UK/FILE: London gears up for the October 18 opening of the 50th London International film festi

London is gearing up for its October 18 opening of the London Film Festival. This year's festival will feature tales of sex and politics, skinheads and dictators, fast-food workers and pumpkin kings. Talking to Reuters TV ahead of Wednesday's Gala Opening Night, Sandra Hebron, the Artistic Director of London Film Festival said her team was ready to kick off the fiftieth London Film Festival. "Well I think we are as prepared as we can be, I mean it is always very hard to tell but we have been planning this for quite some months, particularly this year as it is our fiftieth anniversary so I guess expectations are even higher than they would normally be. But we have had a huge team of people running and making preparations so for now we just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope all will be well. The cinema is booked, the party is booked we have sold tickets, we know that the talent are arriving so in theory we are all good to go," she said. The festival will open with Kevin Macdonald's Idi Amin drama 'The Last King of Scotland', with Forest Whitaker playing the Ugandan leader. The festival closes on November 2 with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's 'Babel', starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. In between the opening and closing films, the festival will host a steady stream of major motion picture releases, world premieres, documentaries, short films, foreign films and family movies as well as career interviews and master classes with the stars and film-makers of the featured movies. "London is actually a big draw for lots of film makers and stars, you know it's a great city to be out. And at this time of year of course a lot of the films are starting their pathway towards their hopeful nominations for both Academy Awards and BAFTA, so again that is additional incentive, for talent to really come out and support their film," Hebron told Reuters recently. Just some of the stars attending the festival will be actors Dustin Hoffman, Ben Affleck, Kate Winslet and directors Tim Burton, Emilio Estevez -showing his star-studded movie 'Bobby' - and 'The English Patient' director Anthony Minghella, film whose film 'Breaking and Entering' will screen at the Festival. The London Film Festival runs from October 18th to November 2nd.

ITN Source | October 26, 2006

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