Widows (dir Steve McQueen)
After his Oscar-winning drama 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen boldly takes a new tack with this much-acclaimed heist thriller based on Lynda La Plante’s 1980s TV drama. Viola Davis leads a cracking cast, leading an all-female crew finishing the job their dead husbands left undone.
The Favourite (dir Yorgos Lanthimos)
Yorgos Lanthimos has enjoyed so much international success that it hardly makes sense to talk about him getting his mojo back. But The Favourite returns him to that dizzying surrealist comedy with which he first made his name. Olivia Colman gives a glorious performance as Queen Anne in this post-Restoration romp.
Out of Blue (dir Carol Morley)
Here is a movie straight out of left field: a metaphysical noir starring Patricia Clarkson as a tough New Orleans cop investigating the mysterious death of an astrophysicist, based on the Martin Amis novel Night Train. Director Carol Morley is such a restlessly creative film-maker.
Peterloo (dir Mike Leigh)
Mike Leigh’s stark, cerebral, austerely focused film about the Peterloo massacre of 1819 couldn’t be more topical: it is about a squalid event that speaks of official cruelty and arrogance. This is a deeply intelligent film about talk as much as action, and it richly rewards the investment of attention.
Happy as Lazzaro (dir Alice Rohrwacher)
One of the most gorgeous and beguiling films at the festival, a lovely magic-realist fable set among an exploited peasant community who appear to be living in the 19th century, yet this is misleading. Among them is the happy idiot boy Lazzaro, who, like his namesake, is destined to be mysteriously reborn.
In Fabric (dir Peter Strickland)
Marianne Jean-Baptiste stars in this latest rapturous exotic walk on the wild side from Peter Strickland, whose The Duke of Burgundy was a mysterious adventure in erotic role play. Jean-Baptiste is Sheila, who goes to a strange departure store to get a dress for a date and enters a new world of sensual connoisseurship.
The Fight (dir Jessica Hynes)
Award-winning actor and comedian Jessica Hynes has come up with something startling and intriguing. She directs and stars in this drama about a woman with many concerns in her busy life, so decides to hit back at life’s worries – by getting into boxing.
If Beale Street Could Talk (dir. Barry Jenkins)
Barry Jenkins, whose Moonlight won the best picture Oscar just two years ago, now returns with this impassioned adaptation of James Baldwin’s 1974 novel. It is a story of love and injustice in 1970s Harlem, when a young man is falsely accused of rape and his pregnant girlfriend must prove his innocence. Watch the first trailer here.
Roma (dir Alfonso Cuarón)
Everyone has been talking about Alfonso Cuarón’s creative return to his homeland; it’s a film based on his own upbringing in an embattled upper middle-class household in Mexico City in 1971, a place on the verge of social eruption. The action centres on the life of their maid – a wonderful performance from Yalitza Aparicio.
Been So Long (dir Tinge Krishnan)
Something pleasingly appropriate for the London film festival – a musical romance, set on the streets of Camden, in north London, by director Tinge Krishnan, whose first feature was the tough Junkhearts. Michaela Coel plays Simone, who discovers the power of love and music.
