BFI London Film Festival: The World’s Grandest Popcorn Diplomacy Show

BFI London Film Festival: One More Glittering Mirage in the Wreckage of the World
By our man in the press pen, nursing a lukewarm prosecco and existential dread.

London, mid-October—when the Thames smells faintly of diesel and the last of the empire’s optimism is auctioned off in NFT form—rolls out its annual crimson carpet for the BFI London Film Festival. Across twelve days, 160-odd features from 67 countries compete for the affection of critics already drafting their “disappointed but not surprised” tweets. If you stand on the Southbank long enough, you can hear the whirr of global soft-power generators humming in unison, each premiere a tiny diplomatic summit with popcorn.

The festival’s official line is “discovery, diversity, dialogue.” Translation: we’ve discovered that diversity sells, and dialogue is cheaper than subtitles. Still, the program is undeniably cosmopolitan. Senegal offers a ghost story about debt collectors; South Korea delivers a romantic comedy set in a cryptocurrency mine; Canada, ever the polite apocalypse, premieres a climate-crisis musical performed entirely by taxidermied beavers. Each film arrives freighted with its nation’s anxieties, like emotional duty-free.

For the British Film Institute itself, the stakes are existential. Post-Brexit funding is tighter than a Wes Anderson waistcoat, and the government’s idea of cultural support is a commemorative stamp. So the LFF becomes both shop window and panic room: wooing Netflix scouts with free gin, while quietly praying that the next Ken Loach isn’t priced out by, well, Netflix. Meanwhile, the Americans—who else?—swagger in with three mega-budget streamer titles nobody asked for but everybody will watch on the toilet. Soft power, hard stool.

The international press corps, a diaspora of caffeine addicts in identical black raincoats, treat the festival like speed-dating for geopolitics. “What does this Kurdish coming-of-age fable say about EU enlargement?” someone asks earnestly at 9 a.m., already drunk. We all scribble, pretending art still moves the needle, while outside the NFT barriers, actual needles move quite a lot of other things.

And yet—because cynicism must occasionally pay rent—there are moments when the circus stumbles into revelation. An Iranian director, banned at home, Skypes in from an undisclosed location; the Q&A freezes on her tear-streaked grin, and 300 strangers hold their breath like teenagers caught shoplifting sincerity. A Ukrainian short, shot on a thermal-imaging drone, ends with a silent minute for a shelled cinema in Mariupol. Nobody checks their phone; the algorithm, for once, is speechless.

Back in the marketplace—yes, there is a literal film market, capitalism’s answer to the agora—sales agents flog remake rights like carpet hawkers. “Nigerian noir with Franco-Chinese co-pro potential!” one barks, waving a glossy one-sheet. A German buyer yawns, already calculating how many tax credits fit inside a human soul. Everyone speaks English, the lingua franca of dreams discounted for bulk.

By day nine, the jet-lagged jury emerges blinking into daylight, clutching the Golden Lion or Bear or Walrus—honestly, who can keep track? Their verdict will boost one filmmaker’s GDP more effectively than any World Bank loan, while the remaining 159 entries shuffle back to streaming purgatory. The winners toast at a pop-up champagne bar sponsored by a Gulf airline currently bombing one of the runners-up’s hometowns. Irony, like plastic, is forever.

And then, suddenly, it’s closing night. The carpet is rolled up, the Instagram geotags expire, and London remembers it still hasn’t fixed the NHS. But somewhere in Lagos or Lima or Lahore, a kid who pirated the festival feed decides to pick up a camera instead of a rock. That, in the end, may be the only global ripple the LFF reliably produces—small, defiant, and impossible to monetize. Which is probably why it feels like hope, even to us jaded hacks clutching our empty glasses, waiting for the next apocalypse to drop.

Cut to black. Roll credits over footage of unpaid interns sweeping up the glitter.