Pharrell's Lego biopic to close London Film Fest

Stanley Tucci, Elton John projects also join the line-up

LONDON:

From a documentary about Elton John's final US live shows to Angelina Jolie's Maria Callas biopic, this year's BFI London Film Festival promises a star-studded line up that kicks off with a World War Two drama from Oscar winner Steve McQueen.

The London-born director will open the festival for a third time with the world premiere of his film Blitz on October 9. It stars Saoirse Ronan as Rita, a London mother who sends her young son George, played by newcomer Elliott Heffernan, to safety in the countryside during the war. But George is determined to return home despite the many dangers ahead.

Vatican-set thriller Conclave starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci, Daniel Craig's Queer, in which the former James Bond star plays a drug-addicted American living in 1950s Mexico, and Cannes Festival winner Anora about an exotic dancer who gets involved with a Russian oligarch's son are also on the programme. Like Craig, Jolie premiered her film Maria at the Venice Film Festival.

"We have a lot of wonderful films that have premiered throughout the year at some of the biggest festivals in the world," BFI Festivals director Kristy Matheson told Reuters on Wednesday. "And then of course we have 39 world premiere films as well." One of those is Joy, starring Thomasin McKenzie, Bill Nighy, and James Norton in a retelling of the birth of the world's first test tube baby in 1978.

The Apprentice about a young Donald Trump, Pedro Almodovar's first English-language feature film The Room Next Door starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, and Nightbitch, in which Amy Adams plays a stay-at-home mother who starts exhibiting canine instincts, are also among the line-up.

Among documentaries screening will be Elton John: Never Too Late about the musician's return to Los Angeles' Dodger Stadium, and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which looks back at the late actor's rise to fame as the superhero and his life following a horse riding accident that left him paralysed from the neck down. Pharrell Williams' Lego biopic Piece By Piece will close the festival on October 20.