As expected, the London Film Festival gave the UK the first proper taste of every big player in this year’s awards season that’s already premiered as well as throwing a few exclusives of its own. Consequently, our monitoring chart has experienced a big shake-up, signalled by the arrival of the three clear leads in the race until now: ‘Gravity’; “12 Years A Slave” and “Captain Phillips”, as well as the latest works from the Coen Brothers; Stephen Frears and Ashgar Farhadi, also likely to earn many a nomination. With such a incredibly packed programme we had to give some other equally resonating works a miss, among them ‘Saving Mr. Banks’; ‘Nebraska’; “All Is Lost’ and the Cannes Palme D’or winner “Blue is The Warmest Colour’, soon to be released in our screens.
Next to the big names, the festival was also a good showcase for some of the International submissions for the Academy’s Foreign Language Oscar. As well as Iran’s already mentioned choice, Farhadi’s ‘The Past’; other favourites in this category are Chile’s ‘Gloria’; Mexico’s ‘Heli’; Romania’s “Child Pose’; Cambodia’s ‘The Missing Picture’ or Palestine’s ‘Omar’.
We could make a third group of films composed mainly by arthouse gems not specially aiming at award recognition, but nevertheless likely to feature among the critics’ end of the year selections. Our favourites were such well received films as ‘The Selfish Giant’; ‘Like Father, Like Son’; ‘Strangers by the Lake’; festival winners ‘Ida’ and ‘My Fathers, My Mother & Me’; US Indies ‘Short Term 12’ and ‘The Spectacular Now’. All of them help reassure we are heading for another twelve months of excellent cinema.
Check the full updated list here: