The London Film Festival lets you watch films early – and brag about them

 October plays host to one of my very favourite jamborees across the entire spectrum of the arts, namely the London Film Festival.

One of the myriad joys of an arts festival is the tantalising opportunity it offers to deviate from our cultural strait and narrow and try something out of the ordinary. We can rest easy in our festival wanderings, knowing that everything has been curated by experts in the field. Under this reassuring aegis of selection, we find ourselves emboldened to roam far and wide, often encountering en route the very artists who have made the work, as festivals love nothing better than to offer a Q&A in congenial surroundings. 

A theatre critic by trade – and thus no stranger to the mother of all festivals, the Edinburgh Fringe – I have been a devotee of the London Film Festival for more than 20 years now, customarily seeing a film each afternoon before heading off to the theatre in the evening.