The 64th BFI London Film Festival (LFF) in partnership with American Express has today announced a programme of Screen Talks and events that will take place across the 12-day Festival period and free to access via YouTube and the BFI social channels.

Actors Riz Ahmed and Letitia Wright will join filmmakers Michel Franco, Miranda July, Tsai Ming-liang, Christian Petzold, musician and performer David Byrne and artist Es Devlin (as part of LFF Expanded), for a series of LFF Screen Talks offering audiences a unique opportunity to learn about the careers of these renowned creatives. . In addition to Screen Talks, the LFF will also host live salons and discussion events tackling subjects emerging from the films.

A series of in-depth talks will also take place virtually during the Festival designed to get audiences thinking and engaged in debate around the pressing issues explored in a number of the Festival titles this year: Anna Bogutskaya, the co-founder of horror film collective The Final Girls, leads a conversation exploring the female horror renaissance with some of the most exciting women working in horror today in THE FEMALE HORROR RENAISSANCE, presented by Sight & Sound.

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British filmmaker Yemi Bamiro, director of ONE MAN AND HIS SHOES, a documentary that tells the story of the phenomenon of Air Jordan sneakers, is joined by sneaker archivist Kish Kash and Jason Coles, author of Golden Kicks: The Shoes that Changed Sport, to discuss the film and explore the history and cultural significance of sneakers; and film critic Kaleem Aftab discuss issues of identity in the depiction of the British Asian experience with AFTER LOVE director Aleem Khan, Hardeep Pandhall (Happy Thuggish Paki) and Dawinder Bansal (Jambo Cinema).

The Festival will culminate in an LFF Audience Awards ceremony with the public taking the place of the Festival’s Official Jury. Viewers engaging with the Festival online will be invited to vote in four categories: Best Fiction Feature, Best Documentary Feature, Best Short Film, and Best XR.  The winners of the BFI London Film Festival 2020 Virtual LFF Audience Awards and The IWC Schaffhausen Filmmaker Bursary Award in association with the BFI will be revealed during the awards ceremony, which will be broadcast on Sunday 18 October at 19:00 on BFI YouTube and social channels.

The full programme of talks and events can be found here:  https://www.bfi.org.uk/explore-our-festivals/bfi-london-film-festival

The 64th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express is taking place from Wednesday 7th October-Sunday 18th October 2020. Over the twelve days the Festival will be its most accessible ever, presenting over 50 Virtual Premieres and a selection of highly-anticipated new feature film previews at BFI Southbank as well as in cinemas across the UK, offering audiences a unique chance to engage with the Festival in different ways.