BFI London Film Fest Posts 10-Year-High in Attendance, Unveils Audience Awards Winners
Across 12 days of screenings at the BFI London Film Festival, the event saw its highest in-person audience attendance in 10 years, organizers said on Monday.
The festival took place this year from Oct. 9-20 with a host of talent premiering or screening some of the year’s biggest movies, with Steve McQueen‘s Blitz, Sean Baker‘s Anora, Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice and John Crowley’s We Live in Time all getting air time at Royal Festival Hall.
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Universal’s The Wild Robot and LEGO Pharrell biopic Piece by Piece were among the animated highlights of the fest, which racked up an impressive audience of 230,342 people across the U.K. capital and beyond with features, series, shorts, immersive art and extended reality works through various LFF initiatives — an increase of 18 percent from 2023.
Screen Talks events included appearances from McQueen, Mike Leigh, Denis Villeneuve, Daniel Kaluuya, Zoe Saldana, and Lupita Nyong’o, who spoke candidly about their careers and more generally, the entertainment industry.
Occupancy across both free and paid-for in-person screenings and events at London venues increased to 92% this year, new data from the BFI LFF team reveals, with over 815 international and U.K. filmmakers, XR artists, and series creatives presenting their work in person.
The industry forum welcomed more than 3,000 delegates and 800-plus media were accredited to the LFF and attended press & industry screenings of 159 films.
BFI LFF director Kristy Matheson said: “Our biggest thanks go to the artists and industry colleagues from the UK and across the globe who fueled our collective curiosity this year. It was a delight to see audiences engage with each other and this program — proving once again the joy and comfort we all find in screen culture.”
The fest also revealed the winners of this year’s LFF Audience Awards, chosen by members of the public who caught the films in London and at U.K.-wide venues. Darren Thornton’s comedy-drama Four Mothers, about an Irish son juggling four very different mothers, won the audience award for best feature.
Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson’s Holloway, which follows six formerly incarcerated women at what was once the largest women’s prison in Europe, won the audience award for best documentary.
Jamie Benyon’s Two Minutes won the best short film honor for his tale about two brothers getting interrupted by their grandmother while robbing a store.
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