Variety Hosts First London Dinner as BFI Festival Kicks Off Awards Season

Variety hosted its first London dinner on Tuesday evening at Soho Mews House, drawing Jack O'Connell, Sandra Hüller, Taron Egerton, George MacKay and director Florian Zeller to mark the start of the awards season and celebrate the BFI London Film Festival.

The intimate event, held in collaboration with Studiocanal, was hosted by Variety's international editor Elsa Keslassy alongside London-based colleagues Alex Ritman and Ellise Shafer. Studiocanal, part of the London-listed Canal+ Group, arrived with talent from its fall slate at Venice, Toronto, Telluride and the LFF.

Who was in the room?

The guest list spanned four festival circuits and several awards campaigns:

• Danny Boyle, director of the Venice opener "Ink", joined by writer James Graham and star O'Connell
• Billie Piper, singer-turned-actor and star of the LFF opener "Elsinore", with writer Stephen Beresford
• Florian Zeller with "Bunker", starring Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem
• Jonathan Schey, director of "Everybody Wants to F*ck Me", with cast members Egerton and Mia McKenna-Bruce
• Sandra Hüller, attending with "Rose" director Markus Schleinzer

Studiocanal CEO Anna Marsh traveled from Paris for the occasion, accompanied by Ron Halpern, EVP of global production, and Joe Naftalin, SVP of production and development.

Hüller, dressed in a silky red dress, is at the LFF with two films. Besides "Rose", she appears in Pawel Pawlikowski's "Fatherland", which could land her a pair of best actress nominations. Rosalind Eleazar, whose first leading role in Chris Rock's "Misty Green" has earned strong Oscar buzz, also attended. Gemma Chan came fresh from the Sundance highlight "Josephine", in which she stars opposite Channing Tatum. MacKay is currently shooting the "Ocean's Eleven" prequel in France and presented Calvin Demba's "The Animals" at the festival.

What does the dinner signal for the industry?

The evening highlighted the deepening ties between the French and British film industries, with Studiocanal's strong festival presence illustrating the growing crossover of talent, producers and financing partners on both sides of the Channel.

In a short speech, Keslassy stressed the importance of bringing the international film community together at a time of upheaval and consolidation.

"We're here to celebrate the London Film Festival, but also to celebrate you — filmmakers, talent, producers and executives who all have one thing in common: a desire to make movies that are not just entertaining but also bold and meaningful," Keslassy said. "This event is meant to bring this community together, and reflect how vibrant and diverse it is."

She closed on a note of cross-Channel camaraderie: "The French and British may be the biggest rivals in many fields — including in soccer — but when it comes to cinema, we're the best of allies!"

Beyond the headliners, the room mixed rising talent and established figures. Nora Fingscheidt, director of "The Outrun"; Olivia Washington, who starred in the West End production of Jeremy O. Harris' "Slave Play"; and Savanah Leaf, whose feature directing debut was "Earth Mama", all joined the gathering.

Producers in attendance included Katie Goodson of Searchlight Pictures, Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe of Element Pictures, Graham Broadbent and Pete Czernin of Blueprint Pictures, Rosie Alison of Heyday, Ed Macdonald of Plan B Europe, Ben Browning of Pathé UK, Tanya Qureshi of LuckyChap International and independent producer Rosa Attab. Mubi founder Efe Cakarel, whose fall slate includes "Rose", "Fatherland" and France's Oscar candidate "Minotaur", also attended, as did BFI CEO Ben Roberts and senior production and development executive Ama Ampadu.

London Film Festival artistic director Kristy Matheson, now in her fourth year at the helm, joined the dinner after the presentation of Andrew Haigh's "A Long Winter".

Guests began with a cocktail reception in a warmly lit lounge of vintage furniture, then sat down to a four-course dinner at two long tables dressed in white linen. The menu ran from smoked salmon with buckwheat blinis and burrata with black figs to Suffolk chicken, baked potato gnocchi, sticky toffee pudding and dark chocolate mousse.

With Hüller chasing dual best actress nominations and Eleazar generating Oscar talk, the dinner sets the tone for a festival season in which Studiocanal's slate, and the Anglo-French partnerships behind it, will be hard to ignore.