Festival Fortnight: Screenings, Suppers and the Hours Between
Every October the BFI London Film Festival takes over screens across the West End for a fortnight. How tickets are won, how to pick a screening, and how dinner fits around the credits.
01October Belongs to the Festival
The BFI London Film Festival arrives each October and runs for roughly a fortnight, bringing new features, documentaries and shorts from around the world to screens across central London. For the West End it is the richest cinema stretch of the year: premieres on the square, filmmakers talking after their films, and an audience that treats the screening as the evening itself rather than something to fill the time before dinner.
For an evening in company, the festival offers something the rest of the calendar rarely does, a film neither of you could have seen last week and most of London will not see for months. It hands a first conversation an obvious subject and a shared moment to begin from, which is worth more than any list of recommended bars. Two people leaving a festival screening never run short of something to say.
02Getting Tickets Without Losing a Morning
Festival tickets are sold in stages. BFI members receive priority booking windows, and the general public sale follows once those have run, which means the most talked about galas can be thin on the ground by the time ordinary booking opens. If one particular title matters, membership is the dependable route, and being logged in and ready at the exact minute your window opens matters more than any other part of the plan.
Sold out is rarely the final word. Returns reappear throughout the festival as other people's plans change, and they come back through the festival's own booking channels. Unofficial resale is best left alone, because nobody can promise that a seat bought that way will be honoured at the door, and a refused entry makes a poor opening to any night. The festival publishes its own ticket terms each season, and they are worth reading once.
03Choose the Screening, Then the Table
Order matters here. Fix the film first, because its start time and length decide everything else, and only then book a restaurant around it. A screening at half past six leaves dinner for afterwards; one at nine suggests an early table and a late drink. Many festival screenings are followed by a question and answer session with the director or cast, often the best part of the night, and it can add a good deal to the running time printed in the programme.
Danielle studies the festival brochure as closely as a sommelier studies a cellar, repertory habits and all, and tends to steer towards the smaller titles where a director will be in the room rather than the red carpet galas. The house files her among its raven haired ladies, and she likes a supper long enough to argue properly about the ending.
04Leicester Square Nights, Galas Across the River
The festival's footprint shifts a little from one year to the next. The large cinemas on Leicester Square have long carried premieres and headline screenings, BFI Southbank serves as the festival's home, and in recent seasons the grandest galas have been staged at the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. Smaller screens scattered across the West End fill out the rest of the programme.
That spread shapes the evening more than people expect. A gala across the river pairs naturally with a walk back over the Hungerford footbridges towards Charing Cross and a late table in the West End, an easy stroll in dry weather. A screening on the square itself needs no transport at all, with Chinatown and the kitchens of Soho a few minutes away when the house lights come up.
05Dinner Either Side of the Credits
Before an early screening, a pre-theatre menu is the simple answer, since the West End has decades of practice feeding people who need to be seated by half past seven. Settling up as the plates are cleared keeps the clock on your side. After a late screening, the kitchens that keep serving well past eleven come into their own, and Chinatown in particular keeps a later clock than most of its neighbours.
Patricia prefers the later version: film first, conversation afterwards, somewhere with low lights and a table that will not be turned for a second sitting. Her fondness for film noir makes her particularly good company after a thriller, and she is one of the three auburn names the house can offer.
06When the Festival Runs Long
Festival nights have a habit of overrunning. Introductions begin late, the conversation after the film finds a second wind, and an audience leaving a large auditorium takes a while to clear the foyer. Build slack into the plan instead of timing it tightly. Two hours is rarely enough for a screening and a meal together; three hours suits it better, and the four hour dinner date better still.
Gala evenings also rearrange the streets around the square. Barriers and closures can turn a two minute walk into a detour, so leave extra time and pick somewhere to meet that sits clear of the carpet, a doorway you can find each other in without shouting over a crowd.
07Booking a Festival Evening
A festival night is arranged as a night out, with the screening, the table and the route folded into one plan with the host. Buy the tickets yourself, two seats together, and mention the venue and start time in your first message. The hours begin when she meets you, not when the opening titles roll.
Three hours comes to £700 and the four hour dinner date to £900, both printed alongside the rest of the ladder on the rates page. Look through the guest list for someone who shares your taste in film, or describe the programme you have chosen and the host will match it to a name who will genuinely enjoy the screening.
> Ladies from this note sit on the late twenties card, one of the styles the guest list is cut into.
Questions from guests
The programme is announced a few weeks before the festival, with BFI members booking first and the public sale following. Dates move each year, so watch the festival's official announcements.
Often, yes. Returns are released through the official booking channels during the festival itself, and patience is regularly rewarded.
Three hours covers a screening and a drink afterwards. With a proper dinner as well, the four hour dinner date is the more comfortable fit.