This is the 70th BFI London Film Festival, and from 7 to 18 October it brings 251 titles from 88 countries to London: features, shorts, series and immersive work. Every gala premiere plays at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall, and the rest of the programme is spread across BFI Southbank, the BFI IMAX and a group of central London cinemas. General sale opens at 10am this Thursday, 17 September, so this is the week to plan it. Here is the practical version from the driving seat: where the venues are, where a car can set you down, and how a festival day holds together.
The dates that matter
The festival opens on Wednesday 7 October with Elsinore, Simon Stone's film about the Scottish actor Ian Charleson, with Andrew Scott in the central role. It is the European premiere, and it plays at the Royal Festival Hall. It closes in the same hall on Sunday 18 October with the UK premiere of The Debut, directed by Jesse Eisenberg, whose cast includes Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti.
BFI Members have already had their priority booking. Everyone else can book from 10am on Thursday 17 September, and some screenings and events sell out very quickly. A sold-out screening is not always the end of it: during the festival the BFI releases tickets for that day's screenings and events after 10am each morning.
There is a free strand too. LFF for Free opens for booking at 10am on Thursday 1 October. Those tickets are over-allocated to allow for no-shows, so a ticket does not guarantee entry. If you are going to one, arrive early.
The galas at the Royal Festival Hall
Every gala plays at the Royal Festival Hall this year, and the list is a strong one. Danny Boyle's Ink, about Rupert Murdoch's Fleet Street career, is the Mayor's Gala. Taika Waititi brings his adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun. Andrew Haigh has A Long Winter, from a Colm Tóibín story, and James Gray has Paper Tiger. If you hold a ticket for any of them, you are going to Belvedere Road, SE1.
The Southbank Centre's own advice for arriving by car is to be dropped at Southbank Centre Square on Belvedere Road, where there is also a taxi rank, or on the slip road outside the square. That is where I take you. The catch is that a gala audience arrives in one wave and leaves in another. Getting in is manageable. Getting out, after the credits and the applause, is when a full hall wants a car at the same moment, and that is where having one already waiting counts.
BFI Southbank and the IMAX
Special Presentations and Official Competition titles are among the films playing at BFI Southbank, further along the same road. The BFI recommends the BFI Shop on Belvedere Road as the best drop-off and pick-up point, around 140 metres from the main entrance, so that is where I stop rather than trying to reach the door itself.
The BFI IMAX is the odd one out. It stands in the middle of the roundabout where Waterloo Road, Stamford Street, York Road and Waterloo Bridge meet, and behind its doors is the largest cinema screen in the UK. Nobody pulls up at the door of a building on a roundabout, so I set you down nearby and tell you before you go in exactly where I will be afterwards.
I will say this plainly as well. The South Bank is one of the best-connected corners of London. Waterloo is the nearest station, and Embankment and Charing Cross are across Hungerford Bridge. If you are going to one screening on your own, carrying nothing, the tube is the right answer and I would tell you so.
The West End half of the festival
The other London venues sit in and around the West End: Vue West End and the Prince Charles Cinema by Leicester Square, Curzon Soho on Shaftesbury Avenue, Picturehouse Central, the ICA on The Mall, and The Hall at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Parts of Leicester Square and the streets around it are closed to vehicles, and Soho is a grid of one-way streets that punishes a wrong turn, so the last stretch to some of these doors is on foot whoever is driving.
For those venues I set you down on the nearest street a car can use, tell you which way to walk, and agree the pick-up spot with you before you go in. Soho and the West End sit inside the Congestion Charge zone, which is £18 a day and runs from 7am to 6pm on weekdays and from noon to 6pm at weekends. That is already inside the price I quote, so it is not a sum you need to do. I have written separately about how the Congestion Charge and the ULEZ work.
A festival day that needs a car
One screening does not need me. A proper festival day is different: a Special Presentation in Soho in the afternoon, an early dinner, then across Waterloo Bridge for a gala at the Festival Hall, and supper somewhere after. Done on foot and underground on a wet October evening, that day becomes a series of small scrambles, and you walk into the gala slightly damp and slightly late.
With a car it is one thread. I collect you from your hotel or your home, set you down in Soho, wait while you are inside, take you on to dinner and then to Southbank Centre Square, and I stay parked up close by while the gala runs. When the credits roll you send me a message and I bring the car round to the square. Your coat, your bags and anything you did not want to carry into the hall stay in the car all evening.
Frieze is the same week
The second week of the festival overlaps with Frieze London and Frieze Masters in The Regent's Park, which run from 14 to 18 October. If your October has an art fair in the afternoon and a premiere in the evening, that is exactly the kind of day where one car and one driver keep things simple. I have written up the Frieze side of the week as well.
How I would book it
For a single gala, a return works well: I take you there and bring you home, at a price fixed before the night. For a day of screenings, or a gala with dinner either side, book me by the hour, which in London starts at a five hour minimum. You keep the same car and the same driver for the block, and the evening can change shape without a new booking.
For one or two of you, the S-Class is the car I would send. For four or more, or a group going to the same premiere, the V-Class keeps everyone together. The cars I drive are all in one place, and if you are flying in for the festival, my airport transfers meet you inside the terminal at a fixed price agreed in advance. For larger parties and screenings with a guest list, have a look at event chauffeuring.
If you have tickets
Send me the screenings you have booked, the venues and the times, and anything else in the diary that week, and I will build the driving around them and come back with one price for the lot. Tell me your festival plan and I will take care of the rest.
