Hirokazu Kore-eda, Carol Morley and Lili Horvát are among the directors in official competition at the London Film Festival (LFF).

Ten titles will compete, with the winner unveiled at the LFF Awards on Sunday October 18. Countries represented include the UK, Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan and Poland.

Kore-eda’s film Look Back, Morley’s 7 Miles Out and Horvát’s My Notes on Mars are among the films. The others are Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s Act 3, Benjamín Naishtat’s Glaxo, Sergei Loznitsa’s Imperium, Giovanni Tortorici’s Ketticé, Rubaiyat Hossain’s The Difficult Bride, Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s The Idiot(s), and May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown.

Full details on the films, which span genres from fiction to documentary, can be found below.

Films shortlisted for the festival’s other competitive categories, the Grierson Award for Best Documentary, the Sutherland Award for Best First Feature and the Short Film Award will be revealed in September. The winners will be chosen by LFF Awards Juries, who will be announced in the coming weeks.

“As we celebrate the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival, it’s an honour to have a number of alumni filmmakers represented in the Official Competition alongside those making their first appearance at the festival. Our 2026 competition selection brings an astounding array of filmmaking styles to the screen,” said Kristy Matheson, LFF Festival Director.

“As ever, it’s been creatively nourishing for myself and the team to encounter each of these works – we’re excited to share these with audiences in October.”

The LFF takes place from October 7-18, with the full September 2.

London Film Festival Official Competition Titles – captions supplied by LFF

7 MILES OUT (UK, Dir-Scr. Carol Morley)
Carol Morley (Dreams of a Life, The Falling) adapts her moving semi-autobiographical novel, which documents her adolescence in Stockport during the 70s and 80s. Morley’s film follows Anne, who struggles to come to terms with her beloved father’s suicide and finds escapism in the emerging of new-wave punk movement. Featuring a soundtrack that perfectly encapsulates the era, this intimate portrait also serves as an ode to friendship, youth and the discovery of one’s creativity, as Anne grapples with grief and healing while edging towards adulthood.

ACT 3 (Ireland-UK, Dir. Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor)
The latest in Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s series of cinematic essays is a rich and thought- provoking journey through aging, legacy and the intersection between artistic and personal relationships. Molloy and Lawlor (Baltimore, LFF 2023) engage in a witty and moving conversation that explores family history and their latest project, a film about groundbreaking artists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. As they analyse this decades-long relationship, they identify parallels between these two artists and their own lives. Act 3 celebrates the power of connection, of artistic exploration and the importance of memory to shape our present and future.

GLAXO (Brazil-Argentina, Dir. Benjamín Naishtat)
An act of betrayal between a close group of friends has terrible consequences in Benjamín Naishtat’s atmospheric period-noir thriller. Four young men in the provincial Argentine city of Chivilcoy find their lives disrupted when a retired police officer and his glamorous young wife move into the area. Add two visiting American Mormons into the mix, along with a volatile political situation, and tensions soon escalate. Pitch-perfect performances and a lush score by Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi further distinguish Naishtat’s impressively taut drama.

IMPERIUM (Germany-France-Italy-Lithuania, Dir. Sergei Loznitsa)
Archival footage master filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa reframes Soviet history once again, via the revealing gaze of Italian cameramen who captured life there in the early 1970s. The footage Loznitsa uncovered at Rome’s Audiovisual Archive of the Labour and Democratic Movement left him marvelling at the contrast with official Soviet productions from the same era. Opening in Moscow, the film shifts into territories where different traits, beliefs and ethnographic features emerge, revealing the power relations between natives and colonisers. The result is a compelling indictment of Russia’s historical and present-day imperialism.

KETTICÈ (Italy, Dir. Giovanni Tortorici)
Following his debut with Diciannove (LFF 2024), Giovanni Tortorici continues his collaboration with producer Luca Guadagnino on this vibrant coming-of-age story, set in early 2000s Palermo. Giulio, a dissatisfied 16-year-old, drifts through life with no enthusiasm for his education or his future, much to his family’s dismay (particularly his endlessly frustrated mother, brilliantly played by Monica Bellucci). Ketticè articulately explores the challenges of adolescence, the generational divide and the expectations placed on Giulio by the adults as he and his friends attempt to escape the monotony of their daily existence.

LOOK BACK (Japan, Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Spanning more than a decade, Hirokazu Koreeda’s tender coming-of-age story follows two girls who bond over their passion for and dream of becoming manga artists. Fujino, a gifted artist and aspiring manga artist, meets Kymoto, a shy admirer of her work. Seemingly opposites, they create the perfect team with their shared love of the form. But as their work draws praise and attention, they find themselves confronted with decisions that threaten their artistic collaboration. Koreeda’s beautiful love letter to friendship and the creative process offers keen insight into the craft.

MY NOTES ON MARS (Hungary-Austria, Dir. Lili Horvát)

In Lili Horvát’s beguiling third feature, the sudden return of Sam’s missing wife, who has no memory of anything except her scientific research, gives their relationship another chance. A talented scientist goes missing while hiking with her husband. Weeks later, she reappears at the family home but is not herself; all memories, save for those of her recent research on Mars, have mysteriously disappeared. This suspenseful domestic drama follows the couple as they navigate a second chance at life together, while questioning how much we can really know those we love.

THE DIFFICULT BRIDE (France-Bangladesh-Portugal-Norway-Germany, Dir. Rubaiyat Hossain)
A bride-to-be wrestles with beauty rituals, social restrictions and supernatural forces as her dream wedding approaches, in this gripping feminist body horror from Bangladesh. Zaineen is very excited about her upcoming wedding. But she soon bristles under the many planned makeovers intended to make her thinner, fairer, sleeker and more bride-like. Resistance takes root in her body, and she experiences strange changes and omens. Filmmaker Rubaiyat Hossain crafts a taut supernatural drama that dissects the patriarchy hiding beneath the veneer of a fairytale wedding.

THE IDIOT(S) (UK, Dir. Malgorzata Szumowska, Michal Englert)
Aimee Lou Wood and Johnny Flynn are superb as Anna and Fyodor Dostoevsky in Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert’s acerbic and joyful period film. Anna Dostoevsky loves her husband Fyodor. Fyodor loves his wife, but he also loves gambling and booze. Living in self-exile in Germany, Fyodor’s biggest obstacle to creative progress is himself. Anna tries desperately to rid him of his procrastination so he can deliver a new novel and they can avoid destitution. Sending up the myth of the male genius, The Idiots is also a beautiful love story about the writer and the wife that saved him.

WOMAN UNKNOWN (Denmark-Latvia-Sweden, Dir. May el-Toukhy)
Marie, a young nanny and housemaid, is about to marry the wealthy older widower, Christian, for whom she is working. But Marie guards a shameful secret. During World War II, she was in an intimate relationship with a German soldier. Now Marie’s past threatens to catch up with her, and she is forced to do everything in her power to preserve her new status as lady of the house in post-war anarchy.

Bleiberg Entertainment will be selling worldwide rights at the TIFF market to historical drama People of The Book, we can reveal.

Directed by Michael Haussman (Edge of the World), and based on the book of the same name written by Pulitzer prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks, filming has recently wrapped in the Valencia region of Spain, including at Ciudad de la Luz in Alicante, and in Trieste and Venice in Italy.

The film “tracks the creation and survival of a sacred religious artifact across 500 years, weaving back and forth between a series of interconnected chapters that span across several centuries and countries including pre and post inquisition Spain, 17th century Venice, Nazi occupied Bosnia and a contemporary narrative focusing on an Iraqi refugee family’s harrowing escape journey from ISIS held Mosul to safety in Europe”.

Adapted for the screen by Oscar-nominated Petter Skavlan (Kon-Tiki), the film is produced by Miriam Segal (The Infiltrator) and marks the first project for Good Films Studios Spain, the joint venture between the Spanish government, Canadian-U.S. outfit Orogen Media and Segal’s Good Films.

Earlier this summer the Spanish government’s investment company SETT (Spanish Society for Technological Transformation) made two remarkable investments worth a combined €40M in production companies Ítaca Films Madrid and Good Films Studios Spain based in Alicante.

Ítaca Films Madrid received €20m to create a Spanish arm of Mexico’s Grupo Ítaca, to produce 26 film and TV productions worth a combined €419m over the next 10 years. Good Films Studios Spain, a public-private initiative overseen by Segal, also got €20M to develop, finance, produce and sell mid-sized international productions budgeted at between €17m and €25m. The plan is to shoot 20 films at Ciudad de la Luz over the next decade, beginning with People of The Book.

Cast on the project includes Ziad Bakri, Rania Ben Fattoum, Ankido Hussen, Luca Ferrini, Giorgia Sinicorni, Pasquale Esposito and Jose Luis Ferrier.

HODs include Oscar-winning make-up artist Julie Dartnell (Les Misérables), Spanish production designer, Edou Hydallgo, and costume designer Cristina Sopeña, as well as DOP Diego Romero. The film is projected to be completed by the end of the year and the filmmakers aim to debut at one of the major international film festivals in 2027.

Bleiberg Entertainment will be presenting the film at the TIFF market and showing first footage for buyers. Negotiations for the sales attachment were handled by Ariel and Ehud Bleiberg for Bleiberg Entertainment and by Miriam Segal for Good Films Collective.

“This has been one of the most challenging projects I have ever developed and produced. It has been an extraordinary journey, over many years. I am enterally grateful for the opportunity to bring this incredible, resonant, truly cinematic, epic narrative to the screen,” said Segal, also know for producing recent political drama War Of Words.

“When I read this script and understood the scope and ambition of the entire project and the way GOOD films planned to bring it to life with the whole new operation in Spain, I told everyone on our team that we had to be a part of it, no matter what. To be involved with such a universally profound, artistic film like this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and I think buyers, critics and audiences alike will recognize its potential,” added Ariel Bleiberg, Head of Acquisition and Development for Bleiberg.

The official competition lineup of the 70^th edition of the BFI London Film Festival (LFF) is set, with organizers unveiling the 10 movies that will vie for the best film award.  

The titles make for an international lineup of filmmakers, with 10 countries represented, including the U.K., Ireland, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, and Poland.

“This year’s official competition explores an incredible range of storytelling, from a wide range of voices and styles, spanning fiction to documentary, from post-war Europe to Dhaka, Japan and beyond,” organizers said.  

The competition program includes the world premiere of Carol Morley’s (Dreams of a Life) new feature, 7 Miles Out, the film adaptation of her novel of the same name. Based on her own troubled adolescence following her father’s suicide, the novel tells the story of Anne, who, after losing her father in tragic circumstances, finds solace – and trouble – in the Manchester music scene of the 1970s and 1980s.

The LFF 2026 competition lineup also includes such international filmmakers as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Sergei Loznitsa, Lili Horvát, Benjamín Naishtat, Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, Giovanni Tortorici, Malgorzata Szumowska, May el-Toukhy and Michal Englert, as well as Rubaiyat Hossain. Various of the titles will world premiere at Venice or Toronto before touching down at London.

Established in 2009, the BFI London Film Festival’s best film award previously went to the likes of Jacques Audiard for A Prophet, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail in 2024, and Landmarks by Lucrecia Martel in 2025.  

“As we celebrate the 70th edition of the BFI London Film Festival, it’s an honor to have a number of alumni filmmakers represented in the official competition alongside those making their first appearance at the festival,” said Kristy Matheson, BFI London Film Festival director. “Our 2026 competition selection brings an astounding array of filmmaking styles to the screen. As ever, it’s been creatively nourishing for myself and the team to encounter each of these works – we’re excited to share these with audiences in October.”

LFF 2026 takes place Oct. 7-Oct. 18. The full festival program will be revealed on Sept. 2.

Check out the 10 films in the LFF 2026 official competition below.

7 Miles Out (UK, Dir. Carol Morley)  

Act 3 (Ireland-UK, Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor)  

Glaxo (Brazil-Argentina, Dir. Benjamín Naishtat)  

Imperium (Germany-France-Italy-Lithuania, Dir. Sergei Loznitsa)  

Ketticè (Italy, Dir. Giovanni Tortorici)  

Look Back (Japan, Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda)  

My Notes on Mars (Hungary-Austria, Lili Horvát)  

The Difficult Bride (France-Bangladesh-Portugal-Norway-Germany, Rubaiyat Hossain)  

The Idiot(s) (UK-Poland, Dir. Malgorzata Szumowska, Michal Englert)  

Woman Unknown (Denmark-Latvia-Sweden, Dir. May el-Toukhy)