Making it the perfect time to discover, or revisit, some of the Academy Award and BAFTA winning UK filmmaker’s previous work.

The 68th BFI London Film Festival, which this year will rum from the 9th to the 20th of October will kick off the festival with their much anticipated Opening Night Gala, always an affair to remember. But unlike last year, when audiences were treated to the darkly wonderful Saltburn and its red carpet was devoid of any acting talent due to the ongoing strikes, this year the mood will be completely different.

Opening night this year will see the World Premiere of the Apple Original Film Blitz, directed, produced and written by Academy Award and BAFTA winner Steve McQueen. Blitz stars Academy and BAFTA Award nominee Saoirse Ronan, newcomer Elliott Heffernan, Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham, Leigh Gill, Mica Ricketts, CJ Beckford, Alex Jennings, Joshua McGuire, Hayley Squires, along with Erin Kellyman and Sally Messham.

Blitz follows the epic journey of George (Heffernan), a 9-year-old boy in World War II London whose mother Rita (Ronan) sends him to safety in the English countryside. George, defiant and determined to return home to Rita and his grandfather Gerald (Weller) in East London, ensues on an adventure, only to find himself in immense peril, while a distraught Rita searches for her missing son.  

McQueen’s Lammas Park produces alongside Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner of Working Title Films, Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan and Michael Schaefer for New Regency, with producers Anita Overland and Adam Somner. 

This marks the third time McQueen has inaugurated the BFI London Film Festival. He did so in 2018 with Widows and again in 2020 with Mangrove.

In 2016, McQueen was awarded the BFI’s highest honor, the BFI Fellowship, at the BFI London Film Festival, for his outstanding contribution to film and moving image culture.  

So what films should you discover him through, or revisit to prepare for this latest one? I would start with Twelve Years a Slave, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, but also featuring Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt, Paul Giamatti, Brad Pitt, along with standout performances by Lupita Nyong'o and Alfre Woodard. The film marked the first time a Black British producer and director (both McQueen) won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film is based on the true 1853 memoirs Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, who was drugged and captured while a free man and made into a slave in the American South.

Then I’d move to Shame, since McQueen is never repeating himself, always experimenting with new stories. In Shame, Michael Fassbender’s character, a NYC executive, grapples with a serious sex addiction and his unstable sister, played by Carey Mulligan. The film’s explicit scenes resulted in a rating of NC-17 in the puritanical US.

Small Axe could be next. It is a British anthology film series, created and directed by McQueen. It consists of five films that tell distinct stories about the lives of West Indian immigrants in London from the 1960s to the 1980s. Any film that references a Bob Marley song is alright by me! The anthology was a particularly personal project for McQueen, as it portrays the larger community that he grew up in.

Then Widows, the 2018 film starring Viola Davis, based on the 1983 British series of the same name. Widows is a heist thriller about four armed robbers who are killed in a failed heist attempt, only to have their widows step up to finish the job.

Last but not least, Occupied City, based on the book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945 by Bianca Stigter — an illustrated history book which focuses on the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam from 1940 to 1945.

The film premiered in Cannes in 2023 and Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it a "monumental film" that "allows its emotional implication to amass over its running time." The version of Occupied City released in US and UK cinemas runs over four and a half hours long, but McQueen also made a 36-hour version which includes everything in the original Stigter book. Stigter is McQueen’s wife, Lady McQueen and is also a filmmaker.

Image courtesy of the BFI London Film Festival.