The BFI London Film Festival has announced that this year’s Opening Night gala will be Academy Award winner Steve McQueen’s new feature Widows, with its international premiere set to take place on October 10th an Cineworld in Leicester Square.
“I am absolutely delighted that Widows will be opening this year’s BFI London Film Festival,” said McQueen. “Watching the UK TV version of Lynda La Plante’s original thriller as a teenager in the 80s had a major impact on me and so it feels very special to be sharing this film with a UK audience.”
“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,” added BFI London Film Festival Artistic Director Tricia Tuttle. “Adapted from a ground-breaking 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.”
SEE ALSO: Watch the trailer for Widows
From Academy Award®-winning director Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”) and co-writer and bestselling author Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”), comes a blistering, modern-day thriller set against the backdrop of crime, passion and corruption: “Widows” is the story of four women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands’ criminal activities. Set in contemporary Chicago, amid a time of turmoil, tensions build when Veronica (Oscar® winner Viola Davis), Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Belle (Cynthia Erivo) take their fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms.
Widows is directed by Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) from a script by Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) and features a cast that includes Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez, Elizabeth Debicki, Cynthia Erivo, Colin Farrell, Brian Tyree Henry, Daniel Kaluuya, Garret Dillahunt, Carrie Coon, Jacki Weaver, Jon Bernthal, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Robert Duvall, and Liam Neeson.
The 62nd BFI London Film Festival runs between October 10th and October 21st.
