Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.This year’s BFI London Film Festival begins on October 9 and is selling out fast. Only £200 fundraising tickets remain for the world premiere of Steve McQueen’s wartime drama Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan, and there’s not a seat to be had for Sean Baker’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner Anora. There were still tickets — at press time — for the following, but there is no time to waste. One to One: John & Yoko“There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known, nothing you can see that isn’t shown,” sang John Lennon. You might think this true of his own life story after the surfeit of Beatles documentaries in recent years. But Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ One to One: John & Yoko finds something fresh. It picks up in 1972, three years after and 3,000 miles away from the London of Get Back, Lennon and Ono now residing in Greenwich Village and joining the anti-establishment Rock Liberation Front in an effort to reverse rising youth apathy. But it’s not all peace and love: they face threats of deportation and FBI surveillance, ironically inspiring them to tape their own phone calls and thus providing much of the material here. Another trove is footage from two One to One benefit concerts, the only full-length ones Lennon ever gave post Beatles. Ono is no longer the silent partner of Get Back, here railing against the misogyny and sexism she faced in Britain. But there is much levity too: Yoko and her assistants sourcing live flies for her installation art becomes a running gag, as does Lennon trying to lure a piqued Bob Dylan into performing. The directors find a winning tone that is not overly reverent, dispensing with the greying talking heads and letting youthful optimism course through the film. More than 50 years later, it still has the power to inspire. RAEmilia PérezEmilia Pérez is a soft-spoken mother of two living peacefully in a plush Mexican suburb. She doesn’t start that way: at the outset she is Juan “Manitas” Del Monte, a feared kingpin who kidnaps a defence lawyer (Zoe Saldaña) and employs her to help him transition. Yes, this is a hard-boiled cartel thriller with a transgender twist — and a musical to boot, weaving in rap and reggaeton numbers in Lin-Manuel Miranda fashion. Some rhythms arise organically from the cadence of conversation; others begin with the percussive click-clack of assault rifles. Saldaña does much of the hoofing and lends burning intensity to the role of Manitas’s fixer and confidante. Less in the know is his wife, Only Murders in Building star Selena Gomez stretching her range while working mostly in Spanish. Meanwhile, the Oscar-tipped Karla Sofía Gascón ranges from quiet menace to tenderness in the tricky dual role of Manitas/Emilia, who finds it is easier to change gender than change the past. Writer/director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet, Dheepan) balances narrative audacity with emotional authenticity, proving again his ability to turn his hand to seemingly any genre. RAIt’s Not MeWhen the director of Lovers on the Bridge and Holy Motors sets his mind to reflecting on his life, cinema, and the world, what you get is the blithely bizarre and wildly creative It’s Not Me. Leos Carax’s voiceover mimics raspy late-period Jean-Luc Godard, but any pretensions vanish as he hopscotches among his family history and his 20th-century heroes and villains, pausing to portray himself (in infrared) dreaming up his work in a bedroom crawling with cats. This 41-minute dervish of ideas, images, and goofs shares the joyous velocity and unbound cinephilia of Carax’s other films, which pop up in vibrant clips (with a surprise or two). Amid the flood are moments of sudden poignancy, such as a ghostly-looking girl playing piano, and barbed insights on the absurdities and outrages of the past century. Despite the title, it’s a movie that feels utterly personal in its total idiosyncrasy. NRThe InvasionIt’s hard to surpass Sergei Loznitsa as chronicler of Ukraine’s struggle to wrest itself free from Russia, having served up films on Maidan, Donbas, and now, his entire country under Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion. Filmed over two years, The Invasion pointedly sticks to the home front to show Ukrainians carrying on with daily business as best as possible despite the demands and death toll of war. It’s a living mosaic of moments — families getting food, children at school, even a wedding and impromptu dance — that radiates an inspiring sense of life force and steely determination. But even if we’re not brought to the battlefield, the tentacles of war reach every other scene in some way, whether it’s a woman re-bricking her bombed house, amputees undergoing physiotherapy, or a bookstore binning Russian-language novels. There’s a palpable patriotic pride here, yet shadowed by the hard work of simply surviving. NRMotherboardLike a do-it-yourself version of Michael Apted’s Up series or Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, Motherboard captures 20 years in the lives of a filmmaker and the son she is raising alone. Victoria Mapplebeck fashions a bustling close-up portrait of motherhood and growing pains that chronicles young Jim from his toddler days up through angsty adolescence. What shines through the ups and downs is the love between the two and their jokey rapport, as Jim displays a touching sensitivity to his mother even as he carves out his independence. Hanging over the years is the question of whether to reconnect with Jim’s birth father, who is a source of insecurity and lingering hurt for each of them. Woven together from digital camera and smartphone footage, it’s also a portrait of an artist who is pushing through frustrations and finally making the most of the subject who is living and breathing right in front of her. NROctober 9-20, bfi.org.uk/lff
