Five Film4-backed films confirmed for London Film Festival 2014

3 September 2014

 

Film4 is delighted that five of its titles have been confirmed for the 58th BFI London Film Festival, including three UK Premieres.

Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy and Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming both receive their European Premieres. Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, Yann Demange’s ’71 and Daniel Wolfe’s Catch Me Daddy all receive their UK Premieres at the festival.

Sameena Jabeen Ahmed (Actor, Catch Me Daddy) and Daniel Wolfe & Matthew Wolfe (Writers/Directors, Catch Me Daddy) are nominated for the Best British Newcomer Award.

Yann Demange (’71), Daniel Wolfe and Matthew Wolfe (Catch Me Daddy) and Debbie Tucker Green (Second Coming) are included in the First Feature Competition for The Sutherland Award. Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy features in Official Competition. Mr Turner will receive a Gala Screening.

Tessa Ross, Channel 4 Controller of Film and Drama, said: “It's wonderful for filmmakers to be invited to the London Film Festival and we're thrilled that Clare and her team have selected these great films. The festival has a tradition for backing visionary filmmaking, and this line-up reflects that, once again. We can’t wait for LFF audiences to discover them.”

This year’s London Film Festival runs 8-19th October.

 

The titles:

Peter Strickland’s eagerly anticipated follow up to Berberian Sound Studio and Katalin Varga explores the intense relationship between two women. The Duke of Burgundy is a dark melodrama about an amateur butterfly expert whose wayward desires test her lover's tolerance. Stars Sidse Babett Knudsen and Chiara d’Anna.

 

Debbie Tucker Green’s Second Coming follows a tight family unit navigating their way through family life as it breaks down in the aftermath of an unexplained pregnancy. Stars Nadine Marshall and Idris Elba.

 

Mr. Turner, written and directed by Mike Leigh, explores the last quarter century of the great, if eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner, played by Timothy Spall who won the Best Actor award for the role at the Cannes International Film Festival 2014. Profoundly affected by the death of his father, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady. Throughout, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.

 

A young British soldier, played by Jack O’Connell, is accidentally abandoned by his unit following a terrifying riot on the streets of Belfast in 1971 in Yann Demange’s ‘71. Unable to tell friend from foe, the raw recruit must survive the night alone and find his way to safety through a disorienting, alien and deadly landscape.

 

Daniel Wolfe’s Catch Me Daddy follows Laila, a girl on the run from her family who is hiding out in West Yorkshire with her drifter boyfriend Aaron. When her brother arrives in town with a gang of thugs in tow, she is forced to flee for her life and faces her darkest night.