BFI London Film Festival announces 2014 dates

The BFI London Film Festival has announced that its 58th edition will run from 8-19 October 2014 at venues across the capital. Submissions for both Feature and Short Film also opened today.

The 2013 Festival, which included 22 world premieres, 13 International and 29 European premieres, was widely regarded as an outstanding line-up. Many LFF 2013 gala presentations have emerged as the year’s most celebrated films, including four of the five BAFTA nominations for Best Film – 12 Years a Slave and Captain Phillips both of which had European Premieres at LFF, while Gravity and Philomena had UK premieres in high profile positions. There are also 16 films with Oscar® nominations from the LFF 2013 programme, cementing the Festival’s strategic position in the Award season calendar and capitalising on the city’s high population of BAFTA and AMPAS members.

The 2013 addition, which opened with the European premiere of Captain Phillips and closed with the World premiere of Saving Mr Banks attracted audiences of 151,000 across a footprint of 20 screens across the UK’s capital, showing 235 fiction and documentary features from 74 countries, with more than 600 filmmakers attending to present their work. The opening and closing night films were also beamed into 50 cinemas across the UK with live highlights from red carpet arrivals of Paul Greengrass, Tom Hanks for Captain Phillips and John Lee Hancock, Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell and Ruth Wilson for Saving Mr Banks. These screenings reached a further 11,200 people.

Feature and short films for the 2014 edition can be submitted through the BFI London Film Festival website at www.bfi.org.uk/lff with the final deadline for shorts on 13 June 2014 and for features on 20 June 2014.