66th BFI LFF announces venues and programme structure

Following a hugely successful 2021 edition of the BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express, the BFI has confirmed it will retain the Festival format developed over the past two years for 2022, allowing the LFF to reach audiences across the UK.

Alongside the iconic flagship venue BFI Southbank, the LFF will continue its partnership with the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall to ensure that London’s South Bank retains its position at the heart of the film festival experience.

Additional 5 London venue partners will return with the West End remaining a key hub for the Festival’s film programme with wider availability at 10 UK-wide cinemas and a broad range of films from the programme screening on BFI Player, alongside the in-cinema premieres.

The 66^th edition of the Festival will showcase over 160 features, 8 new series, 6 Screen Talks, breath-taking immersive art and XR projects as part of the LFF Expanded strand which returns to 26 Leake Street, a robust LFF For Free programme of events that will include panel discussions, a short film programme, book launches and more, the LFF Awards at the end of the Festival, and an expansive Industry programme. Accessible online to audiences across the whole of the UK, BFI Player will host a specially curated programme of 25 feature films which will screen from 14-23 October and will allow audiences to choose when they want to watch a particular title within the Virtual Festival’s dates.

The LFF has also revealed the newly-minted 2022 creative which will roll out across the UK in the coming months. Working with creative agency DBLG for the sixth year, and taking inspiration from Norman Engleback’s 1950s sign for the National Film Theatre, the BFI continues to build on the Festival’s existing ‘cascade’ iconography to create an identity that is both bold and playful that represents the LFF as the dynamic, diverse celebration of cinematic storytelling that it is.

2022 UK-Wide Cinema Screening Partner Venues

The LFF’s in-cinema physical screenings for the Festival will be hosted at a number of partner venues in the West End that include Curzon Soho (Screens 1, 2 & 3), Curzon Mayfair (Screen 1), Institute  of Contemporary Arts (ICA), ODEON Luxe West End (Screens 1 & 2) at the Londoner Hotel and Prince Charles Cinema; as well as 10 cinemas around the UK: Broadway (Nottingham), Chapter (Cardiff), Edinburgh Filmhouse (Edinburgh),  Glasgow Film Theatre (Glasgow), HOME (Manchester), MAC (Birmingham), Queens Film Theatre (Belfast), Showroom (Sheffield), Tyneside Cinema (Newcastle) and Watershed (Bristol).  As in previous years, the LFF is working closely with the venues to offer audiences a great range of new programming from the Festival.

The 66^th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express takes place from Wednesday 5 October – Sunday 16 October, 2022. The BFI LFF Programme Launch, when the full programme will be unveiled, is on Thursday 1 September, 2022.