Pro­gram­mers Picks from the 2019 BFI Lon­don Film Festival

These days everyone’s a crit­ic, but not all crit­ics are the same. The BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val pro­gram­mers, for exam­ple, cer­tain­ly have firm, well ground­ed views on cin­e­ma root­ed in broad view­ing expe­ri­ence and advi­so­ry exper­tise, but their par­tic­u­lar cri­te­ria also offer insights not just on the films them­selves, but on the Festival’s prin­ci­ples of selec­tion. Best of all, they are in the priv­i­leged posi­tion of hav­ing (col­lec­tive­ly) seen the full pro­gramme, unlike the rest of us. LWLies is grate­ful to the 13 pro­gram­mers who have con­tributed these recommendations.

There is some­thing pro­found­ly dis­arm­ing about this debut fea­ture from Michel Franco’s reg­u­lar pro­duc­er David Zonana. On sur­face lev­el, it begins as a social real­ist dra­ma look­ing at the after­math of a con­struc­tion site acci­dent that deprives plas­ter­er Fran­cis­co (or ​‘Pacheco’ as he is known) of his broth­er Clau­dio. Frus­trat­ed in his attempts to get prop­er com­pen­sa­tion from his employ­ers for the neg­li­gence that result­ed in his sibling’s death, he opts for a left-field strat­e­gy that shifts the nar­ra­tive (and indeed the film) in a sharply dif­fer­ent direc­tion. The para­ble that ensues – a study of greed, class and social inequal­i­ties – proves an unnerv­ing con­tem­pla­tion of humanity’s dark­er side imbued with a sly Buñuelian moral ambi­gu­i­ty that recalls Los Olvidados.

A shout out also for Lucio Castro’s Argen­tine debut End of the Cen­tu­ry – a queer love sto­ry with a dif­fer­ence that had me long­ing to watch it all over again as soon as the cred­its had rolled. Maria Del­ga­do

Arguably the finest fea­ture so far by Brazil­ian direc­tor Karim Aïnouz, this was, for me, one of the high­lights of this year’s Cannes film fes­ti­val, and cer­tain­ly the most emo­tion­al­ly affect­ing movie I saw there. About two sis­ters – extreme­ly close despite their very dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties – who dream of escap­ing the strait-laced world of 1950s Rio but are sud­den­ly sep­a­rat­ed by a com­bi­na­tion of fate and fam­i­ly prej­u­dice, the film pro­ceeds in stages by chron­i­cling the let­ters they send one anoth­er. By a cru­el twist, their updat­ing mes­sages go unread and unan­swered, so that the sib­lings remain whol­ly unaware that they are still, unex­pect­ed­ly, liv­ing in the same city.

Though the sto­ry (adapt­ed from a nov­el by Martha Batal­ha) has the poten­tial for lurid melo­dra­ma, Aïnouz wise­ly opts for sub­tle irony and nuance, ensur­ing that it all remains both cred­i­ble and utter­ly engross­ing. A cel­e­bra­tion of sis­ter­ly loy­al­ties in a pro­found­ly patri­ar­chal soci­ety, it grips from spir­it­ed begin­ning to deeply mov­ing end. Geoff Andrew

Screen­ing as the Trea­sures from the Archive restora­tion in the Exper­i­men­ta strand is Maria Klonaris and Kate­ri­na Thomadaki’s Unheim­lich II: Astar­ti, made in 1980. The name is derived from the Ger­man word for ​‘uncan­ny’ (as used by Freud), and the Greek name for the god­dess Ishtar, the ancient Mesopotami­an deity asso­ci­at­ed with love, beau­ty, desire, war, jus­tice and polit­i­cal pow­er. It is an exquis­ite mytho-poet­ic film that is a re-enact­ment of ancient female arche­types as an inves­ti­ga­tion into the mean­ing of ethics and rela­tion­ships, tak­ing us into a trance-like jour­ney in the hyp­not­ic depths of where cre­ation began.

If you know the films of Maya Deren you will have an idea of the expe­ri­ence. As we are all fac­ing an uncer­tain future, a med­i­ta­tion on the mean­ings of the fem­i­nine and a rethink­ing of eth­i­cal rela­tion­ships could not be more pre­scient. The film itself has been painstak­ing­ly restored by the CNC in Paris from the orig­i­nal Super 8 film into daz­zling 2K dig­i­tal – a kind of rebirth in itself. Helen de Witt

Coup 53 is a grip­ping inves­ti­ga­tion into ​‘Oper­a­tion Ajax’ – the CIA/MI6 led coup that over­threw Iran’s demo­c­ra­t­ic Prime Min­is­ter Mossadegh, cru­cial­ly end­ing his most sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy: the nation­al­i­sa­tion of Iran­ian oil. Any­one with an inter­est in con­tem­po­rary pol­i­tics and the shape of the world today should see this film. For those of us who know the sto­ry of this piv­otal polit­i­cal event all too well, the film packs an emo­tion­al punch – for, though the Coup isn’t an unknown sto­ry, it has fall­en vic­tim to the colo­nial amne­sia at which Britain in par­tic­u­lar excels.

Work­ing along­side vet­er­an edi­tor Wal­ter Murch (Apoc­a­lypse Now, The Eng­lish Patient), award-win­ning doc­u­men­tar­i­an Taghi Ami­rani has spent a decade relent­less­ly chal­leng­ing the secre­cy shroud­ing the events of August 1953. Mas­ter­ful sto­ry­telling makes this a taut and thrilling watch, but the del­i­cate nature of doc­u­men­tary ethics are also addressed, rais­ing ques­tions not just of pow­er, but of who gets to tell the sto­ries that become known as ​‘his­to­ry’. Elhum Shak­er­i­far

Ben­ni is a so-called ​“sys­tem crash­er” who exas­per­ates Germany’s child and wel­fare sys­tem. She dreams of noth­ing more than being reunit­ed with her over­strained moth­er, but instead is tossed from one fos­ter home to the next because of her vio­lent behav­iour. The strik­ing per­for­mance of nine-year-old Hele­na Zen­gel is mind-blow­ing, her aggres­sion, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and deter­mi­na­tion painful­ly real. This is pink pow­er punk of rare emo­tion­al inten­si­ty alter­nat­ing between anger, sad­ness and hope.

Sys­tem Crash­er has just been vot­ed Germany´s Oscar entry, mak­ing its writer/​director Nora Fin­gschei­dt a (well-deserved) sur­prise star. Her deeply mov­ing por­trait of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of child­hood chal­lenges con­ven­tion­al atti­tudes towards inno­cence and sys­tems of sup­port, as she coura­geous­ly tack­les this top­ic with a cap­ti­vat­ing nar­ra­tive, shin­ing a neon light on a uni­ver­sal top­ic. Juliane Grieb

Rod­ney Ascher’s air­tight VHS [sic] essay about exe­cu­tion­er-hood­ed Seat­tle hel­lion El Duce is arguably an even greater achieve­ment than his cult Kubrick doc­u­men­tary Room 237, since most peo­ple are famil­iar with The Shin­ing where­as The El Duce Tapes some­how makes rel­e­vant to 2019 a for­lorn provo­ca­teur who was mar­gin­al by even the sub-sub­cul­tur­al stan­dards of the pre-Nir­vana punk/​metal underground.

You don’t need pri­or knowl­edge: Asch­er and co-direc­tor David Lawrence pro­vide musi­cal con­text through con­cise cap­tions. Their pri­ma­ry visu­al source is the aston­ish­ing video archive amassed by day­time soap actor Ryan Sex­ton, who spent much of ¹⁹⁹⁰⁄₉₁ film­ing the singer born Eldon Hoke plus his odd­ball group The Men­tors. A book­ish bassist says that they began as jazz-fusion nerds but then devolved as a ​“con­scious sell-out” to cap­i­talise on white male teenagers’ misog­y­ny, racism and homo­pho­bia. The band’s dancer ref­er­ences NWA and you believe her; El Duce’s pok­er-faced artis­tic pose sort of demands a spot of inflam­ma­to­ry rhetoric.

Sounds odd, I know, but instead of being offend­ed you feel sad­ly nos­tal­gic for a pre-social media age when such trolling could still be deployed as a (dubi­ous) sub­ver­sive strat­e­gy to bait con­ser­v­a­tive hyp­ocrites, rather than fuel for actu­al big­ots. Back then, the con­se­quences of play­ing with ​‘shock rock’ fire didn’t stretch fur­ther than an episode of Jer­ry Springer, along­side cud­dly toi­let met­al heroes GWAR. A por­trait that smart­ly nev­er pleads its subject’s case, intrigu­ing­ly com­pli­cat­ed by the way that alco­holism blurs the line between a cal­cu­lat­ed masked per­sona and a trag­ic per­son­al­i­ty that just won’t come off. Man­ish Agarwal

Fol­low­ing his award win­ning debut at Cannes with Close­ness in 2017, Kan­temir Balagov’s sec­ond fea­ture con­firms him as one of the most dis­tinc­tive of the young Russ­ian film direc­tors. Inspired by Svet­lana Alexievich’s book The Unwom­an­ly Face of War – which com­pris­es inter­views with female sur­vivors of World War Two – he focus­es on the intense rela­tion­ship, con­veyed with unusu­al depth and con­vic­tion, between trau­ma­tised Iya and her friend Masha in the after­math of the siege of Leningrad.

Balagov’s objec­tive was to show ​‘the con­se­quences of war in their faces and eyes’. A for­mer stu­dent of Alexan­der Sokurov (Russ­ian Ark), his strik­ing recon­struc­tion of post-war Leningrad and its psy­cho­log­i­cal aura makes pow­er­ful use of colour with evoca­tive and painter­ly com­po­si­tions. Peter Hames

When was the last time you got the per­spec­tive of a jinn on changes in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates? Well, the ancient and wise Moth­er of Fire (Um Al Naar) should know. Sum­moned by the pro­duc­ers of a real­i­ty TV doc­u­men­tary, she is con­fes­sion­al and chat­ty, with the poten­tial to run her own spin-off, ​‘House-jinns of Ras Al Khaimah’. Hor­ri­bly averse to change, she does how­ev­er have some rea­son­able long­stand­ing issues with exor­cists and colo­nial­ism, the lat­ter from cen­turies of Euro­pean med­dling along the silk route.

Artist Farah Al Qasimi’s play­ful medi­um-length film is more than just enter­tain­ing, it’s about the ways that the UAE under­stands, presents and pre­serves its own his­to­ries and cul­ture. How might the mis­un­der­stood jinn and the notion of haunt­ing res­onate with con­tem­po­rary con­cerns about spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, women’s pol­i­tics and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty? Sarah Perks

This is a sur­pris­ing and deeply strange doc­u­men­tary – in a bril­liant way. At its heart is the rela­tion­ship between Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Lau­rent and the del­i­cate ecosys­tem Pierre rig­or­ous­ly main­tains to allow Yves to flour­ish. Direc­tor Olivi­er Mey­rou con­struct­ed this from years of obser­va­tion­al footage he began shoot­ing in the 90s, but then put on hold due to a legal limbo.

So much more than a straight­for­ward fash­ion doc, it feels like the inspi­ra­tion for the pecu­liar­i­ty and twist­ed pow­er dynam­ics of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phan­tom Thread. Exper­i­men­tal sound design by François-Eudes Chan­frault cre­ates com­pelling dis­so­nance, as mod­els glide ele­gant­ly through the cor­ri­dors of the YSL fash­ion house, enveloped in an unnerv­ing whis­per­ing sound­track. Mey­rou has described how the score was an attempt to recre­ate the atmos­phere they felt dur­ing shoot­ing and the film embod­ies that force. Defy­ing biopic con­ven­tions, this unfolds hyp­not­i­cal­ly through mood and ten­sions. Sophie Brown.

Atmos­pher­i­cal­ly shot on 16mm film, this is an inti­mate account of love and friend­ship in a com­plex, con­tra­dic­to­ry world. We fol­low a group of young peo­ple as they come of age, mov­ing from a swel­ter­ing, care­free sum­mer to an unfor­giv­ing win­ter in the tiny post-Sovi­et break­away repub­lic of Transnis­tria. Most peo­ple would strug­gle to find this coun­try on a map – a nar­row strip of land lying between Moldo­va and Ukraine that has a total pop­u­la­tion of only 555,000 and still has the ham­mer and sick­le on its nation­al flag.

What’s so spe­cial and engag­ing about Anna Eborn’s film is the way she shows us that how­ev­er remote and exot­ic the loca­tion, teenagers have much the same con­cerns the world over – love, iden­ti­ty, hopes and dreams. At a time when glob­al pol­i­tics seems pre­oc­cu­pied with stress­ing nation­al dif­fer­ences, this film suc­ceeds in putting our com­mon human­i­ty into beau­ti­ful focus. Chris­tine Bardsley

Fyzal Bouli­fa is refresh­ing­ly unflinch­ing in depict­ing com­plex work­ing class char­ac­ters in his strik­ing debut fea­ture. Where tra­di­tion­al British social real­ist cin­e­ma can some­times lean too hard into didac­ti­cism, pre­sent­ing blame­less and two-dimen­sion­al­ly angel­ic char­ac­ters, Bouli­fa instead presents a set of ful­ly fledged human beings who are both deeply sym­pa­thet­ic vic­tims of cir­cum­stance and capa­ble of immense cru­el­ty and ignorance.

Set on a name­less estate where young moth­ers Lynn (Rox­anne Scrimshaw) and Lucy (Nichola Bur­ley) have been friends their whole lives, a tragedy sets in motion a series of events that severe­ly tests their bond, bring­ing out fears and resent­ments in the com­mu­ni­ty around them. This arrest­ing and beau­ti­ful­ly per­formed film, ele­gant­ly shot in 4:3 acad­e­my ratio, man­ages the trick of tran­scend­ing its kitchen sink aes­thet­ic and slice-of-life sce­nario to deliv­er some­thing akin to a mod­ern moral­i­ty play.

With­out easy answers or res­o­lu­tions, the film presents the thorni­est of ​‘what if?’ sce­nar­ios, con­fronting us with a taut thriller of bad choic­es, mis­un­der­stand­ings and esca­lat­ing social unrest. It is tru­ly excit­ing to see Bouli­fa join the ranks of British film­mak­ers Fran­cis Lee, Hope Dick­son Leach and Daniel Koko­ta­j­lo, who with skill and sen­si­tiv­i­ty have man­aged to expand upon and tran­scend tired British film gen­res and tropes. Paul Ridd

Talky, sharp and shame­less – I rec­om­mend Heart for those who dig their low-bud­get cin­e­ma slow, slight, and as like­ly to alien­ate as delight. While debates may rage about mil­len­ni­al women and rep­re­sen­ta­tions of abjec­tion, South Kore­an writer-direc­tor Jeong Ga-young is busy cre­at­ing her own one-woman genre (home­wreck­ing mum­blecore? K‑squirm?).

Fol­low­ing Bitch on the Beach and Hit the Night, this is the third film in which she stars as the aspir­ing film­mak­er most like­ly to steal your boyfriend for kicks. In Heart, her char­ac­ter is in a pen­sive mood, keen to drunk­en­ly kick back with a mar­ried ex-para­mour to rem­i­nisce on their fling in the hope he’ll give her advice on her lat­est roman­tic obses­sion. But is she there to shock? To seduce? Or to get at some­thing deep­er? Join me, fel­low con­nois­seurs of cringe, in mak­ing Jeong’s cin­e­ma your next infat­u­a­tion. Kate Tay­lor

The Trai­tor is a gang­ster film – a Sicil­ian mafia epic, no less – but sur­pris­ing­ly one from ven­er­at­ed and ven­er­a­ble Ital­ian mae­stro Mar­co Bel­loc­chio whose work is typ­i­cal­ly far from the tropes of genre filmmaking.

On the one hand Bel­loc­chio drama­tis­es, in biopic fash­ion, the glo­be­trot­ting true sto­ry of mob boss Tom­ma­so Buscetta who became the first ever senior Camor­ra mem­ber to turn gov­ern­ment informer. This is replete with all the plea­sures of the genre at its best: hand­some­ly mount­ed, dra­mat­ic, often vio­lent action, intense Machi­avel­lian plot shifts and grotesque, com­pelling char­ac­ters. But – and it’s a big but – Bellocchio’s vision, in what may be his most ambi­tious film, is to use all this as a basis to also ren­der an unfor­get­table, com­plex por­trait of con­tem­po­rary Ital­ian social his­to­ry with bravu­ra, insight­ful film­mak­ing. Unmiss­able. Adri­an Wootton

The 63^rd LFF runs 2 – 13 Octo­ber. For full pro­gramme info head to bfi​.org​.uk/lff