60th BFI London Film Festival draws its anniversary year to a close

Sharlto Copley, Cillian Murphy and Ben Wheatley attend the Free Fire Closing Night Gala screening during the 60th BFI London Film Festival

The 60th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express®, closed its anniversary year tonight with the European Premiere of Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire. Audience attendance for the 60th edition reached a record-breaking 184,700, an 18% increase from 157,000 in 2015, with the new temporary Embankment Garden Cinema contributing significantly to that growth.
   
A further 8,200 people enjoyed the Festival through satellite screenings across the UK of Opening Night film Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom and Werner Herzog’s Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected World, which, in a first for the Festival, was also made available online as a virtual premiere. UK-wide access brought the overall audience total to 193,129.
   
The Festival welcomed over 840 international and British filmmakers to present their work from across the LFF programme at venues across the capital. The programme presented more Headline Galas and Special Presentations than ever before, with 12 and five respectively (an increase from seven and three at LFF 2015), while the temporary purpose built venue Embankment Garden Cinema was the home for Strand Galas and films in Official Competition.
        
At the annual BFI London Film Festival Awards, the LFF competition winners announced were:

• Certain Women – Kelly Reichardt, won the Best Film Award (Official Competition)
• Raw — Julia Ducournau, won the Sutherland Award (First Feature Competition)
• Starless Dreams — Mehrdad Oskouei, won the Grierson Award (Documentary Competition)
• 9 Days – From My Window in Aleppo — Issa Touma, Thomas Vroege and Floor van de Muelen, won the Short Film Award

This year the BFI Fellowship was received by Academy Award-winning director Steve McQueen, and presented by Michael Fassbender. The Fellowship is the highest accolade the BFI can bestow.

This year’s LFF Connects series of thought-provoking high-impact talks for industry and public audiences explored the future of film and how film engages with other creative industries featured the innovative iconoclasts: Charlie Brooker, Annabel Jones and Joe Wright for LFF Connects: TV, Liam Young, Forest Swords and DJ Yoda for LFF Connects: Music/Performance, Dennis Muren, David Vickery and Kevin Jenkins for LFF Connects: Creative Technologies, David Cage for LFF Connects: Games and Lynette Wallworth for LFF Connects: Art/Immersive Film.
    
Insightful Screen Talks were given by celebrated directors, actors and industry professionals: Park Chan-Wook, Paul Verhoeven, Nicole Kidman & Dev Patel, Werner Herzog and Ben Wheatley, offering festival audiences the opportunity to learn more about leading lights in contemporary cinema.

The Surprise Film was Clint Eastwood’s highly anticipated Sully.
    
David Oyelowo headlined the Black Star Symposium at LFF 2016 with a powerful and rousing speech about diversity in film; and Heather Stewart (Creative Director, BFI) presented research that explores the representation of black actors in UK films over the last 10 years. The new research provides an early indicator of what is set to be the most comprehensive set of data about UK films from 1911 to the present day – the BFI Filmography, launching in 2017. Other Symposium speakers included Amma Asante, Noel Clarke, Julie Dash, Barry Jenkins and Karen Blackett (Chairwoman, MediaCom), Ramy El-Bergamy (On-Screen Diversity Executive, Channel 4), Ben Roberts (Director, BFI Film Fund), Ije Nwokorie (CEO, Wolff Olins) and Tunde Ogungbesan (Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Succession, BBC) and Heather Stewart. The Symposium kicked off the UK’s biggest celebration of black screen actors and the BFI’s cultural focus for 2016 – BFI Black Star – launching Monday 17 October till the end of the year.