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Director Steve McQueen and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor talk about acclaimed drama 12 Years A Slave. At BFI Southbank, Ralph Fiennes discusses the relationship between actor and director. Steven Knight’s Locke, set entirely within a car, receives its premiere. And there’s a screening of restored 1924 film The Epic of Everest.

Director Steve McQueen and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor joined the press to discuss their extraordinary new film, Twelve Years a Slave, which finally brings the reality of slavery into its brutal, devastating context. Chris Fennell was there to report at this 57th BFI London Film Festival event.

Oscar-nominated for co-writing Before Sunset, Julie Delpy writes, directs and stars in a sweetly autobiographical and fearlessly bawdy comedy about a family’s boozy get-together in Normandy. It’s the summer of 1979. High above the earth, the space station Skylab is out of control. And somewhere in Brittany, so is Albertine, a precocious eleven-year-old making her transition into teenage life and love while her extended family drinks, dances, fondles and fights all around her. This award-winning comedy – part Wes Anderson, part Truffaut – is like a miniature French summer holiday in the dark of a London autumn.

One of the most highly anticipated films of the year, from the directors of Sweetgrass and Foreign Parts, Leviathan is a thrilling, immersive documentary that takes you deep inside the dangerous world of commercial fishing. Set aboard a hulking fishing vessel as it navigates the treacherous waves off the New England coast-the very waters that once inspired Moby Dick- the film captures the harsh, unforgiving world of the fishermen in starkly haunting, yet beautiful detail. Employing an arsenal of cameras that pass freely from film crew to ship crew, and swoop from below sea level to astonishing bird’s-eye views, Leviathan is unlike anything you have ever seen; a purely visceral, cinematic experience.

The winner of the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Abdellatif Kechiche’s stunning portrait of a relationship is a remarkable achievement. Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux’s committed performances brilliantly convey the power of physical, emotional and sexual attraction, but also communicate the problems of sustaining a relationship when passion gives way to domestication. Detailed in its portrayal yet exploring emotions and situations universal to us all, this is a towering achievement in cinema.

From Jaume Collet-Serra (Unknown) comes a new action thriller starring Liam Neeson, Julianne Moore and Michelle Dockery. Bill Marks (Neeson) is a burned-out veteran of the Air Marshals service. He views the assignment not as a life-saving duty, but as a desk job in the sky. However, today's flight will be no routine trip. Shortly into the transatlantic journey from New York to London, he receives a series of mysterious text messages ordering him to have the government transfer $150 million into a secret account, or a passenger will die every 20 minutes.

A reflection on love, sacrifice, and the creative spirit, this candid New York story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of renowned “boxing” painter Ushio Shinohara and his artist wife, Noriko. As a rowdy, confrontational young artist in Tokyo, Ushio seemed destined for fame, but met with little commercial success after he moved to New York City in 1969, seeking international recognition. When 19-year-old Noriko moved to New York to study art, she fell in love with Ushioabandoning her education to become the wife and assistant to an unruly, husband. Over the course of their marriage, the roles have shifted. Now 80, Ushio struggles to establish his artistic legacy, while Noriko is at last being recognized for her own art—a series of drawings entitled “Cutie,” depicting her challenging past with Ushio. Spanning four decades, the film is a moving portrait of a couple wrestling with the eternal themes of sacrifice, disappointment and aging, against a background of lives dedicated to art.

Philomena press conference from BFI London Film Festival. Director Stephen Frears and actors Judi Dench and Steve Coogan talk about the challenges of making true-life adoption tale Philomena.

Premiere for The Invisible Woman, directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes discusses the intense affair between Charles Dickens and a young actress. Beat Generation drama Kill Your Darlings starring Daniel Radcliffe gets its premiere. And the LFF Surprise Film is unveiled: Wong Kar Wai’s The Grandmaster.

28-year old Pietro has just moved to Rome with a new job. When he finds a beautiful apartment at a low rent because it is badly in need of repair, he thinks he's struck lucky. However, objects start mysteriously moving about and strange noises are heard in seemingly empty rooms. Soon he realises he's sharing with seven and a half other flatmates who have been in residence a very, very long time. Has he a ghost of a chance of evicting them or can man and spirit make a harmonious home? Directed by Ferzan Ozpetek (LOOSE CANNONS), A MAGNIFICENT HAUNTING is a charming comedy of a young man whose life is revitalised when he overcomes his deepest rational and irrational fears to find love, friendship and solidarity.

Premiere of true-life tale Philomena, and interviews with director Stephen Frears and actors Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. Plus actor-turned-director Joseph Gordon-Levitt on directing Scarlett Johansson in Don Jon, and documentary maker Alex Gibney tells us about filming Lance Armstrong's dramatic story in The Armstrong Lie.

From the director of The Housemaid (Im Sang-soo) comes a 'bitter and delicious' thriller of lust, seduction, decadence and betrayal. One of South Korea's richest families, controlled with a vice-like grip by Geum-ok (Yoon Yeo-jeong), wife of the prominent but disillusioned family-business President, Yoon (Baek Yun-shik), is in the throes of crisis. Her newly appointed personal secretary, a handsome and ambitious young man, Joo (Kim Kang-woo), deals with the families immoral-and illegal-activities whilst patiently waiting for his own chance for financial reward, but when he is witness to an affair the balance of power shifts, with tragic consequences. As their personal and professional empire begins to unravel and a scandalous arrest threatens to expose the family's unsavoury secrets, the steely-cold Geum-ok turns to the basest form of revenge left available to her, cold-blooded murder. Lost between his own shrinking sense of morality and a shortcut to an ever-growing bank balance, Joo has to decide between rescuing what is left of his moral soul and a the plentiful supply of cold-hard-cash that lies waiting for him on wooden pallets in the household's basement vault.

From the producers of TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY comes the new international thriller, CLOSED CIRCUIT. Following a mysterious explosion in a busy London market, the police swoop, a suspect is detained, and the country prepares for one of the most high-profile trials in British history. Two exceptional lawyers with a romantic history step into a dangerous web of secrets and lies, and when evidence points to a possible British Secret Service cover up, it's not just their reputations, but their lives that are at stake. The film stars Eric Bana, Rebecca Hall, Jim Broadbent and Julia Stiles.

Colm Meaney stars as a man weary of doing right. Times are changing, car bombs are less common and terrorists find themselves out of work, but old habits die hard. And while most go quietly into the night, he must find the few who won’t comply. Haunted by his own past failures, he knows that he may only get one last chance to repeat the same mistake, and this time, the blood will be on his hands. When a series of murders awaken dormant memories, many fear the worst. A greying assassin has stopped walking his son to school, purely precautionary. And his old comrades are also refusing to die gracefully. Someone is laying plans for the future, but first they must secure the present. Gripping characters, fiercely intelligent action, and deadly consequences... A BELFAST STORY is a film about the passing of a way of life... and the dangers that brings, because in Ireland: Someone always has to buy the last round...

A comedy centred on an aspiring singer who becomes a reality-show sensation.