After Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn was announced as the opening night gala, it was only a matter of time before we found out what film would close the BFI London Film Festival this year.
Previous closing night galas have included Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire and last year, Glass Onion.
This year, that honour goes to Kibwe Tavares and Daniel Kaluuya’s The Kitchen, which is set in a near-future version of London.
Credit: Netflix
Here’s the synopsis: “In a dystopian London, the gap between rich and poor has been stretched to its limits. All forms of social housing have been eradicated and only The Kitchen remains. A community that refuses to move out of the place they call home. This is where we meet a solitary Izi (Kane Robinson), living here by necessity and desperately trying to find a way out, and a 12-year-old Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman), who has lost his mother and is searching for a family. We follow our unlikely pair as they struggle to forge a relationship in a system that is stacked against them.”
Before The Kitchen has its world premiere at LFF, you can catch Robinson in the final season of Top Boy on Netflix. Oscar-winner Kaluuya is also on writing duties, having penned the script together with Joe Murtaugh.
The Kitchen is also heading to Netflix. The film will get a cinema release in the UK before streaming on the service, but there’s no official word on when this might happen.
“We both grew up in London, and The Kitchen is a love letter to our city, so it’s a true honour to premiere it here, in our hometown, on the closing night of BFI’s London Film Festival. Starting a decade ago as a workshop in a local Barbershop, the film’s journey from script to screen has been a continued collaboration between us and the community of cast and crew that came to make up our ‘Kitchen’, including our two amazing leads, Kane Robinson and Jedaiah Bannerman whose performances anchor the heart of our story. Together we have aimed to make something fresh, thoughtful and cinematic – an allegory and homage to the residents of ‘The Kitchen’ in every city in the world,” Tavares and Kaluuya said.
“Kibwe Tavares & Daniel Kaluuya have made a film that totally explodes our expectations of contemporary UK cinema. The Kitchen offers such scope for audiences – the essential social politics and high-octane energy gel perfectly to create an electrifying big screen experience. We could not be more excited to close the festival with this inventive film set in a near future London that showcases this incredibly talented team who call this city home,” said Kristy Matheson, the festival director.
BFI London Film Festival runs from 4-15 October. The full programme will be announced on 31 August.
