The 2012 BFI London Film Festival, which runs until Sunday October 28, presents 22 French films this year, ranging from Love by Michael Haneke to Zarafa by Rémi Bezançon.
Fifteen French actors and directors made the trip across the Channel to attend the event: the directors Jacques Audiard, Benoît Delépine, Rachid Djaïdani, Alain Gomis, Héléna Klotz, Sébastien Lifshitz, Benjamin Renner, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, Valeria Sarmiento, and François Ozon, and the actors Béatrice Dalle, Kristin Scott Thomas, Melvil Poupaud, and Matthias Schoenaerts.
The London Film Festival serves as an important launching pad for British distributors to showcase their films and test reactions of local audiences.
As well as the main screenings, the event also hosts public film screenings and numerous conferences and workshops. One of these workshops, entitled Meet the Buyers, is a mini market organized as a business "speed dating" event, which this year brought together around twenty international sales agents and British television and theatrical buyers. The participating French and British industry professionals met up following the event to attend a reception hosted by uniFrance Films.
