21 great films playing at BFI London Film Festival 2026

1. Ken Russell’s The Devils

Russell was an iconoclast, to say the least, and he made a film that lives perennially in the now: an impassioned plea against totalitarian systems and the eternal playbook they use to divide us all”Guillermo del Toro

2. All of a Sudden

Hamaguchi cultivates constructive philosophies of living just as he models alternative, enriching ways of making movies”Nicolas Rapold

3. I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

Clio Barnard’s latest continues the director’s deep commitment to exploring working-class characters, this time set in Birmingham and lodged in a group of long-time pals who have grown up but not necessarily out of the old neighbourhood” B. Ruby Rich

4. The Debut

Destined to be pored over by acting-students for years to come, this simply mounted two-hander effectively ended the 2027 Best Actress race when The Debut premiered at Telluride”Neil Young

5. Minotaur

As much as any movie from the Russian master, Minotaur is a coldly crystalline game of composition and duration, of cinematic space and time”Jessica Kiang

6. A Man of His Time

[Swann] Arlaud excels as this man of in-action; it’s a complicated, subtle role to pull off... His Keaton-esque deadpan helps balance the film’s unexpected, off-kilter comedic moments”Thomas Flew

7. Variations on a Theme

Something extraordinary emerges from the film, the magic inherent in the ordinary time travel of a long-lived life ”John Bleasdale

8. My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile

Masterful editing gathers visceral tension into a rising tide of danger, through unnerving scenes of threat and surveillance, as the deadly hand of Putin’s regime reaches tremendously committed dissenters in the heart of Europe”Carmen Gray

9. Paper Tiger

The kind of low-stakes crime drama we don’t get enough of these days and which James Gray excels at”John Bleasdale

10. Flies

[Fernando] Eimbcke delivers a humbly poignant film that affirms his lineage with the great children’s auteurs like Lamorisse and Truffaut”Nicolas Rapold

11. Everytime

Everytime is concerned with a distinctly modern numbness, the irrepressible grief and guilt and grace that subtly persist through a world we no longer recognise”Alexander Mooney

12. Animol

As an actor, [Ashley] Walters has always moved elegantly between vulnerability and gravitas, sometimes holding both within the same frame; unsurprisingly, he proves an instinctive actor’s director”Leila Latif

13. Look Back

While Koreeda has adapted from manga before (Air Doll (2009), Our Little Sister (2015)), Look Back’s source material is significantly more commercial and heightened. The director brings that style down to a simmer, playing in a subtler, characteristically naturalistic mode”Blake Simons

14. La Bola Negra

With its exuberant revisionist take on 20th-century national history, La Bola Negra may well transform Calvo and Ambrossi from Spanish household names to international auteurs on the rise”Elisabet Cabeza

15. Josephine 

Josephine is a film about loss of innocence, but its cleverness lies in how it demonstrates that this loss cuts in multiple directions. A child’s sense of safety has been shattered, but so has her parents”Rachel Pronger

16. Fatherland

Pawlikowski, co-writing with Henk Handloegten, makes a tragedy of exile that’s ultimately not about one ageing author or his family, but about all of us, living in a world we no longer recognise”Nicolas Rapold

17. The Dreamed Adventure

A film so fully shaped by the place and its people that it depicts [Bulgaria] as we’ve never seen before: both daunting and beloved”Savina Petkova

18. The History of Concrete

[John] Wilson’s debut feature shows the expert essayist as sneakily profound as ever, contemplating life and art and piecing together meaning from the fragments”Nicolas Rapold

19. Possible Love

Lee Chang-dong’s sober, detached approach highlights social and psychological effects, showing how the trauma of corporate abuse spreads through families and communities”Jonathan Romney

20. Rose

[Sandra] Hüller has become one of the most accomplished and recognised actors in the European film scene. Her supple turn here provides the film with its emotional clout”John Bleasdale

21. Wild Horse Nine

Do performances get much better than John Malkovich playing an ageing CIA operative beset by terminal cancer and early-stage dementia, too pickled in cynicism and soul-blackening state secrets to fully deserve the elegiac ending he craves?”Jessica Kiang