More than half the programme is films by women. The opening documentary took twelve years to shoot, the closing murder mystery was made by a Cotswolds town, and both gala nights are on sale now. London Breeze Film Festival runs 21 to 25 October.
This is the eleventh edition, running across cinemas in London, and the curation team has handed more than half the programme to films by women, including both headline galas. The full line-up lands on 14 September. These two are bookable now.
Opening night: twelve years with one family
Love Chaos Kin gets its UK premiere on 21 October at Regent Street Cinema, which is London’s oldest cinema and a good room for a red carpet.
It is the second feature documentary from Chithra Jeyaram, a Tamil director who was a physical therapist before she was a filmmaker and who shot, produced and edited this herself. The film follows an Indian immigrant mother who decides her adopted children should know everything: their white birth mother, their Navajo father, and all the complications in between. Jeyaram filmed it across twelve years.
The score is by Vivek Maddala, a four-time Emmy winner. Jeyaram is flying over from the States for a Q&A, and the earlybird ticket includes a glass of something and a goody bag.
Closing night: the village that made a murder mystery
Such a Vivid Imagination closes the festival on 25 October at Riverside Studios, with the awards ceremony straight afterwards.
It is a family murder mystery made in Nailsworth in the Cotswolds, with the town supplying talent, locations and, by the producers’ account, most of the goodwill. Sheherazade Farrell, last seen in A House in Jerusalem, plays Celia, twelve years old, who uncovers her mother’s affair and then a body in the woods, and whose imagination stops being a refuge and starts being a problem. She and her cousins set out to find the killer while the line between witness and suspect goes soft.
It is the debut feature for German-born director Ina Lüders and writer Dave Fedash, produced by Julia Gurry of the duo Belle Rosco, and it has already taken Best Narrative Feature at the Berlin Women Cinema Festival in May. Director, writer, producer and cast are all doing the Q&A.
What else is worth knowing before 14 September
- Over half the programme is films by women, including two of the fourteen shorts strands. T-shirt label Girls on Tops has joined the curation team
- The live pitching competition has been handed entirely to women filmmakers pitching short documentaries, at The Garden Cinema on 25 October
- The Sound of Storytelling, an afternoon on music and sound in film with Oscar-winning music supervisor and editor John Warhurst (Bohemian Rhapsody) and music supervisor Kathleen Wallfisch (Napoleon)
- Industry Roundtables open the industry programme, hosted by Channel 4’s Thomas Pullen and executive producer Kamila Serkebay (Kneecap). Already on sale at Regent Street Cinema
The quality of entries was so extraordinarily high that choosing between films has often felt almost impossible.
Sam Cullis, founder and executive director, London Breeze Film Festival
The London x London Take: the thing that makes this festival worth your October rather than another one is scale. Fourteen shorts programmes and a five-day industry strand is a serious operation, but the venues are Regent Street Cinema, Riverside Studios and The Garden Cinema, which means you are watching UK premieres in rooms of a few hundred people with the director two rows in front. Book the closing gala first: a debut feature from a village of volunteers that has already won in Berlin, followed by an awards ceremony, is the single best-value night in the programme. Then set a reminder for 14 September, when the rest goes on sale.
Need to know
- What: London Breeze Film Festival, eleventh edition
- When: 21 to 25 October 2026
- Opening gala: Love Chaos Kin, UK premiere plus Q&A and reception, Regent Street Cinema, 21 October. Tickets
- Closing gala and awards: Such a Vivid Imagination, Riverside Studios, 25 October. Tickets
- Industry Roundtables: Regent Street Cinema, on sale now
- Full programme: announced 14 September at londonbreezefilmfestival.com
More on screen? Our guide to London’s best independent cinemas covers where to watch the rest of the year.
