If there’s one scene that perfectly captures this year’s BFI London Film Festival – and its growing prominence in the awards calendar – it’s around midday on the first Sunday of the festival, at 180 The Strand, the venue of Soho House.
In a chaotic room full of guests and where wiggle room was at a premium, Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, Mia Goth, Colin Farrell, Rian Johnson, Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones and Kerry Condon gracefully juggled meet-ups while trays of canapes were passed between bodies with expert precision. Meanwhile, away from the noise and toward the — slightly — less crowded outdoor pool, Guillermo de Toro held court at a table and, further down, Noah Baumbach chatted casually with a group that included awards vet Lisa Taback.
Netflix’s annual brunch has been a hugely popular LFF stop since its debut just a few years ago, giving voters, industry stakeholders, and press the chance to have a brief, friendly, coordinated chat with a small selection of the streamer’s cinematic talent over a (well-concocted) Bloody Mary. In 2024, “Emilia Pérez” star Selena Gomez brought some spice to the event (triggering multiple selfie requests). But the 2025 edition was something else. Netflix, as one guest pointed out, was “really getting into it.”
He wasn’t the only one.
While the LFF may be a public-facing event, for many in the industry it has also become the unofficial starting gun of awards season (at least from an international court perspective), and one where studios, streamers and indie distributors are now unleashing assets – and star power – like never before.
“It’s like there’s a film festival and a whole other awards festival going on in parallel,” says a seasoned awards veteran, who points out one of the main reasons why: London has the largest concentration of AMPAS voters outside the United States. Some 800 reside in the UK, or 7% of the total, while in Europe the number more than doubles to 1,750 or 15% (many of whom flew to the festival). And these numbers are constantly increasing.
This year’s Oscars highlighted the importance of the ever-expanding international bloc – with numerous statuettes, including best picture, for Palme d’Or winner “Anora” and a surprise win for Latvian animated independent film “Flow”. To capture a large portion of these voters in one fell swoop, London has become an extremely effective starting point.
With that in mind – and with the 2025 festival lineup containing almost every title likely to be in the running for awards – this year has seen more industry offerings, special screenings and Q&As than ever before, with many films enjoying multiple events. Among those that insiders said were getting a notable boost were Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt” and Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda.” (There were, of course, some notable absentees – Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme,” already considered a dead certificate for the awards race, didn’t make it to London).
“We’ve seen real confidence from studios and the independent sector that LFF has become the perfect opportunity to launch awards campaigns with enthusiasm,” said Sam Ross, DDA’s vice president of awards, speaking the day after an evening in which his team oversaw five events. Ross notes that while most of the films have premiered at other festivals and may have already received “odd” awards in the United States, LFF was “the first time all of these films have been brought together in one festival – so from our side it’s 10 days full of high-quality films and top talent filling the screening rooms and attending all the festival-adjacent events.”
And these events are becoming more elaborate, impressive and expensive. Alongside the festival screenings and red carpets, there were numerous screenings and Q&A sessions for BAFTA voters, AMPAS voters and individual guilds, as well as dinners, receptions, trend-setting events and parties. An awards insider said London’s most popular screening rooms had been “booked for months” (and were also booked until the end of the year). And then there are the third-party events, with AMPAS hosting its annual reception for new members and the Golden Globes having now joined the fray — its cocktail party at the Dorchester Hotel this year attracted the likes of Channing Tatum of “Roofman,” Amanda Seyfried of “The Testament of Ann Lee,” Tessa Thompson of “Hedda” and Claire Foy of “H Is for Hawk” “.
For “Hamnet,” BAFTA voters were offered three opportunities to see the film, one followed by a question-and-answer session with Zhao and his lead actors, including Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, and another by a question-and-answer session with Zhao and his department heads.
“Frankenstein,” meanwhile, alongside Elordi, Isaac, Goth and del Toro at the Netflix Brunch and several other special events, enjoyed a full exhibition – with movie props, artwork and costumes on display at the Old Selfridges Hotel, next to the famous department store. Before it opened to the public, Netflix bused guests to the exhibition from a special screening of the film at BAFTA headquarters, where del Toro and the stars gave an introduction. “Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro”, the latest film by the Mexican author, previously presented in its world premiere in London, is on track to win the Oscar for best animated film.
London’s status is such that talent seeking to court votes must now give it much more than the cursory 24-hour tour they might have taken in previous years.
“Many now come to town and spend a few days here – and during those days they do lots of events,” says Ross, who says distributors now plan entire European tours around their film’s London dates.
The hectic nature of it all has not gone unnoticed, with talent being transported from one end of the capital to the other for events that often take place simultaneously. Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Cailee Spaeny, Kerry Washington and other stars of Rian Johnson’s LFF opening film “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” took to the stage at the Royal Festival Hall to introduce the film, were quickly ferried across the Thames to the Ham Yard Hotel for a Q&A session about the screening of Netflix (where Josh O’Connor, who narrowly missed the premiere after returning from a shoot, I joined), then went back in time for opening night.
Jon M. Chu didn’t even have a film on the festival schedule – “Wicked: For Good” doesn’t open until November – and yet he launched an impressive and earth-shattering charm offensive for the first half of the festival, perhaps with the hope that international voters might get him the best director Oscar nomination he missed out on last time. Alongside a lengthy on-stage lecture at the BFI Southbank, Chu was honored at a special BFI luncheon, joined the cast of the West End musical ‘Wicked’ on stage at the Apollo Victoria Theater and even presented a special screening of ‘Singing in the Rain’ and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ at the popular Genesis arthouse cinema.
With voting numbers increasing and more and more production and talent moving to the UK, London’s new status as the curtain-raiser to awards season – a status that has been several years in the making – doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon. But any future growth may require at least one change.
As one Netflix brunch attendee noted, “They’ll need a bigger room next time.” »
