BFI London Film Festival: Andy Serkis’s directorial debut Breathe opens event

The BFI London Film Festival kicked off in Leicester Square last night with the European premiere of new Andy Serkis movie Breathe.

Serkis - best known for his CGI-enhanced roles in the Lord of the Rings and Planet of the Apes flicks - makes his directorial debut with film, which stars Andrew Garfield as Robin Cavendish, an inventor and disability rights activist.

There were also dramatic scenes at yesterday’s festival launch, which opened 12 days of screenings of British and international films at venues across the capital.

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The Guardian reports that about 50 staff from Picturehouse Cinemas staged a demonstration in Leicester Square, with the support of union Bectu, as part of a campaign demanding a London living wage.

Speaking on the red carpet at the Breathe premiere, actor Garfield expressed his support for the workers. “It’s awful,” he told Sky News. “It’s indicative of every aspect of our culture now, this massive social divide.”

The Spider-Man star said he hoped to increase awareness of social issues on screen.

“Hopefully, we can make socially conscious films and have change on the ground simultaneously, that’s the ideal,” Garfield said.

Breathe tells the story of how Cavendish was paralysed from the neck down by polio in 1958, at the age of 28, and confined to a hospital bed in order to breathe through a mechanical ventilator.

Unable to accept his fate, he enlisted the help of his friend, an OxfordUniversity professor, to invent a wheelchair with a built-in respirator that liberated him and other polio sufferers from a life in hospital.

Early reviews for the film have been positive.

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw calls Breathe a “valuable and touching story” and an “affecting account of the quiet courage needed to battle the deadly spores of discrimination and condescension that came with polio”.

In The Independent, Geoffrey Macnab says that Serkis has taken a “daunting premise” and managed to deliver “rousing and surprisingly entertaining viewing in its own very British fashion”.

Films from a total of 67 countries are being showcased at the 61st BFI film festival, in a programme of features, shorts and documentaries.

Oscar-winner Emma Stone and Bryan Cranston will attend to promote their films - respectively, tennis comedy-drama Battle of the Sexes and the Richard Linklater comedy Last Flag Flying.

Another highlight is the UK premiere of Loving Vincent, the first ever fully painted feature film, which explores the life and art of Vincent Van Gogh: Variety calls it “truly awe-inspiring”.

The BFI London Film Festival runs until 15 October.