BFI London Film Festival 2025 opens on track to be “most popular edition of the festival yet”

BFI London Film Festival (LFF) kicked off last night with the star-filled international premiere of Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, and a message of optimism from BFI CEO Ben Roberts.

“This year has been our most popular edition of the festival yet,” said Roberts during the opening ceremony at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall, noting LFF had shifted “more tickets, faster, than ever before, which is a big win for cinemas”.

He also highlighted the festival is opening its doors to as broad a range of audiences as it can, with “a number of festival titles, including tonight’s gala, being shown in many hospital cinemas, and we’ve allocated hundreds of tickets to primary and secondary schools, as part of our schools programme as well”.

This year marks the final edition of American Express as the festival’s headline sponsor, after 16 years. Roberts noted the festival is “polyamorous” and always on the lookout for new sponsorship partners.

A replacement for American Express is yet to be confirmed.

Festivals director Kristy Matheson quoted Esther Kinsky’s Seeing Further in her opening speech, saying: “The cinema is a space of expectations that are seldom let down since every time, no matter what, you end up seeing further than you had before, exploring a horizon that would not exist without the screen.”

Joining Roberts and Matheson on the stage during the opening ceremony was Johnson, producer Ram Bergman and some of the cast of Wake Up Dead Man – which had its world premiere at Toronto – Daryl McCormack, Cailee Spaeny, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Mila Kunis, Josh Brolin and Daniel Craig. Josh O’Connor was not on stage, but is understood to have attended opening night.

“These movies are always built out of character,” said Johnson. “You quickly realise, especially with a murder mystery, plot is never going to keep the audience entertained. Ultimately at the end of the day, what’s fun about movies – that starts with the characters. Look at these faces [the cast] – this is where you want to put your money, forget about plot.”

“An impossible act”
Earlier in the evening, Roberts spoke to Screen on the red carpet about the challenges facing independent filmmaking. “It’s really hard being an independent producer – it’s been an impossible act for quite a long time.”

He also addressed recent calls from independent producers for the tax credit to be cash-flowed. He confirmed while that is something that’s “not in our gift, it’s looked after by Treasury” the BFI is in regular discussion with producers’ groups about the need.

On producer fee deferral, he noted: “We support and advocate for producers not doing that and there’s a question around how we all come around that and do our best to protect the producer in that process. Really open to that conversation, it’s quite a live discussion.”

The festival runs until October 19.