7 – 18 October 2026
The BFI London Film Festival returns to the ICA for its 70th edition running from 7 to 18 October.
The BFI London Film Festival returns to the ICA for its 70th edition running from 7 to 18 October.
Programme
Wednesday 7 October, 5:30pm
Supporting Role
This mysterious and uniquely introspective journey through Tbilisi traces the steps of a once famous, but now faded Georgian actor.
Wednesday 7 October, 8:35pm
Lali
Two emotionally scarred strangers are thrust into an arranged marriage, in this wildly original, pitch-black comedy with hints of the supernatural.
Thursday 8 October, 6:15pm
Prince
The stakes are high for a prize-winning show dog, his owner, her butler and their extended family, in this kitsch comedy about avarice and love.
Thursday 8 October, 8.40pm
The Calf Doll
When his only cow delivers a stillborn calf and then falls sick, a retired professor turns to an age-old calf-doll ritual, while industrialisation closes in around him.
Friday 9 October, 6pm
The Last Day
Acclaimed visual artist Rachel Rose gives Mrs Dalloway a contemporary makeover in her arresting a mood piece, starring Alicia Vikander and Victoria Pedretti.
Friday 9 October, 8:25pm
A Girl Unknown
Jing Zou’s captivating debut feature, an intimate, decade-spanning character study, explores the consequences of the single-child policy on generations of Chinese girls.
Saturday 10 October, 12:30pm
To Hold a Mountain
Set in the remote highlands of Montenegro, this year’s Sundance World Documentary Prize winner reflects on the fragile coexistence between ancestral knowledge and the growing pressures of the contemporary world.
Saturday 10 October, 3pm
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Filmed by William Greaves in 1972 and completed by his son David 50 years later, this is a rapturous love letter to the Harlem Renaissance.
Saturday 10 October, 5:30pm
The Dreamed Adventure
Featuring a vibrant lead performance, this gripping realist drama, set in a lawless town on the Bulgaria-Turkey border, exudes an atmosphere of danger and paranoia.
Saturday 10 October, 9pm
I Plant My Hand in the Garden
Playing versions of themselves as the central protagonists, Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadžija make a daring debut: a witty, irreverent and politically astute portrait of lives shaped by the search for belonging.
Sunday 11 October, 12:50pm
Chronovisor
The film collective Cosmic Salon (Jack Auen and Kevin Walker) make their beguiling and assured feature debut, guiding us through hidden histories and uncanny landscapes of belief, mystery and the unknown.
Sunday 11 October, 3:15pm
9 Temples to Heaven
Infused with gentle humour and profound humanity, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s fiction debut presents a serene passage through family, faith and the cycles of life.
Sunday 11 October, 6:20pm
At Night
Beatrice Gibson’s feature directorial debut is a luminous nocturne, evocatively capturing the streets of Paris over the course of a single night on 16mm.
Sunday 11 October, 8:35pm
Concrete Turned to Sand
Shaped by the tidal rhythms of British Columbia’s oyster farms, this richly cinematic documentary, shot on 35mm, exists where labour, scientific inquiry and the living world meet.
Monday 12 October, 4:30pm
FLORID
In this striking British feature debut, a young man in the care system tries to juggle his musical aspirations and mental health issues.
Monday 12 October, 6:40pm
Tropical Fractals
Leonardo Pirondi’s timely reflection on ecological collapse imagines a future in which a biodome spaceship preserves the last traces of life on Earth.
Monday 12 October, 8:45pm
Revolutionaries Never Die
Framed as a cinematic letter to the late Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab, this evocative and timely work reanimates Saab’s 16mm archive as a living space of dialogue and political imagination.
Tuesday 13 October, 2:40pm
Imperium
Master of archival film reconstruction, Sergei Loznitsa, reframes Soviet history once again via the revealing gaze of Italian cameramen who captured life there in the early 1970s.
Tuesday 13 October, 6:20pm
Compressed Distances
Contending with oppression, violence, and dispossession, these four works embody acts of defiance and solidarity; some enacted up close, others from afar. As images narrow the gaps, kinships are formed.
Tuesday 13 October, 8:45pm
Az Zeeb
Discovering a cache of Super 8 home movies and photographs following the death of his grandmother, Chilean filmmaker Martín Seeger embarks on a personal journey through his family’s intertwined political histories.
Wednesday 14 October, 12pm
My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile
The second part of Julia Loktev’s epic documentary, detailing the persecution of journalists in Russia, follows her brave protagonists’ escape abroad following the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Wednesday 14 October, 6:40pm
Easter
Sekja, an ageing and charismatic Korean trans burlesque star, is front and centre in this glorious film about life.
Wednesday 14 October, 8:50pm
Rebellion
Revolution is the beat that drums through this electrifying story about the landmark case against the Bradford 12.
Thursday 15 October, 4pm
The Banning Curse
Iranian director Mohsen Amiryousefi discusses his eventful career with the Angel of Death in this hilarious cinematic autofiction about the highs and lows of radical filmmaking.
Thursday 15 October, 6:15pm
The Chorus that Carries
Resisting the enduring legacies of colonial violence and honoring those who continue to gather, speak and dream, these films transform acts of remembrance into radical forms of reclamation, solidarity and world-making.
Thursday 15 October, 8:30pm
Tracing Islands
These films invite reflection on places that remember, histories that persist, and cinema’s role in unearthing hidden relationships between ecology, extractive capitalism and collective survival.
Friday 16 October, 2:50pm
Dao
The new film by Alain Gomis is a formally inventive, politically attuned meditation on the enduring ties of the African diaspora, and the meaning of family and community.
Friday 16 October, 6:40pm
Let Them Be Seen
Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi’s debut feature – a tender love letter to Tapoleng, her hometown in South Africa – offers an intimate evocation of a community in transition.
Friday 16 October, 8:40pm
Hanabi
Hanabi is a visceral cinematic adaptation of Yoko Hayasuke’s Journal of a Radioactive Brain, written in the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake and nuclear disaster.
Saturday 17 October, 1:30pm
Josephine
Winner of the Grand Jury Dramatic Prize at Sundance, this suspenseful and devastating film follows a child trying to navigate life after witnessing a sexual assault.
Saturday 17 October, 4:15pm
Experimenta Special Presentation
Shab-Nameh: Women of Iran’s Forgotten Left
Following a screening of her short Ghazal-e Sorkh, Jarman Award–winning artist Maryam Tafakory presents this live film performance, which explores erased histories of women’s political resistance in Iran.
Saturday 17 October, 6:20pm
Cadences of Resistance
Resisting the enduring legacies of colonial violence and honouring those who continue to gather, speak and dream, these films transform acts of remembrance into radical forms of reclamation, solidarity and world-making.
Saturday 17 October, 8:40pm
Act 3
The latest in Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s series of cinematic essays is a rich and thought-provoking journey through ageing, legacy and the intersection between artistic and personal relationships.
Sunday 18 October, 3:15pm
Reconstruction Sites
Invoking existing media and texts, alongside introspection and collaborative gestures, these five works intervene in structures that determine and shape meaning. Language, architecture, and filmic grammar are remade and re-experienced.
Sunday 18 October, 5:45pm
A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra
Jacqueline Lentzou follows Moon 66 Questions with this evocative and playful look into the life of a teenager who is completely unaware of the forces at play in her fate.
Sunday 18 October, 8pm
Minotaur
Andrey Zvyagintsev transposes Claude Chabrol’s La Femme infidèle to contemporary Russia, delivering a magnificent political allegory that dissects the mechanics of ego, violence and corruption.
Wednesday 7 October, 5:30pm
Supporting Role
This mysterious and uniquely introspective journey through Tbilisi traces the steps of a once famous, but now faded Georgian actor.
Wednesday 7 October, 8:35pm
Lali
Two emotionally scarred strangers are thrust into an arranged marriage, in this wildly original, pitch-black comedy with hints of the supernatural.
Thursday 8 October, 6:15pm
Prince
The stakes are high for a prize-winning show dog, his owner, her butler and their extended family, in this kitsch comedy about avarice and love.
Thursday 8 October, 8.40pm
The Calf Doll
When his only cow delivers a stillborn calf and then falls sick, a retired professor turns to an age-old calf-doll ritual, while industrialisation closes in around him.
Friday 9 October, 6pm
The Last Day
Acclaimed visual artist Rachel Rose gives Mrs Dalloway a contemporary makeover in her arresting a mood piece, starring Alicia Vikander and Victoria Pedretti.
Friday 9 October, 8:25pm
A Girl Unknown
Jing Zou’s captivating debut feature, an intimate, decade-spanning character study, explores the consequences of the single-child policy on generations of Chinese girls.
Saturday 10 October, 12:30pm
To Hold a Mountain
Set in the remote highlands of Montenegro, this year’s Sundance World Documentary Prize winner reflects on the fragile coexistence between ancestral knowledge and the growing pressures of the contemporary world.
Saturday 10 October, 3pm
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Filmed by William Greaves in 1972 and completed by his son David 50 years later, this is a rapturous love letter to the Harlem Renaissance.
Saturday 10 October, 5:30pm
The Dreamed Adventure
Featuring a vibrant lead performance, this gripping realist drama, set in a lawless town on the Bulgaria-Turkey border, exudes an atmosphere of danger and paranoia.
Saturday 10 October, 9pm
I Plant My Hand in the Garden
Playing versions of themselves as the central protagonists, Hoda Taheri and Boris Hadžija make a daring debut: a witty, irreverent and politically astute portrait of lives shaped by the search for belonging.
Sunday 11 October, 12:50pm
Chronovisor
The film collective Cosmic Salon (Jack Auen and Kevin Walker) make their beguiling and assured feature debut, guiding us through hidden histories and uncanny landscapes of belief, mystery and the unknown.
Sunday 11 October, 3:15pm
9 Temples to Heaven
Infused with gentle humour and profound humanity, Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s fiction debut presents a serene passage through family, faith and the cycles of life.
Sunday 11 October, 6:20pm
At Night
Beatrice Gibson’s feature directorial debut is a luminous nocturne, evocatively capturing the streets of Paris over the course of a single night on 16mm.
Sunday 11 October, 8:35pm
Concrete Turned to Sand
Shaped by the tidal rhythms of British Columbia’s oyster farms, this richly cinematic documentary, shot on 35mm, exists where labour, scientific inquiry and the living world meet.
Monday 12 October, 4:30pm
FLORID
In this striking British feature debut, a young man in the care system tries to juggle his musical aspirations and mental health issues.
Monday 12 October, 6:40pm
Tropical Fractals
Leonardo Pirondi’s timely reflection on ecological collapse imagines a future in which a biodome spaceship preserves the last traces of life on Earth.
Monday 12 October, 8:45pm
Revolutionaries Never Die
Framed as a cinematic letter to the late Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab, this evocative and timely work reanimates Saab’s 16mm archive as a living space of dialogue and political imagination.
Tuesday 13 October, 2:40pm
Imperium
Master of archival film reconstruction, Sergei Loznitsa, reframes Soviet history once again via the revealing gaze of Italian cameramen who captured life there in the early 1970s.
Tuesday 13 October, 6:20pm
Compressed Distances
Contending with oppression, violence, and dispossession, these four works embody acts of defiance and solidarity; some enacted up close, others from afar. As images narrow the gaps, kinships are formed.
Tuesday 13 October, 8:45pm
Az Zeeb
Discovering a cache of Super 8 home movies and photographs following the death of his grandmother, Chilean filmmaker Martín Seeger embarks on a personal journey through his family’s intertwined political histories.
Wednesday 14 October, 12pm
My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile
The second part of Julia Loktev’s epic documentary, detailing the persecution of journalists in Russia, follows her brave protagonists’ escape abroad following the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Wednesday 14 October, 6:40pm
Easter
Sekja, an ageing and charismatic Korean trans burlesque star, is front and centre in this glorious film about life.
Wednesday 14 October, 8:50pm
Rebellion
Revolution is the beat that drums through this electrifying story about the landmark case against the Bradford 12.
Thursday 15 October, 4pm
The Banning Curse
Iranian director Mohsen Amiryousefi discusses his eventful career with the Angel of Death in this hilarious cinematic autofiction about the highs and lows of radical filmmaking.
Thursday 15 October, 6:15pm
The Chorus that Carries
Resisting the enduring legacies of colonial violence and honoring those who continue to gather, speak and dream, these films transform acts of remembrance into radical forms of reclamation, solidarity and world-making.
Thursday 15 October, 8:30pm
Tracing Islands
These films invite reflection on places that remember, histories that persist, and cinema’s role in unearthing hidden relationships between ecology, extractive capitalism and collective survival.
Friday 16 October, 2:50pm
Dao
The new film by Alain Gomis is a formally inventive, politically attuned meditation on the enduring ties of the African diaspora, and the meaning of family and community.
Friday 16 October, 6:40pm
Let Them Be Seen
Nolitha Refilwe Mkulisi’s debut feature – a tender love letter to Tapoleng, her hometown in South Africa – offers an intimate evocation of a community in transition.
Friday 16 October, 8:40pm
Hanabi
Hanabi is a visceral cinematic adaptation of Yoko Hayasuke’s Journal of a Radioactive Brain, written in the aftermath of the Tōhoku earthquake and nuclear disaster.
Saturday 17 October, 1:30pm
Josephine
Winner of the Grand Jury Dramatic Prize at Sundance, this suspenseful and devastating film follows a child trying to navigate life after witnessing a sexual assault.
Saturday 17 October, 4:15pm
Experimenta Special Presentation
Shab-Nameh: Women of Iran’s Forgotten Left
Following a screening of her short Ghazal-e Sorkh, Jarman Award–winning artist Maryam Tafakory presents this live film performance, which explores erased histories of women’s political resistance in Iran.
Saturday 17 October, 6:20pm
Cadences of Resistance
Resisting the enduring legacies of colonial violence and honouring those who continue to gather, speak and dream, these films transform acts of remembrance into radical forms of reclamation, solidarity and world-making.
Saturday 17 October, 8:40pm
Act 3
The latest in Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s series of cinematic essays is a rich and thought-provoking journey through ageing, legacy and the intersection between artistic and personal relationships.
Sunday 18 October, 3:15pm
Reconstruction Sites
Invoking existing media and texts, alongside introspection and collaborative gestures, these five works intervene in structures that determine and shape meaning. Language, architecture, and filmic grammar are remade and re-experienced.
Sunday 18 October, 5:45pm
A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra
Jacqueline Lentzou follows Moon 66 Questions with this evocative and playful look into the life of a teenager who is completely unaware of the forces at play in her fate.
Sunday 18 October, 8pm
Minotaur
Andrey Zvyagintsev transposes Claude Chabrol’s La Femme infidèle to contemporary Russia, delivering a magnificent political allegory that dissects the mechanics of ego, violence and corruption.
