Life changing

National Lottery Players in starring role at
2018 BFI London Film Festival

Players like you make British film amazing! You've supported 13 stunning films that will be shown in the UK's leading and most prestigious film festival - the London Film Festival (LFF). This 12 day celebration of cinema illustrates the richness of international filmmaking, with films to delight and entertain audiences, and films that probe and interrogate issues of significance. Watch the video above to see how you make British film amazing!

This year, the LFF will host 21 world premieres, 9 international premieres and 29 European premieres.

Several key events will also be cinecast to cinema venues around the UK, including the world premiere of Peter Jackson's National Lottery funded 'They Shall Not Grow Old', which will be simultaneously screened, in 2D and 3D to cinemas and special venues across the UK. For the first time ever, an LFF premiere outside London, Mike Leigh's lottery funded 'Peterloo' will take place at HOME, Manchester.

Here's your guide to National Lottery funded films at this year's LFF. More information and tickets at whatson.bfi.org.uk.

Colette

Forget what you know about costume dramas. This witty, Belle Époque-era biopic stars Keira Knightley and Dominic West as literary couple Colette and Willy, whose relationship rewrote social and gender rules.

Evelyn

When his brother, newly diagnosed as schizophrenic and suffering from intense depression, took his own life at 22, the director and his other two siblings buried the trauma, rarely talking about it. Over a decade later, the remaining family set out on a hiking tour, visiting landscapes Evelyn liked to walk, to reflect on his life and death.

Been So Long

'Chewing Gum' star Michaela Coel leads a talented cast in Tinge Krishnan’s contemporary London musical, which reimagines Camden as a romantic neon-soaked wonderland.

Out of Blue

Solitary recovering alcoholic Detective Mike Hoolihan (Patricia Clarkson) is called out to the scene of a possible homicide at an observatory. Adapted from Martin Amis' 'Night Train', Carol Morley has created a moody detective story with an almost Lynchian dry wit.

Aquarela

'Aquarela' means watercolour in English, but that is too delicate a word to describe this stunning, sensory cinematic experience by Russian master Victor Kossakovsky.

Irene's Ghost

How do you paint a portrait of someone whose existence has been a family secret? Iain Cunningham does the detective work to uncover his own mother's story.

Wild Rose

This delightful and infectiously joyous film finds a young woman balancing her dreams of being a country music star with the responsibilities of motherhood. Shot in Glasgow starring Jessie Buckley (who's been receiving rave reviews following its recent Toronto Film Festival world premiere) and Julie Walters.

They Shall Not Grow Old

Academy Award®-winner Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) presents the world premiere of an extraordinary new work. Employing state-of-the-art technology to transform audio and moving image archive footage more than a century old, Jackson brings to life the people who can best tell this story: the men who were there. A 1418:NOW project with funds awarded through Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England.

Peterloo

As shell-shocked soldiers return from the battle of Waterloo, they find their hometowns ravaged by a gentry upping food costs and ripping off the working classes. The French have already had their revolution and the disenfranchised men and women of Manchester are stirring with their own desire for reform.

Outlaw King

Shot entirely in Scotland with funding awarded by Creative Scotland, 'Outlaw King' is directed by Glasgow-based David Mackenzie. Starring Chris Pine, 'Outlaw King' was selected to open Toronto Film Festival in September.

Ray & Liz

In this astonishingly personal film, Richard Billingham delves into his Black Country upbringing to recreate visceral family memories and desperate living in Thatcher's Britain.

In Fabric

Wildly and perversely imaginative and visually thrilling, 'In Fabric' ventures to the outer reaches of the erotic macabre, finding pleasures in everything from shop mannequins to the sound of someone listing washing-machine parts. A potent mix of design and spooky intrigue, the film is bolstered with lashings of oddball humour.

Mari

Charlotte (played by contemporary dancer Bobbi Jene Smith) is rehearsing a show with her dance company when she learns her beloved grandmother Mari is dying. At Mari's bedside with her mother and sister, fractious family resentments surface. Charlotte also struggles to process the news that she's pregnant and the inherent implications for her work.

The National Lottery has been changing the lives of winners and supporting good causes across the UK since 1994. In that time, there have been more than 7,000 new millionaires created and by playing The National Lottery you raise over £4 million for Good Causes every dayΔ.

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