph Fiennes; and H Is For Hawk, starring Claire Foy.

Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein, starring Jacob Elordi and Oscar Isaac, will premiere in London after a buzzy debut at the Venice Film Festival – alongside Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, starring The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen.

It was previously announced the third instalment in the Knives Out whodunnit series, Wake Up Dead Man, will open the festival – while 100 Night Of Hero, starring pop star Charli XCX, Emma Corrin and Felicity Jones,  will close the festival.

Kristy Matheson, director of the BFI London Film Festival, told the PA news agency it has been a rich year for film.

She said: “Just to have the the amount of of choice this year has made it very hard for us to pull the programme together.

“There’s been so many films that we’ve absolutely just fallen head over heels for and so it’s felt very abundant this year and it’s going to be a very exciting festival for for audiences.

“I think the one thing that we noticed really early on in the process…was just how daring people are being with with the cinematic form.

“People are using all the tools in the toolbox. Every time you feel like ‘Oh, we’ve seen everything this medium can do,’ I think this year, we were just constantly surprised at how people are kind of pushing that, and pushing the language of cinema.”

A number of the films, including the opening and closing gala, will screen at cinemas around the country at the same time as their London premiere.

The programme features 247 titles including shorts, series and immersive works, hailing from 79 countries.

Among them are two films from Palestine – Palestine 36, which Matheson describes as “a handsomely made period drama, looking at the British Mandate in Palestine,” and With Hasan In Gaza, an archive piece made from a cache of tapes filmed in the early 2000s.

Matheson said of Palestine 36: “It’s looking at the broader politics of of that time period, but really doing that through the lens of a village.

“Quite a number of films this year are using the past to talk about the present….it’s almost like thinking about films as not providing answers or resolutions, but maybe providing frameworks to help us navigate contemporary society.”

Discussing the tapes in With Hasan In Gaza, she said: “They almost read like home movies. In the film, you’re really just cruising around with this person, and they’re meeting other people, and they’re [looking for] this person and you they’re having all these very sort of organic encounters.

“So you can really just ease into the film and really observe the landscape and really observe the daily goings on, but it’s hard to watch, because you’re watching what we know is a ghostly image. So it takes on an incredibly different weight.”

The line-up also includes the world premiere of the TV series The Death Of Bunny Munro, starring Matt Smith in the adaptation of the novel by Nick Cave, and Saipan, a film portraying the events of the Republic of Ireland manager Mick McCarthy’s bust-up with captain Roy Keane ahead of the 2002 World Cup.

It stars Steve Coogan as McCarthy and Eanna Hardwicke as Keane.

UK-wide premieres will return to the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham, Chapter in Cardiff, Glasgow Film Theatre, Home in Manchester, MAC in Birmingham, Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast, Showroom Cinema in Sheffield, Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle and Watershed in Bristol with the new additions of Filmhouse in Edinburgh and National Science and Media Museum in Bradford for 2025.

The BFI London Film Festival runs from October 8-19.