London Film Festival 2025 – Day 6 – Riz Ahmed’s ‘Hamlet’ first screening – more film reviews
Riz Ahmed’s ‘Hamlet’ – Mayor of London Gala Screening this evening – reviews of films at LFF: After The Hunt, Sentimental Value, My Father’s Shadow – 10.30pm BST
STAR actor Riz Ahmed and director Aneil Karia spoke to www.asianculturevulture.com earlier today about their new work together, ‘Hamlet’.
Ahmed said that there would be many members of his family and friends in the audience at today’s UK premiere screening at London Film Festival (LFF) at the Curzon Mayfair this very evening.
The film screens again tomorrow at the BFI Southbank and then finally during the festival on Thursday (October 16) in the same venue. Check the latest availability – until the screenings actually start with the link below and there are rush queue tickets available too. It goes on general release from February 2026.
Adapted from the original Shakespeare by writer Michael Lesslie, this is set in contemporary North London, in a rich well to do Hindu following, Hindi speaking family. Some 95 per cent of the film is in English but there is a crucial speech that has subtitles.
Ahmed plays Hamlet who, as in the original returns home to mourn the death of his beloved father. In huge grief, he discovers his mother is to marry his father’s brother, played by Art Malik – as Ahmed told us today, this isn’t unusual in South Asia and he also talked about why he was drawn to this story, its parallels and its many global and diverse antecedents – with ideas contained in ‘The Bhagavad Gita’, among other ancient texts that deal with family, strife and war and go to the very heart of our existence.
Ahmed told us what it feels like to bring this film to London, after two screenings in North America earlier this year.
Look out for interviews and full review but do go and see this if you can at LFF, especially if you love Shakespeare or love Ahmed’s work – you will enjoy it and be moved!
After the hunt – students and teachers crossing boundaries
Director: Lucas Guadagnino
2 hours and 18 mins
BEGUILING, irritating and full of suspenseful and over the top score music – this might lead you to believe this wasn’t up to much and yet Nora Garrett’s screenplay crackles in all the right places – perhaps in another director’s hands we might have had something a little less grating and grandiose and there may be some for whom this approach works.
Set at Yale, an upmarket university in the US, to put it crudely, it’s a bit intellectual and mines power and mind games between a particular student and her teacher professor. That we have Julia Roberts in the latter role should tell you enough about the general quality of this film – even if all the parts don’t hang together as they might.
Andrew Garfield is the flirty, friendly, hard-drinking colleague who gets himself into bother with a sensitive black student struggling with the weight of expectations upon her – Maggie (Ayo Edebiri). She in turn is rather infatuated with Professor Almo Olsson (Roberts) who also happens to be very friendly with Garfield’s character. Throw in Olsson’s marriage fraying at the edges and a spectacular falling out with both Garfield’s and Edebiri’s characters – taking in diversity, authority, representation and seeing, defining and dealing with The Other (ie anyone different) and you can see this stirs a cauldron that simmers everywhere in higher education where one generation – Gen Z sees things somewhat differently from the folks in charge of them. Acv rating: *** (all out of five)
Sentimental Value – fine old school filmmaking
Joachim Trier
2 hours and 15 minutes
ALMOST a film within film, Joachim Trier’s Cannes winner is for those intrigued by questions of art and reality and the interplay and waste land (?) between them.
Perhaps that is to elevate filmmaking and all artistic creation to a level beyond its actual position in most people’s lives.
And it maybe Trier also asks this – what is the point of watching and making films? Perhaps not directly but reading between the lines.
Partly in Norwegian, and English, Stellan Skarsgard plays an ageing film director looking to making a movie – his daughter (Renate Reinsve) happens to be a successful actor but isn’t at all keen. Skarsgard’s other daughter in the film, is married, settled – in some contrast to her sister – and more overtly pained by her parents’ separation and the ego that is present within her father. You might not care too much about the artist character’s choices and proccupations, but the family dynamics and the very brilliant acting carry you along…to an interesting place. ACV rating:****
‘Sentimental Value’ screens tomorrow (October 14) at 2pm Southbank NFT1 and finally on Sunday (October 19) at 5pm Curzon Mayfair
My Father’s Shadow – Superb debut, expansive canvas
Akinola Davies Jnr
1 hour 34 minutes
SET in Nigeria, during the time of the Presidential Elections, this is a family story centred around two brothers and their father.
Sope Dirisu, as the dad, is superlative and so too are his young sons played by real life brothers, Chiwuke Marvellous Egbo and Godwin Egbo – they pretty much steal and seal the film.
Written by two British Nigerian brothers – Wale Davies and directed by Akinola – this is an exceptional debut in many ways.
The father has to go into town to collect his wages and the three of the set off from their rural home – their mother barely features and these three and their concerns, doubts and joys are well depicted.
Absorbing and emotional, this went down well in Cannes and Davies has a brilliant future ahead of him on the evidence of this. ACV rating: ****
My Father’s Shadow screens on Friday (October 17) 9pm at BFI Southbank NFT1 and again on Saturday 12.30pm Vue West End Screen 3
We caught up director Akinola Davies Jnr just after its world premiere screening in Cannes
LFF 2025 latest ticket availability
LFF 2025 general https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/online/default.asp
We saw ‘Sentimental Value’ and ‘My Father’s Shadow’ at the Cannes Film Festival 2025
