The 62nd BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express has announced that this year’s Opening Night gala will be Academy Award-winner Steve McQueen’s Widows.
Co-written by BFI Fellow McQueen and best-selling Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn, Widows is about a group of women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities. The film’s star-studded ensemble cast includes Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Daniel Kaluuya and Jacki Weaver with Robert Duvall and Liam Neeson.
BFI Fellow and Widows director and co-writer Steve McQueen comments: “I am absolutely delighted that Widows will be opening this year’s BFI London Film Festival. Watching the UK TV version of Lynda La Plante’s original thriller as a teenager in the 1980s had a major impact on me and so it feels very special to be sharing this film with a UK audience.”
BFI London Film Festival artistic director Tricia Tuttle says: “We treasure the work of BFI Fellow and Festival alumni Steve McQueen, so it’s an utter pleasure to open our festival with the international premiere of Widows. Adapted from a groundbreaking UK television classic into a feature to savour on the biggest cinema screens, this is scintillatingly rich storytelling from a magnificent filmmaker, probing issues around race, class and gender, while always delivering immense style and crackingly sharp thrills.”
The international premiere of Widows will take place on Wednesday 10 October at the Cineworld, Leicester Square.
