Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) has today announced the opening, closing and central films for its 2024 edition alongside the UK premiere titles that will play in its Constellation and Fanomenon competitions. LIFF is supported by BFI National Lottery Audience Projects Award.
LIFF opening night film is the UK premiere of Carine Tardieu’s The Ties That Bind Us, a compassionate, emotionally engaging film about what brings people together in times of adversity and the new kinds of family ties that can bloom unexpectedly. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Anaïs in Love) and Pio Marmaï (The Three Musketeers) lead a superb ensemble cast of performers in film both irresistible and with a lived-in and universally relatable feel.
The closing night film is the UK premiere of Shô Miyake’s luminous new film All the Long Nights. Shot beautifullyon 16mm, the film follows Misa, a young woman with debilitating PMS that manifests in volatile outbursts, who leaves her corporate job for a gentler workplace, a company making scientific toys where she encounters Takatoshi, a co-worker struggling with panic disorder. This hopeful and radiant ode to friendship by Shô Miyake, one of Japan’s most exciting new filmmakers, provides a fitting finale to LIFF 2024.
The Festival’s Central Film screening will be Payal Kapadia’s 2024 Cannes Grand Prix winner, All We Imagine As Light. This luminous portrait of the lives, loves, and longings of three women in Mumbai features exquisite cinematography and captivating performances to create a heartfelt and poetic depiction of hope, desire and sisterhood.
The Festival’s Central Classic Film is Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s visually stunning masterpiece of the silent era and a stirring paean to nature and rural life in Ukraine, Earth (1930). The film will screen with a new live jazz score from Ukrainian musicians Misha Kalinin (guitar) and Roksana Smirnova (piano) which blends impressionistic soundscapes with improvisations that enhance Dovzhenko’s sweeping landscapes and iconic close-ups. This event is organised with the financial support of the UK/UA Creative Partnerships programme designed by the British Council and the Ukrainian Institute.
All films in both LIFF competition strands are UK premieres representing the best new, trailblazing cinema from around the world including titles from Brazil, Egypt, Ukraine, Germany, Norway. Singapore, India, Argentina, Italy, France, Greece and more. Constellation showcases the very best in international visionary filmmaking and Fanomenon champions mind-expanding genre cinema from around the world.
Screening in the Constellation competition will be: Marcelo Botta’s captivating look at Brazilian village life Betânia; Hala Elkoussy’s surrealist Egyptian fable East of Noon; Roman Bondarchuk’s fake news satire The Editorial Office; Raam Reddy’s subversive and richly imagined The Fable; Eva Trobisch’shaunting social drama Ivo; Lilja Ingolfsdottir’s multilayered character study Loveable; Nelicia Low’s razor sharp social thriller Pierce; Federico Luis’s Cannes Critic Week Grand Prize winner Simon of the Mountain; Saule Bliuvaite’s beautifully cinematic Locarno prizewinner Toxic.
Screening in the Fanomenon competition will be: Niles Atallah’s unique and poetic post-apocalyptic fantasy Animalia Paradoxa; Ivana Gloria’s tender and mesmerising fairytale, Chlorophyll; Thibault Emin’s psychedelic body-horror debut Else; Benjamin Pfohl’s cosmic coming-of-ager Jupiter; Yannis Veslemes’s sc-fi fever dream She Loved Blossoms More; Pavlo Ostrikov’s Ukrainian space romance U Are the Universe; Joel Potrykus’s jet-black punk rock comedy Vulcanizadora.
Established in 1987, Leeds International Film Festival is one of the largest annual film events in the UK and one of the longest, running for 17 days every November in venues across Leeds and West Yorkshire. Presenting over 250 features and shorts every year, with annual submissions of over 5000 from more than 120 countries, LIFF principally showcases and supports films from new and diverse filmmaking talent and which may not receive profile in the UK otherwise.
The 38th edition of the Festival will run from 1st to the 17th November 2024 at venues across the city including screenings and events at Vue Leeds in the Light, Everyman Leeds, Hyde Park Picture House, Cottage Road Cinema and Howard Assembly Room. The full LIFF 2024 programme will be announced on 9 October when tickets will also be on sale.
As previously announced, this year’s LIFF programme spotlights the life and work of Indian actress Smita Patill and Leeds artist-filmmaker Stuart Croft.
Stuart Croft (1970-2015) was a hugely talented artist-filmmaker from Leeds whose work imaginatively collapsed the boundaries between the art gallery and the cinema. He went from Lawnswood School in Leeds to exhibitions in New York, Venice and Beijing. His work subverts genre conventions and narrative expectations in a playful and thought-provoking way, and his influences range across film history from groundbreaking art films to classic Hollywood cinema.
In partnership with Leeds Art Gallery and The Stuart Croft Foundation, LIFF presents Stuart Croft: Eternal Return, a special season of films that inspired Stuart’s unique vision paired with his own looping moving image works. This season is programmed to complement an immersive exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery (08 November 2024 – 6 April 2025).
In Spice & Fire: The Films of Smita Patil, LIFF celebrates the work of legendary performer Smita Patil. Smita Patil was just 31 when she passed away in 1986. With her screen debut in 1975, Smita Patil forged one of the most superlative bodies of work that an actor has ever produced. Across the space of 11 years, Patil collaborated with many of the best filmmakers of her generation. Her disarming beauty and acting prowess made her the iconic face of Parallel Cinema, India’s first post-colonial art film movement (1968 – 1995). This unique retrospective will aim to open a door into the world of Smita Patil, celebrating her films, activism, and enduring stardom.
LIFF Director, Chris Fell has said: “For this year’s epic 17-day celebration of cinema at LIFF we wanted to increase our support for new films that we believe deserve greater recognition. This commitment is reflected in our choice of opening and closing films, UK Premieres of two beautiful and uplifting depictions of people finding new connections in unsettling times, showing kinds of relationships rarely represented on screen. Also, our two feature film competitions – one expanded, one new – highlight the diversity and innovation in contemporary cinema with 16 selections, all UK Premieres and 8 from first time filmmakers. We can’t wait to share these films and so many more great cinematic discoveries with audiences at LIFF 2024 this November.”
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