London Film Festival comes to Hackney

Rich Mix, Bethnal Green: one of the host venues for the London Film Festival

Cinemas in Hackney and surrounds will screen some of the year’s most exciting films as part of the London Film Festival this month.

For the first time the BFI’s annual festival will reach cinemas across London, including the Hackney Picturehouse and Rich Mix in Shoreditch.

The BFI say the plan to take the LFF to new venues “is designed to give a wider audience more opportunities to take part in the festival.”

The East End venues will screen more than 50 films from the festival, including Mira Nair’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist and the British comedy Sightseers. Other highlights include Seven Psychopaths, starring Colin Farrell and Woody Harrelson, Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild and Hackney-based drama My Brother the Devil.

There will also be choice cuts of world cinema on offer, such as South Korean thriller Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time and the experimental Mekong Hotel.

“What we’re most excited about is the themes,” said Beth O’Connor at Rich Mix, referring to the festival’s new format. Instead of the usual categories, this year’s festival is arranged by themes, such as Dare, Journey, Thrill, Laugh, Debate, Love, and Sonic.

Ms O’Connor said she hopes these themes will “introduce new audiences to films which they might previously have been intimidated about going to see.”

This year’s London Film Festival will present 225 features and 111 shorts and include films produced in nearly 70 countries. The biggest films will shown at the Odeon, Vue and Empire cinemas in Leicester Square. There will also be screenings at the Screen on the Green in Islington and several others across the capital.

For more information go to the BFI’s London Film Festival.