8 – 19 October 2025
The BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express returns to the ICA for its 69th edition running from 8 to 19 October.
The BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express returns to the ICA for its 69th edition running from 8 to 19 October.
Programme
Wednesday 8 October, 6.15pm
Becoming Human
The guardian ghost of an abandoned cinema contemplates reincarnation amid the hubbub of Cambodia’s dizzying transformation in Polen Ly’s lyrical drama.
Wednesday 8 October, 8.40pm
The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box)
Ernesto Martínez Bucio’s audacious debut finds five children deposited in the chaotic and ramshackle home of their eccentric and emotionally absent grandmother.
Thursday 9 October, 6.30pm
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office
This superbly crafted documentary on utopian neuroscientist John C. Lilly is a fascinating tale of paranoia, obsession and discovery.
Thursday 9 October, 20.45pm
The Eyes of Ghana
Ben Proudfoot’s film is a love letter to cinema and Ghanian icon Chris Esse who, in his nineties, still works tirelessly to preserve the country’s film legacy and the lessons of colonialism.
Friday 10 October, 6.30pm
D is for Distance
This deeply personal rumination on memory and the moving image offers a frank and uncompromising insight into medical bureaucracy.
Friday 10 October, 8.45pm
Diamonds in the Sand
This tender film, 11 years in the making, follows Yoji, a lonely Japanese man longing for connection and community, which he believes can be found in the Philippines.
Saturday 11 October, 12.20pm
Black is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story
A touching tribute to a forgotten photographer, freedom fighter and activist, who helped popularise the transformative ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement.
Saturday 11 October, 2.45pm
Miroirs No.3
Christian Petzold’s latest is a sharply written and gripping study of loss and trauma, and the potential for reinvention as they subside.
Saturday 11 October, 5pm
Mare's Nest
Ben Rivers takes us on a playful and visually arresting journey into a dreamlike world populated by children with a liking for Don DeLillo’s plays.
Saturday 11 October, 7.30pm
Magellan
A large-scale historical epic, this is a stunningly executed political work that retains Lav Diaz’s key characteristics while offering broader appeal.
Sunday 12 October, 1.05pm
Khartoum
In this playful yet quietly radical film, five citizens of Khartoum, deeply affected by the ongoing conflict and forced to flee their homes, powerfully articulate their memories, hopes and dreams.
Sunday 12 October, 3.15pm
Hair, Paper, Water...
Trương Minh Quý and Nicolas Graux create a mythical work of non-fiction – an ode to an elderly healer and to Rục, her endangered mother tongue.
Sunday 12 October, 5.10pm
Ariel
Casting a cinematic spell of reverie, Lois Patiño’s entrancing reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest conjures shimmering illusions and elemental rhythms.
Sunday 12 October, 8.10pm
Seeds
Sundance Film Festival’s documentary Grand Jury Prize winner is an empathetic and soulful debut that vividly captures a community of Black farming families in the American South.
Monday 13 October, 4.10pm
Singing Wings
Rich with humour and heart, Hemen Khaledi’s documentary debut shows life outshining fiction, painting a lyrical portrait of a magical stork village in Kurdistan.
Monday 13 October, 6.10pm
BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions
Fulfilling the promise of his short films and music videos, Kahlil Joseph’s feature debut is an era- and genre-spanning history of the Black diaspora.
Monday 13 October, 8.50pm
The Memory of Butterflies
Drawing from the shadows of the colonial rubber trade, this evocative film uncovers the lost stories of two Indigenous men taken to London to be ‘civilised’.
Tuesday 14 October, 3.40pm
Sirât
Oliver Laxe’s Cannes winner distils a cinematic reverence for the sacred through a landscape simultaneously scarred and sustained by sound.
Tuesday 14 October, 6.20pm
Super Nature
A spellbinding visual and auditory experience, beautifully shot in Super 8, which invites you to marvel at nature and the wildlife around us.
Tuesday 14 October, 8.30pm
Mother
Noomi Rapace channels an intimidating and transfixed Mother Teresa in Teona Strugar Mitevska’s compelling exploration of faith and devotion.
Wednesday 15 October, 3pm
Island of the Winds
Hsu Ya-Ting’s poignant documentary follows the lives of residents at Taiwan’s Lesheng Sanatorium, where leprosy patients have been confined since the 1950s.
Wednesday 15 October, 5.45pm
A Useful Ghost
The wife of a factory owner returns from the dead to haunt a vacuum cleaner in Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s wildly inventive and wonderfully original film.
Wednesday 15 October, 8.40pm
The Assistant
Celebrated visual artists and filmmaking duo Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal adapt Robert Walser’s novel about an unskilled clerk serving a disgraced inventor.
Thursday 16 October, 3.25pm
Cover-Up
Acclaimed documentary directors Mark Obenhaus and Laura Poitras team up to deliver an engrossing portrait of investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh.
Thursday 16 October, 6.10pm
Hotel London
A Bangladeshi family confronts the harsh realities of temporary unstable housing in London, in a newly remastered drama that blends fiction with video activism.
Thursday 16 October, 8.40pm
The Shadows of The Living
Here, human and more‑than‑human lives intermingle in peculiar ways. Each film uncovers untamed stories where power, survival and transformation twist into unanticipated forms.
Friday 17 October, 3.40pm
Dreams
From Mexican director Michel Franco comes a chilling drama about the underbelly of philanthropy, where the assuaging of guilt is compromised by sexual desire.
Friday 17 October, 6pm
Duse
Pietro Marcello’s mesmerising biopic charts the later life of Eleanor Duse, Italy’s greatest actress of the early 20th century.
Friday 17 October, 8.50pm
Back and Forth Across the Line
This programme of films interrogates a myriad of borders. Some are physical, geo-politically determined, others are socially inscribed. Many more are difficult to define. All are porous, even when it seems they’re not.
Saturday 18 October, 1.20pm
Kontinental '25
Prolific Romanian provocateur Radu Jude returns with a sharp social satire on our materialistic society, blending dark comedy, drama and giant, plastic dinosaurs.
Saturday 18 October, 4pm
Cadences of Refusal
Activated by political urgency and defiance, these five works envision a collective reimagining and remaking of the world. Each crafts a counter-grammar to traditional non-fiction cinema – grounded in poetry, fragmentation, inquiry and the voice.
Saturday 18 October, 6.15pm
Afterlives
Media artist, filmmaker and critic Kevin B. Lee presents an unflinchingly complex and thought-provoking tapestry that interrogates the many faces of violence confronting our lives.
Saturday 18 October, 8.45pm
What Marielle Knows
This sharply observed and darkly comic tale of familial relations will leave you rolling in the aisles and perhaps reassessing your own bond with your loved ones.
Sunday 19 October, 1.10pm
Anatomy of Place, Sites of Becoming
Films in this programme consider how spaces hold the weight of what came before and the traces of what may emerge, moving through landscapes where memory, body and terrain shifts and transforms against time.
Sunday 19 October, 3.20pm
In the Clouds Flecks of Memories Pass
These films embody memories: some personal, others inherited or found. At times they’re mesmerising, yet fissures can appear in the depicted recollections. Subjectivity comes into focus. Established narratives are destabilised.
Sunday 19 October, 5.40pm
With Hasan in Gaza
Kamal Aljafari returns with a poignant reimagining of Palestinian history – a profound meditation on absence and loss, crafted with quiet integrity.
Sunday 19 October, 8.25pm
Nouvelle Vague
Richard Linklater recreates the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal feature debut, penning a nostalgic love letter to the rebellious spirit of the French New Wave.
Wednesday 8 October, 6.15pm
Becoming Human
The guardian ghost of an abandoned cinema contemplates reincarnation amid the hubbub of Cambodia’s dizzying transformation in Polen Ly’s lyrical drama.
Wednesday 8 October, 8.40pm
The Devil Smokes (and Saves the Burnt Matches in the Same Box)
Ernesto Martínez Bucio’s audacious debut finds five children deposited in the chaotic and ramshackle home of their eccentric and emotionally absent grandmother.
Thursday 9 October, 6.30pm
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office
This superbly crafted documentary on utopian neuroscientist John C. Lilly is a fascinating tale of paranoia, obsession and discovery.
Thursday 9 October, 20.45pm
The Eyes of Ghana
Ben Proudfoot’s film is a love letter to cinema and Ghanian icon Chris Esse who, in his nineties, still works tirelessly to preserve the country’s film legacy and the lessons of colonialism.
Friday 10 October, 6.30pm
D is for Distance
This deeply personal rumination on memory and the moving image offers a frank and uncompromising insight into medical bureaucracy.
Friday 10 October, 8.45pm
Diamonds in the Sand
This tender film, 11 years in the making, follows Yoji, a lonely Japanese man longing for connection and community, which he believes can be found in the Philippines.
Saturday 11 October, 12.20pm
Black is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story
A touching tribute to a forgotten photographer, freedom fighter and activist, who helped popularise the transformative ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement.
Saturday 11 October, 2.45pm
Miroirs No.3
Christian Petzold’s latest is a sharply written and gripping study of loss and trauma, and the potential for reinvention as they subside.
Saturday 11 October, 5pm
Mare's Nest
Ben Rivers takes us on a playful and visually arresting journey into a dreamlike world populated by children with a liking for Don DeLillo’s plays.
Saturday 11 October, 7.30pm
Magellan
A large-scale historical epic, this is a stunningly executed political work that retains Lav Diaz’s key characteristics while offering broader appeal.
Sunday 12 October, 1.05pm
Khartoum
In this playful yet quietly radical film, five citizens of Khartoum, deeply affected by the ongoing conflict and forced to flee their homes, powerfully articulate their memories, hopes and dreams.
Sunday 12 October, 3.15pm
Hair, Paper, Water...
Trương Minh Quý and Nicolas Graux create a mythical work of non-fiction – an ode to an elderly healer and to Rục, her endangered mother tongue.
Sunday 12 October, 5.10pm
Ariel
Casting a cinematic spell of reverie, Lois Patiño’s entrancing reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest conjures shimmering illusions and elemental rhythms.
Sunday 12 October, 8.10pm
Seeds
Sundance Film Festival’s documentary Grand Jury Prize winner is an empathetic and soulful debut that vividly captures a community of Black farming families in the American South.
Monday 13 October, 4.10pm
Singing Wings
Rich with humour and heart, Hemen Khaledi’s documentary debut shows life outshining fiction, painting a lyrical portrait of a magical stork village in Kurdistan.
Monday 13 October, 6.10pm
BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions
Fulfilling the promise of his short films and music videos, Kahlil Joseph’s feature debut is an era- and genre-spanning history of the Black diaspora.
Monday 13 October, 8.50pm
The Memory of Butterflies
Drawing from the shadows of the colonial rubber trade, this evocative film uncovers the lost stories of two Indigenous men taken to London to be ‘civilised’.
Tuesday 14 October, 3.40pm
Sirât
Oliver Laxe’s Cannes winner distils a cinematic reverence for the sacred through a landscape simultaneously scarred and sustained by sound.
Tuesday 14 October, 6.20pm
Super Nature
A spellbinding visual and auditory experience, beautifully shot in Super 8, which invites you to marvel at nature and the wildlife around us.
Tuesday 14 October, 8.30pm
Mother
Noomi Rapace channels an intimidating and transfixed Mother Teresa in Teona Strugar Mitevska’s compelling exploration of faith and devotion.
Wednesday 15 October, 3pm
Island of the Winds
Hsu Ya-Ting’s poignant documentary follows the lives of residents at Taiwan’s Lesheng Sanatorium, where leprosy patients have been confined since the 1950s.
Wednesday 15 October, 5.45pm
A Useful Ghost
The wife of a factory owner returns from the dead to haunt a vacuum cleaner in Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s wildly inventive and wonderfully original film.
Wednesday 15 October, 8.40pm
The Assistant
Celebrated visual artists and filmmaking duo Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal adapt Robert Walser’s novel about an unskilled clerk serving a disgraced inventor.
Thursday 16 October, 3.25pm
Cover-Up
Acclaimed documentary directors Mark Obenhaus and Laura Poitras team up to deliver an engrossing portrait of investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh.
Thursday 16 October, 6.10pm
Hotel London
A Bangladeshi family confronts the harsh realities of temporary unstable housing in London, in a newly remastered drama that blends fiction with video activism.
Thursday 16 October, 8.40pm
The Shadows of The Living
Here, human and more‑than‑human lives intermingle in peculiar ways. Each film uncovers untamed stories where power, survival and transformation twist into unanticipated forms.
Friday 17 October, 3.40pm
Dreams
From Mexican director Michel Franco comes a chilling drama about the underbelly of philanthropy, where the assuaging of guilt is compromised by sexual desire.
Friday 17 October, 6pm
Duse
Pietro Marcello’s mesmerising biopic charts the later life of Eleanor Duse, Italy’s greatest actress of the early 20th century.
Friday 17 October, 8.50pm
Back and Forth Across the Line
This programme of films interrogates a myriad of borders. Some are physical, geo-politically determined, others are socially inscribed. Many more are difficult to define. All are porous, even when it seems they’re not.
Saturday 18 October, 1.20pm
Kontinental '25
Prolific Romanian provocateur Radu Jude returns with a sharp social satire on our materialistic society, blending dark comedy, drama and giant, plastic dinosaurs.
Saturday 18 October, 4pm
Cadences of Refusal
Activated by political urgency and defiance, these five works envision a collective reimagining and remaking of the world. Each crafts a counter-grammar to traditional non-fiction cinema – grounded in poetry, fragmentation, inquiry and the voice.
Saturday 18 October, 6.15pm
Afterlives
Media artist, filmmaker and critic Kevin B. Lee presents an unflinchingly complex and thought-provoking tapestry that interrogates the many faces of violence confronting our lives.
Saturday 18 October, 8.45pm
What Marielle Knows
This sharply observed and darkly comic tale of familial relations will leave you rolling in the aisles and perhaps reassessing your own bond with your loved ones.
Sunday 19 October, 1.10pm
Anatomy of Place, Sites of Becoming
Films in this programme consider how spaces hold the weight of what came before and the traces of what may emerge, moving through landscapes where memory, body and terrain shifts and transforms against time.
Sunday 19 October, 3.20pm
In the Clouds Flecks of Memories Pass
These films embody memories: some personal, others inherited or found. At times they’re mesmerising, yet fissures can appear in the depicted recollections. Subjectivity comes into focus. Established narratives are destabilised.
Sunday 19 October, 5.40pm
With Hasan in Gaza
Kamal Aljafari returns with a poignant reimagining of Palestinian history – a profound meditation on absence and loss, crafted with quiet integrity.
Sunday 19 October, 8.25pm
Nouvelle Vague
Richard Linklater recreates the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal feature debut, penning a nostalgic love letter to the rebellious spirit of the French New Wave.
no. 236848.