Rarewaves Highlights from the BFI London Film Festival 2024: 4 Must-See Films!
The BFI London Film Festival (LFF) has once again come and gone for another year and the 2024 lineup was a delightful mix of political thrillers, character-driven biopics and robot/animal friendships. Both groundbreaking indie features and highly anticipated blockbusters gave industry professionals, film enthusiasts and cinephiles the opportunities to discover emerging talent and revel in existing.
Our team here at Rarewaves is unsurprisingly full of movie lovers who would've liked nothing more than to have sat in the cinema and overindulged with no regrets- only square eyes, a slightly sore rear and questionable amounts of popcorn in our hair. But due to living regular lives with other commitments, we couldn't do that (big sad). BUT some of us did see a few, and we (we being Alex, Lucy and Cat from the Rarewaves team) would like to share our thoughts on them with you, dear reader.
Alex Wathced: Maria
Maria Callas is one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of all time and the dramatic and bellowing sounds of the music seem like a perfect fit for a tragic biopic that also doubles as a psychological drama. Maria sees Angelina Jolie take on the role of Callas, delivering a powerful performance of loss and survival as a woman battling with the fragmented memories of a dark past.
Just as with many other prominent figures, Maria Callas’ actual life was often far removed from the glitz and the glam. There are a lot of things that happened in the soprano’s 53 years and plenty that writer Steven Knight (creator of Peaky Blinders) could have dived into but instead, Knight and director Pablo Larraín opted to focus on her final years and vocal decline, along with her affair with Aristotle Onassis. It doesn’t dive particularly deep into the latter though, what with all the scandals and publicity that surrounded it.
Maria focuses on the effects that all of the events of Callas’ life had on her, making it a highly effective character study on the complexities of identity and trauma. As a big fan of character-driven stories, I really enjoyed that aspect. To just delve into her personal struggles like so many biopics do would've been a little too predictable, and so I appreciated that Knight and Larraín decided to get a little more creative and dive into her broken psyche itself as opposed to everything that caused it.
The film boasts a haunting atmosphere and is a rather sombre affair aided by its intense and deliberate pacing. The cinematography further enhances the film’s eerie tone, with muted colours and limited environments where Callas is often alone or with limited company that reflect her loneliness and internal bleakness. It’s not all doom and gloom though, there is some humour but in the form of Callas' very matter-of-fact sarcasm. It all accumulates in a bittersweet and poignant conclusion.
Lucy Watched: The Apprentice
As a fan of Succession and The Wolf of Wall Street, I found The Apprentice fascinating in its depiction of real business dynamics and political power plays. If you enjoy drama, politics, and documentary-style storytelling, this film will captivate you.
Set in the late '70s and early '80s, the film takes us back to Donald Trump's early days working for his father in Trump Village through the potential downfall of his father’s company and a young Trump's determination to rise above it all— culminating in his ruthless ambition, manipulation, and the dark side of power to his eventual “Make America Great Again” presidential campaign.
Sebastian Stan is outstanding as young Donald Trump. His portrayal—capturing Trump's speech patterns, gestures, and expressions—is uncanny, making it feel like you’re watching the real Trump in action. Jeremy Strong’s portrayal of Roy Cohn is nothing short of mesmerizing: cold and calculated, embodying his famous principles: 1. Attack. Attack. Attack. 2. Admit nothing. Deny everything. 3. Claim victory, never admit defeat.
The film also bravely tackles heavy subjects like homelessness, homosexuality in the 80s, the AIDS crisis, and the corruption of power, revealing how money and influence can bend the rules of society. While it occasionally feels like the movie tries to cover too much ground, the gripping performances make up for any narrative shortcomings.
Cat Watched: The Wild Robot
The Wild Robot is not my usual go-to for a film festival screening - I generally make a point to see films that are a little bit weird, and have on more than one occasion left a cinema during LFF filled with an overwhelming sense of discomfort and unease. A sweet, animated family film about a robot and her animal friends was not initially on my watchlist but hey, what can I say, apparently I'm branching out.
Adapted from the book of the same name by Peter Brown, The Wild Robot is, on the face of it, a cute family-friendly film about a robot making friends with an island of random wildlife, learning to accept and love each other and all that mushy stuff. It’s definitely what I thought I was heading into. In actuality, it’s a brilliantly subtle treatise on the climate emergency and the wide-reaching implications of corporate control, wrapped around a heartwarming tale of found families. Safe to say, I was a wreck.
Packed with a stellar voice cast (Matt Berry popping up as a neurotic beaver was definitely a pleasant surprise), and already greenlit for a sequel from Dreamworks, The Wild Robot is one of those unique children’s films that manages to capture adults too.
Cat Watched: Witches
Witches- a film about postpartum mental health through the lens of portrayals of witchcraft within the media, which sounds pretty damn niche. Yet, three sold out screenings at London’s Prince Charles Cinema says that perhaps it’s a topic that speaks to a lot of people. In this snappy 90-minute documentary, filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey details not only her own experiences with postpartum depression, but also that of a number of other people, including the women on the end of a Whatsapp group chat, the strangers that rushed her to hospital and in doing so, saved her life.
It’s, perhaps strangely, not a difficult watch. Witches is informative while still being incredibly engaging, Sankey peppering her soft-spoken voiceover of her childhood obsession with witches with clips from all your favourite enchantresses - from the Owens Sisters and their Midnight Margaritas in Practical Magic, to the iconic melting Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Were these women, historically the healers and midwives, women who would have been witness and bearers of the struggles and turmoil of birth and pregnancy, perhaps unfairly maligned? Could they maybe have been struggling too?
It’s not a question that Sankey delves into in great depth, and I don’t think an answer is really required here. Ultimately, the film is one woman's attempt to make sense of a mental health crisis through the medium of cinema, opening a dialogue on an often sidelined topic, and allowing discussion to bloom.
Maria will hit cinemas in the UK and Ireland on January 10, The Apprentice and The Wild Robot are in cinemas now, with Witches available on MUBI from November 22nd.
As the credits roll on this year’s BFI London Film Festival, we find ourselves awash in a sea of cinematic delights and a few lingering popcorn kernels. We hope that you've been convinced to watch at least one of these gems! Until next year, keep your passion for film alive and remember: there’s always room for one more movie (and more popcorn)!
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