A United Kingdom | 60th BFI London Film Festival

UNITED_KINGDOM Rosamund Pike David Oyelowo

The 60th BFI London Film Festival gets underway today with the Opening Night Gala and European premiere of Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom at Odeon Leicester Square, kicking off twelve days of the world’s best cinema featuring some 240 feature films and shorts from 74 countries.

Director Amma Asante has followed her previous film Belle with another period drama based on the lives of neglected figures from history and tells the incredible true story of Seretse Khama, King of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families and the British and South African governments.

And you don’t have to be in the West End to see Asante join her stars David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike on the red carpet for the gala screening, together with cast members Laura Carmichael, Jack Davenport, Arnold Oceng and James Northcote. Red-carpet footage from opening night will be beamed by satellite to cinemas up and down the UK, followed by a special preview screening of the film.

The Odeon Leicester Square hosts tonight’s Opening Night Gala at 7pm, with chance to see red carpet footage and interviews with the film’s creators via a live satellite link to cinemas around the UK. See bfi.org.uk/lff for more details.

A United Kingdom also screens at the Vue Leicester Square at 7.45pm tonight, and at the Odeon Leicester Square on Thursday 6th October at 11.30am and the Curzon Mayfair on Tuesdayy 11th October at 9pm, and goes on general release from Friday 25th November.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=url66-67O90

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.