Leeds International Film Festival: Full 2024 programme announced with tickets now on sale

The full programme for the 2024 edition was announced yesterday (October 9) and includes UK premieres, new A-List and innovative new Festival strands showcasing the best in world cinema, retrospectives genre films and documentaries.

The 38th edition of the Festival will run from November 1 to 17 at venues across the city including events and screenings at Everyman Leeds, Vue Leeds in the Light, Hyde Park Picture House and Howard Assembly Room.

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Constellation is the new name for the festival’s main programme section, previewing many of the most talked about films of the year and presenting UK Premieres of films from exciting new filmmakers in our feature film competition.

The opening and closing films of Constellation this year are both much-anticipated comedy dramas, featuring stand-out lead performances with Kieran Culkin in Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain and Amy Adams in Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch. Acclaimed filmmaker Sean Baker (Tangerine) returns with his Palme d’Or winning drama Anora.

LIFF is also proud to be presenting new work from some of the finest homegrown British filmmaking talent; Andrea Arnold’s Bird, the director’s first fiction feature made in the UK since Wuthering Heights, will screen at the Festival alongside Mike Leigh’s latest film Hard Truths starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Other films from legendary filmmakers in the programme include I’m Still Here from Brazilian director Walter Salles, and hilarious satire Rumours from Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin.

These join previously announced LIFF opening night film - the UK premiere of Carine Tardieu’s compassionate, emotionally engaging The Ties That Bind Us, as well as the festival’s closing night film of Shô Miyake’s luminous new film All the Long Nights.

There will also be a Central Film screening of the of Payal Kapadia’s 2024 Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine As Light and a special Central Classic Film screening Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s visually stunning masterpiece of the silent era and a stirring paean to nature and rural life in Ukraine, Earth (1930).

Cinema Versa brings you some of the most exciting and innovative documentaries of the year representing a broad range of styles and subjects. There’s the UK premieres of Trans Memoria, Swedish artist and filmmaker Victoria Verseau’s poetic and perceptive diary film about her experiences of gender-affirming surgery in Thailand.

Fanomenon is the home at LIFF for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, dark comedy, cult films, the unclassifiable, and much more. Fanathon film marathons return for LIFF 2024 with Sci-Fi day on November 2 with four new features, including two UK Premieres - mind-bending sci-fi tale The A-Frame and U Are the Universe, a moving and comic story about an astronaut’s search for connection after he is left alone in space when Earth explodes.

Day of the Dead is back on November 9 with four acclaimed new horror films from Belgium, Nigeria, Taiwan and USA showing at Hyde Park Picture House.

Including the UK premiere of Else, smart and suspenseful The Weekend, hilarious dark comedy Dead Talents Society and Dead Mail, a surreal horror thriller that blends retro analogue aesthetics with a twisted tale of obsession, murder, and electronic keyboards.

The ultimate all-night horror marathon, Night of the Dead returns with a new mix of wild films guaranteed to deliver plenty of thrills, gore, and chills. Screenings include the world premiere of Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round, produced by Joe Swanberg, and Dark Match, an action-packed horror that puts a small-time group of ‘80s pro-wrestlers in a desperate battle for survival.

This year’s LIFF programme also spotlights the life and work of Leeds artist-filmmaker Stuart Croft.

Stuart Croft (1970-2015) was a hugely talented artist-filmmaker from Leeds whose work imaginatively collapsed the boundaries between the art gallery and the cinema.

He went from Lawnswood School in Leeds to exhibitions in New York, Venice and Beijing. His work subverts genre conventions and narrative expectations in a playful and thought-provoking way, and his influences range across film history from groundbreaking art films to classic Hollywood cinema.

In partnership with Leeds Art Gallery and The Stuart Croft Foundation, LIFF presents Stuart Croft: Eternal Return, a special season of films that inspired Stuart’s unique vision paired with his own looping moving image works. This season is programmed to complement an immersive exhibition at Leeds Art Gallery (08 November 2024 – 6 April 2025).

The programme also honours Smita Patil, who was just 31 when she passed away in 1986.

With her screen debut in 1975, Smita Patil forged one of the most superlative bodies of work that an actor has ever produced. Across the space of 11 years, Patil collaborated with many of the best filmmakers of her generation. Her disarming beauty and acting prowess made her the iconic face of Parallel Cinema, India’s first post-colonial art film movement (1968 – 1995). This unique retrospective will aim to open a door into the world of Smita Patil, celebrating her films, activism, and enduring stardom.

Audiences can look forward to an introduction to Smita Patil on November 2 followed by a screening of Mirch Masala, featuring Patil in what was arguably her most iconic role of Sonbai, imbuing the film with a memorable feminist and anti-colonial power.

LIFF continues to support short filmmaking with a whole programme section dedicated to them and eight dedicated competitions.

From November 6 - 9, LIFF will present the eight competitions including the Academy Award-qualifying Louis le Prince International Short Film Competition – named after the Leeds pioneer who made the world’s first moving images in 1888 – and the World Animation Competition.

The other competitions include those for British and Yorkshire shorts, documentaries, screendance, queer shorts and music videos. The competitions culminate on November 9 with an awards event at Howard Assembly Room when the juries will announce the winning films which will all be screened on the night too. LIFF Shorts is sponsored by Stewarts.

Established in 1987, Leeds International Film Festival is one of the largest annual film events in the UK and one of the longest, running for 17 days every November in venues across Leeds and West Yorkshire.

Presenting over 250 features and shorts every year, with annual submissions of over 5000 from more than 120 countries, LIFF principally showcases and supports films from new and diverse filmmaking talent and which may not receive profile in the UK otherwise. It is supported by the BFI National Lottery Audience Projects Award.